Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision by Tom Brooks

0:00Alright. First of all, thank you all for joining us. Hopefully, you can all hear me. I saw a couple hellos there. Betty and Kimberly, thank you guys. We'll go ahead and get started. We do have a couple folks, assisting us, Roberto and, Natalia. Natalia's senior director of marketing for Divine Mercy, and Roberto is our multimedia manager. My name is Tom Brooks, and I am the vice president for, marketing and admissions at Divine Mercy University. I'm also currently the person working with the candidates for the, PhD in counselor education and supervision. So I'll be the one that'll walk anybody through the process that may want to apply and attend DMU. So without any further, to do here, we'll go ahead and get started.

1:07Alright. So about Divine Mercy University. We're an international center for the scientific study of psychology with a Catholic understanding. Divine Mercy University originated in 1999 as IPS or the Institute for Psychological Sciences. We became a university when we added our, second degree program. Our first being a, degree in our clinical psychology program, our doctor PsyD. And then we had, our masters of science in counseling and our masters of science in psychology. And then recently, we launched our PhD in counselor education and supervision, which you're all here for. And then we also have a certificate currently, in spiritual direction, and that's becoming part of a new school that we launched called the life learn learning institute, which will house all of our certificate programs moving forward.

2:15So a little bit about Divine Mercy University's vision. Divine Mercy University's vision is to be an international center for scholarship of professional education dedicated to the study of the mind and soul grounded in an integral Catholic Christian view of the human person. That's a big mouthful, but at the end of the day, we, we believe that you don't deal with just a an issue or a trauma or this and that. We we like to talk about the whole person and how to help them. Maintaining the highest academic standards, the institution will educate new generations of professionals in psychology related fields and open new areas of scholarship for the for theories that explore the relationship of the human psyche and the Catholic Christian theological, philosophical, and anthropological principles.

3:06Our mission is simple. The university provides students an appropriate academic and educational environment that supports the integration of science, scholarship, and a Catholic Christian understanding of the person through a rigorous, critical, and objective search for truth. It assists students intellectually, humanly, and professionally as they prepare themselves to respond to their vocation as mental health professional professionals or as men and women helping professions. The university's mission also involves dialogue about its integrative approach with practitioners, scholars, and cultural leaders nationally and internationally. Again, today, we're here to talk about the PhD in counselor education supervision program.

3:57It's an online hybrid program. It's a 90 credit doctoral program that builds on DMU's masters in counseling and clinical mental health counseling program as a foundation incorporates 30 credits from the program for the 90 credit doctoral program. If you come from outside of DMU, excuse me, and you have your master's, then, same thing, your credits will move into fill those 30 credits. Students with graduate degrees in counseling or related fields from accredited institutions can transfer up to 30 credits as I just mentioned depending on courses taken in their prior graduate programs. The doctoral program requires an additional sixty credit hours of coursework Coursework. Addressing professional roles in five areas, counseling, supervision, teaching, research and scholarship, and leadership advocacy.

4:57Additionally, students are required to complete internship experiences in advanced counseling, supervision, and teaching, and a doctoral dissertation of original research. Students are also required to travel to complete three extended weekend residencies in the duration of the program. The residencies are designed as working residencies residencies where students gather to encourage each other, practice skills they are learning, and focus on the completion of the dissertations. The PhD in counselors education and supervision program and curriculum is aligned with premier industry programmatic standards. The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, Cancrep, a specialized accrediting by recognized by the Council for Higher Education, CHEA grants accreditation for master's, doctoral programs, and professional counseling.

5:55The PhD in counselor's education supervision program at DMU is not currently accredited by CREC KCREP. DMU cannot hold any promise or guarantee of becoming KCREP accredited. However, DMU is committed to following the KCREP standards in the design, preparation, and deployment of the program, then applying for the KCREP accreditation. And what that really means is as a new program, we have to wait until we get closer to our first graduating class to submit. And we did this with our master's in counseling program, got a full ten year grant. We see no real reason why we shouldn't do well with this one as as well. Just talking a little bit about the program requirements. I'm not gonna read all of this because it'll make all of us crazy.

6:44But in short, the PhD in counselor education supervision, again, consists of 90. The 90 credit program consists of thirty credit hours at the master's degree level and the doctoral level. And as you can see, we have seven core course content courses, three courses in internships, three courses in integration, three courses in research, and then 17 credits in dissertation research and writing. If you were to take the long slow route, you could take up to seven calendar years from the date of your admissions to to the PhD program with a academic year comprising of a fall semester, spring semester, and summer semester. In reality, if you're a full time student, this program really should take you about two and a half years.

