School of Education

Dr. Angela Holman, Assistant Professor Director, Mental Health Counseling Office: Education Center, Room 320 Phone: 910.521.6511 Email: angela.holman@uncp.edu

Prospective students should email the Graduate Office at grad@uncp.edu or visit the website at http://www.uncp.edu/grad.

Program Mission

The mission of the Mental Health Counseling Program is to prepare students to work in a wide range of settings as Professional Counselors; to contribute knowledge to the field of professional counseling through faculty scholarship; and to provide service to the university, community, and counseling profession. The program addresses the academic and career needs of diverse counselors-in-training by offering a mixture of theoretical and clinical educational experiences. The program is designed to provide students with a core foundation of counseling knowledge, skills and practices; specialty knowledge, skills, and practices related to the practice of Mental Health Counseling; and supervised clinical field placement experiences leading to a master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling. Graduates of this program often seek national certification and state licensure as Professional Counselors and are employed in settings such as counseling centers, mental health agencies, social services settings, hospitals, youth and family programs, substance abuse treatment facilities, and private practice settings.

Field Placement Experiences

The culminating experience of the Mental Health Counseling program is the supervised field placement courses: practicum and internship. The benefits of supervised field experiences for counselor development are numerous. The supervisor and supervisee work together to develop competence with the latest best practices in the field. The supervision relationship builds connectedness between professionals in the field.
Supervision also provides one resource for counselors to use when coping with the stressors of the field, either as graduate students or as seasoned professionals. The practicum in counseling provides for initial field placement prior to the internship.

The practicum experience allows the student to become oriented to the field of professional counseling and to learn the culture of the clinical setting. Students should expect to practice beginning skill development under close supervision by the site supervisor and the university instructor of the practicum course.

The internship in counseling provides for extended field placement. The internship experience allows the student to engage in increasingly complex and independent tasks and duties as related to the field of professional. Students should expect to practice continued skill development under close supervision by the site supervisor and the university instructor of the internship course. The Mental Health Counseling program
requires a 600 hour internship completed over the course of two semesters.

Portfolio

All students will be required to establish, maintain, and present a portfolio that demonstrates competencies in mental health counseling.  Guidelines for completing this requirement are in the student manual.

Program-Specific Admissions Standards (see also Graduate Admissions)

a) All applicants for the M.A. Ed. degree are required to submit an essay detailing their professional experiences and their objectives in pursuing graduate studies.

b) The applicant must also demonstrate graduate-level writing skills in his/her essay (see item a, above) indicating program-career goal compatibility and evidence of the personal attributes expected of a professional counselor.

c) A personal interview with the program director may be requested.