Counseling Program Objectives

Students who graduate from the UTPB Counseling Program will be able to:

• Articulate the professional roles and functions, themes of advocacy and social justice, interdisciplinary professional collaboration, ethical and legal standards of practice and apply ethical decision-making.
• Demonstrate an awareness of, and an appreciation for, social and cultural influences on human behavior and to recognize the impact of individual differences on the counseling process.
• Articulate and employ theories of normal and abnormal human development related to counseling across the lifespan.
• Demonstrate an understanding of and career development theories; occupational and educational information sources and systems; career and leisure counseling, guidance, and education; lifestyle and career decision-making; and career development program planning, resources, and evaluation
• Demonstrate effective individual, group, couples, families and child counseling skills which facilitate client growth and to demonstrate the ability to employ case conceptualization, effective intervention strategies that integrate theory, client assessment information, diagnosis, and accepted professional counseling skills.
• Articulate and employ an understanding of group development, dynamics, and counseling theories; group leadership styles; group counseling methods and skills, and other group approaches.
• Demonstrate an understanding of group and individual education and psychometric theories and approaches to appraisal; data and information gathering methods; validity and reliability; psychometric statistics; factors influencing appraisals and the use of appraisal results in helping processes.
• Demonstrate an understanding of types of research; basic statistics; research-report development; research implementation; program evaluation; needs assessment; and ethical and legal considerations related to research and program evaluation.