7:38If you're what we call a a three quarter student, sometimes you do a little part time, sometimes you do full time. It's more likely you'll be in the through the program in about three, three and a half years depending on how long it takes you to get through your dissertation. The doctoral dissertation topic is developing close consultation with the student's dissertation chair and a dissertation committee. The student is supported throughout by an intentional process of scaffolding skills needed to be successful in the research and writing of the dissertation. This includes the support of dissertation chair, research design, and methodology courses, library resources, and three residencies that support the skills and work required for the completion of the dissertation.

8:25I get questions quite a bit about what are the residents residencies really for. As you can imagine, this is a counseling program. One of the things you need to have is either your provisional license or a full licensure, and you are, assume that you're practicing or working in the field. And the residencies allow you to come in and take what you've learned and need to practice with others in real time and allows you to do that. All every dissertate every, I'm sorry, every residency really allows you to to learn more and more about your skill sets, practice those skill sets, be evaluated in those skill sets, and then either, you know, apply some course correction as needed or, you know, continue learning as you go through, your program.

9:16The first residency is during their first course in the program and then the same term each following year for students in the program full time. As As you can see at the bottom there, it says CES seven forty, advanced seminar and professional identity, legal and ethical issues in CES. CES seven ninety one, internship two is a supervision, four day residency two, and then the CES eight ninety nine, dissertation research and writing five. Again, these are all things that you'll come on the campus with your cohort and, work together on and and practice your skill sets. If you're interested in Divine Mercy University's program and you're looking to, apply, right now, we are taking applications for fall twenty twenty five.

10:08There is no summer sessions for this program. Currently, we offer flat courses, start dates of January and August. So, again, we're looking for August, applicants at this point for, fall twenty twenty five. In order to apply, you would need a master's degree in counseling or related mental health field from an institution accredited by an agency recognized by the US Department of Education. Preference will be given to applicants who are professionally credentialed in a mental health occupation, clinical or school counseling, marriage and family therapy, social work psychology, etcetera. Those accepted without such credentials would need to take the necessary extra courses and internships for those credentials before graduating from the PhD in CES.

10:59Your, you need a cumulative GPA of three point o or better on a scale of four point o. You, would need to complete the application process. It's important you understand this part. There's kinda two parts to the to the application process. There's the original application for admissions document, and that's where you just fill out everything that you need to fill out. And then you would also submit it with a application fee. We do have an application fee waiver code that we can provide to you. And then after that, you would need one recommendation form from an academic reference. If you believe you may have trouble obtaining an academic reference, please contact the admissions office, meaning myself, to discuss this requirement.

11:51Some folks may have been out. I think the currently, I've talked to somebody. It's been out of school nearly twenty five years, and they let me know there's no way they're gonna get an academic reference. So we went to the dean, and we we found another path. Submission of official transcripts from all postsecondary institutions. Even if a degree was not awarded, submission of essays is noted in an application for admission admission document, and two video clips of clinical work. You can role play and a teaching presentation minimum of twenty minutes each. These are important. I get a lot of questions about these, and you can do them as a role play. If you're a clinician and you've been filming your your work and you have a twenty minute snippet, obviously, you follow the FERPA and HIPAA rules in submitting those, and you'd need a, a release from that client.

12:51Or you can basically do kind of a role play as mentioned here and submit that. You do need to submit them as videos and not audio. They you have to have faces on screen. I get asked that quite a bit. And then you would need a curick current curriculum vitae or resume. And, again, we mentioned the, the application fee. There's two interviews. One you'll do with myself, and then I'll be able to answer all your one on one questions, everything from how to invest in your education, start dates, onboarding process, orientation, a number of those things. And we'll go through all of that together. And there's a group interview with other applicants in the CES faculty. Once you've submitted all of your, of your documents for the application process, then that would be forwarded on to the CES faculty.

13:51You would be invited to a group interview with three to four other applicants. There's usually no more than four or five at a time, and then you kinda go through your interview together. And it it helps in a lot of ways. One, you get to know some folks potentially from your your cohort if you're accepted. Two, it's a little easier to watch other people give answers and and then be able to to provide your own, so that it's not all the it's not all on you, if you will. International applicants. I don't know if there's anybody on here that's an international applicant, but if there is, you must have completed the equivalent of a US master's level degree. Applicants holding degrees from outside The United States must submit any international transcripts to a NACES approved evaluation service for a course by course evaluation of the transcripts.

