Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs)
1) Professional Counselor identity, ethical behavior, and professional standards:
• Assisting students to acquire knowledge and understanding of relevant ethical/professional codes, standards and guidelines, laws, statutes, rules, and regulations;
• Awareness and application of ethical decision making;
• Recognizes situations that challenge adherence to professional values and applies an ethical decision-making model to ethical dilemmas;
• Assisting students adhere to professional values throughout professional work;
• Demonstrates understanding of counseling and psychological practice as an applied behavioral science;
• Maintain professionally appropriate communication and conduct across different settings;
• Assess personal accountability and accept responsibility for own actions;
• Demonstrate concern for the welfare of others; and
• Display an appropriately defined professional identity.
2) Evidence-based theories and practice of counseling and psychotherapy:
• Empowering students with the knowledge of individual and group theories of counseling and psychotherapy;
• Maintaining forms of productive and respectful relationships with clients, peers/colleagues, supervisors, and professionals from within and across disciplines;
• Negotiating differences and handles conflict satisfactorily to (1) provide effective feedback to others, receive feedback non-defensively, and integrate feedback appropriately, and (2) communicate clearly using verbal, nonverbal, and written skills in a professional context;
• Applying evidence-based intervention and prevention strategies designed to alleviate suffering and to promote health and wellbeing of individuals, groups, and/or organizations;
• Formulating and conceptualizing cases.
3) Multiculturalism and diversity:
• Assisting students in demonstrating knowledge, self-awareness, and skills in working with individuals, groups, and communities who represent various cultural and personal backgrounds and characteristics;
• Demonstrating knowledge and awareness of self, as shaped by individual and cultural diversity and context;
• Demonstrating knowledge and awareness of others, as shaped by individual and cultural diversity and context;
• Applying knowledge of self and others as cultural beings in assessment, treatment, consultation, and all other professional interactions.
4) Theories of psychopathology and relevant classification systems:
• Demonstrating knowledge including, but not limited to, assisting students in demonstrating knowledge of theories of psychopathology, including but not limited to, biological and sociocultural theories;
• Demonstrating knowledge of classification systems of behavior and evaluates limitations of those systems;
• Demonstrating skills including, but not limited to, assisting students in applying concepts of normal/abnormal behavior to case formulation, diagnosis, and treatment planning in the context of stages of human development and diversity.
5) Tests, measurements, and other assessments of behavior:
• Empowering students to demonstrate knowledge of content, reliability and validity, and purposes of assessment measures frequently used by counselors and psychological practitioners;
• Evaluating strengths and limitations (including cultural limitations) of administration, scoring, and interpretation of assessment measures.
• Assisting students in the ability to select and utilize appropriate assessment measures across domains of functioning, practice settings, and cultural groups.
6) Research methods and program evaluation:
• Assisting students to demonstrate the knowledge of scientific methods commonly used by counselors and psychology practitioners in their clinical work;
• Demonstrate knowledge of use of scientific methods to add to the knowledge base of counseling and psychology;
• Demonstrate knowledge of application of scientific methods to evaluating practices, interventions, and programs;
• Assisting students in critiquing published research effectively.
7) Career and life development:
• Educating students on vocational/career development theories and decision-making models;
• Educating students in career assessment instruments and techniques;
• Assisting students in demonstrating the knowledge of the role of work in peoples’ lives; career development applications;
• Demonstrating the understanding of the development of work and career choices across the life span.
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