CACREP Accreditation

Program Learning Objectives

Mission Statement: The faculty and staff of the Delta State University Counselor Education Program, through teaching, training, supervision, and experiential activity, develop ethical, competent, and culturally sensitive counselors who are prepared to work in school or community settings. Program faculty seek to strengthen the profession by modeling for students the professional expectation of continued growth and learning, interpersonal awareness, and practical application of sound principles and practices in their work as professional counselors.

1. Counseling students will develop and demonstrate an understanding of the life-long need to pursue counseling knowledge and professional development. Students will articulate the value of engagement in professional organizations for the purposes of advocacy, certifications, and accreditations.
2. Counseling students will develop an ethical awareness that results in behaviors that reflect an understanding of roles, responsibilities, supervision, and limitations as they collaborate and consult with other behavioral health professionals, school professionals, and systems.
3. Counseling students will verbalize the importance of counseling history and its ongoing influences on current practices.
4. Counseling students will examine biological, environmental, and systemic factors that affect human behavior, development, and functioning. Counseling students will develop strategies for promoting optimum development, resilience, and wellness across the lifespan.
5. Counseling students will utilize career theories that facilitate the client’s pathway to satisfactory work and leisure, including counseling skills that foster values clarification, knowledge of the work world, and personal wellness.
6. Counseling students will utilize critical thinking skills to evaluate the effects of power and privilege for clients. Counseling students will demonstrate decision making strategies to understand the impact of attitudes, beliefs, heritages, understandings, and acculturative experiences on the views of others.
7. Utilizing multicultural competencies and awareness, counseling students will adopt the counseling knowledge base and work-behavior areas to diverse client populations. This ability to make cultural adjustments will be shown specifically in the work-behavior areas of counselors including fundamental counseling issues, counseling processes, diagnostic and assessment services, professional practice, and professional development.
8. As they strengthen their commitment to grow deeper toward integrated practice, counseling students demonstrate foundational understanding of the intersection between counseling theory, counseling skills, and differentiated interventions.
9. Students are aware of their own worldview and its intersection with theories of counseling and development. From this perspective, students demonstrate a beginning verbalization of their own integrated theoretical approach.
10. Counseling students will display knowledge of the various models of group work, processes, and development to ensure effective, ethical group experiences with clients.
11. Counseling students will recognize the need to assess and improve their own leadership skills. They will demonstrate the ability to manage group dynamics within counseling venues.

Program Outcomes

M.Ed. in Counseling

Academic Year 2023-24 Annual Report