14:46Then once that's, completed and it comes back that you are at a master's or above, then you'll be, you know, be able to get through that part. You'd also need to take a TOEFL, which is basically test in English, international language testing systems. Within the past two years, you can use those. If not, you must take one, before your your actual group interview. If you do take the TOEFL, you must be at least a 100 on the Internet based version, which is the IVT, or two fifty on the computer based version, which is the CBT, and 600 on the paper based version. Academic ILETs or IELTS scores must fall in the overall band of at least seven point o with no individual band scores below six point o.

15:48So if you are international and you have taken a TOEFL, please make sure you pay attention to this part. If need be, you may need to go back and retake it. If you've flown through all these other areas, then you're fine. You see a note down there. It says if an applicant is interested in international internship, this should be clearly noted on the application. There is an internship piece to this. You can do it through your work. You can do it on the job. You know, there's a number of ways to do your internship. That's another question that comes up. On an international level, it would have to be something that would be approved by the faculty. Hey. How do you pay for your education? Several different ways.

16:33Cash is always good. We do take checks. I'm kinda joking. We do have a scholarship and tuition reduction program. Some of you may be graduates of DMU, so you're aware of our scholarship programs. Those of you that are not, graduates of ours, then, you know, we have a pretty robust tuition reduction program and scholarships available for a ton of different things, including international, first responders. I mean, it goes on and on and on, religious. And, for the most part, all of our students do very well. All of you that are on this call right now or on this webinar, if you apply with in the next couple days, next week or so, then you would be eligible for an early admit scholarship as well.

17:24And that's something that you would discuss with financial aid. In addition to scholarships, there are, loans, grants, things like that that you can look at, and all of that's handled through our financial aid department. We do have some other scholarships I mentioned, you know, first responders, those kind of thing. We have a Newman School scholarship. If you went to a Newman accredited or Newman School, there's up to a 15% discount. There's merit based scholarships. We haven't moved into those just yet for this program, but, are a ton of other scholarships that you can apply for. So, again, financial aid, we'll walk through all that. That is part of the application process, and, that's something that you and I would talk to talk to each other about one zero one.

18:13Alright. So that was a really quick down and dirty version. Before we close out. What I'd like to do is open it up, to the group. And as it says on here, you'd see my contact information. My direct line is (703) 416-1161. And then, you can go online to divinemercy.edu, and you can look up the, PhD in, counselor education and supervision. And then there is a Calendly link where you can go in and find availability. You can also, of course, email me and call me, and we can work together on that. So what I'd like to do maybe is just go through some questions. Hey. Good afternoon. Thank you for putting this together. I'm, I work at the as a director of one pastoral area in an in an archdiocese. So we we have a large, very large team of, lay ministers that they are constantly doing some work.

19:26But you what we are aiming now is to improve the standards on the way we are doing ministry work. I wonder if this kind of program would be relevant for would be appropriate for the the needs we have, or is it just specialized in supervising counselors? So if I understand your question correct, I wanna make sure I understand this. Some of it's relevant to helping the priest with their work? Yes. The priest, of course, and their staff and the lay ministers working with them at the party's level. Okay. So, obviously, this isn't a degree designed to talk about, spiritual needs, but from a mental health perspective, absolutely. It the folks that graduate from our PsyD program, which is a doctoral degree in clinical psychology, or our master's in counseling and now the CES program, all of them have that ability to provide, supervision, oversight, and and if given, if you will, and then guidance, of course.

20:42So, yes, it's not directed towards just teaching or something like that. Okay. That's actually what what I'm looking for. We are not supposed to be, given the time we have, directly engaging in ministry work, but accompanying those doing the ministry work. But in for that purpose, the scope of work is vast. We have five areas of ministry and over 150 parishes. So there's a lot of people. What are you looking Yes. It is. Uh-huh. So I would tell you that one of the things that that, priests, deacons, sisters, consecrated Telus is they are grateful for, if they go through one of these programs, getting the mental health and and psychological side attuned with the spiritual needs. But they're usually happy when there's somebody else on staff that can address the the mental health needs versus the spiritual needs.

21:40They usually find those extremely good partnerships. Okay. Good evening. My name is Betty Leek, and thank you so much for your presentation. My question is my question is regarding the accreditation. You said that you guys are not accredited yet, and you need your first cohort to come through and graduate in order to get your accreditation, and there's no guarantee. And if it if there's, like can you say a little bit more about that? Sure. So, we built and started our our master's in counseling program from scratch. And, the folks that that built that program all have run successfully run other built and run, KCREP program KCREP KCREP approved programs. I'm sorry. And, some have served on different boards of the KCREP area.

22:51Our current program director and VP, actually served as the vice president for the international in K CREP area. So they're all well versed in K CREP. They've all participated in in not only building programs, but sometimes going around doing evaluations, a number of things. And like I mentioned, as soon as our our master's in counseling was ready, for submission, we submitted it, and we got full approval right off the bat. Anytime you launch a new program like this, there's a degree of of time that has to be adhered to, and it's really built on the fact that they wanna see that you're actually teaching your students, the students are learning, and they're progressing and those kind of things.

23:41Now the difference in this program versus our master's program, we didn't have anything ahead of that before that was CACREP approved. It was APA approved for our PsyD program. Now that we have a CACREP approved master's program in counseling, this program's accreditation will go a lot quicker and a lot sooner. So where it took us nearly four years under our master's program, we anticipate this to be right around graduation or right after. So regardless of when we get it, everybody that starts in this program our first class start was this January. We just started a class last week, our first class in the CES program. The fall class, anybody that graduates from the program will graduate, and and receive CACREP accreditation.

24:30They'll be able to go through most people want to do their internships wherever they're at in their practice and in their work, those kind of things. But if they choose to go to a a site to work, which, again, many won't, but if they do, they can go to a KCREP approved site as well. So I'm not overly concerned about it and you know? But we do have to put the disclaimer in. One, we're not currently KCREP approved for this program, and we do have to wait a little bit before we could submit for the KCREP approval. But, again, the people that built it, the folks that run it, our academic folks are phenomenal and are all well versed in that world. And if if our masters gives us any indication, we won't have any problem in this area either.

25:14Yes. I am I had to find my mute button. My next question follow-up to that would be, do you all have graduate I think it's called graduate sponsorships, assistantships, or something like that where they, sponsor you through your PhD program, and you assist instructors with, their it's like a their be their assistant if it do you all have that? It's about, student assistance, basically. I guess. I don't know. I'm just learning this stuff, so I'm just checking it out. I'm currently now, in counseling it my master's, getting ready to enter to my field work, and so, interested in my PHD. So once I finish, I wanted to continue forward with my PHD. Okay. So most of the time, I would say teaching assistants, student assistants, those kind of things, really, that's I mean, there may be availability.

26:37I don't know that that's necessarily the route that most people really will take. Anybody going into the program has to be provisionally licensed or fully licensed. So this degree was built for those folks in in mind, meaning we know people who are in the field. We know they're working. We know they got odd hours, all those kind of things. So this degree was built to get them through the rigor and training they need, but do it in what I call a a kind of nice way. The understanding being that you're working. You're in your field. You're doing different things. So most folks don't really take the route you're saying, whether it's a student assistant, teaching assistant, any of those kind of things.

27:21I don't understand the question about sponsorship, so I apologize on that part. But I do I do believe that, again, as you finish up your masters, what you'll find is that you would probably be better off working in the field anyway, whether it's working in a clinic, your own practices. Yes. Hi. But, my name is Lolita Gilmore, and I have my question is, I am a clinical social worker, and, and I just finished seminary with Portland Seminary, George Fox University. So that question is as we as I finish with this, will any of those credits from that doctorate program, that doctoral program, possibly would be accepted into this program? I know I have an MSW with social work and, addiction counseling.

28:18So that's from Grand Canyon and, from Edinburgh on on for the master's level. But I guess my primary question, would any of the credits from the doctoral program be considered? I I think I would have to answer that by saying that, ideally, we're gonna bring in 30 credits, from your master's level. If you have a doctoral degree or you're in the middle of working on one, you can submit your transcripts for evaluation by the program dean and the VP and, the registrar. They'll look at that, and maybe they'll award you some credits, or they'll tell you to test out, or maybe you end up doing a portion of a class without having to do the whole class. I don't know that part yet. Okay. Okay. The because of the nature of the degree itself, it's not always easy to look at another doctoral program and say, yeah.

29:15I can transfer in these. Right. So they would go through that with you and help understand, what they're looking at and what you learned and then how that may apply to anything on our side. Got it. Totally understand. Okay. And then as far as, with, KCRAP, so that for those who are licensed, that wouldn't really wouldn't be an issue at this point. Now if you're already licensed and and you've gone through a KCREP program, it's completely irrelevant. Exactly. Okay. That was my question. K. For all of you that may not understand what was just said, and I and I I wanna expand on it real quick. Thank you, Lily. I think that, it's really people need to understand that this degree is on top of what you're already doing, which is some kind of counseling work.

30:13So pretty much anybody that's gone through and obtained their license probably went through a K Corp program. So you're already kicked through your licensure and and your masters. It's not relevant at this level. They don't take it away or anything like that. But, yeah, obviously, our goal is to apply for and be approved for KCREP accreditation at the CES level. So if you wanna teach down the road, which is one component of this, then, you know, it is an area that you wanna make sure, that the CACREP approval is there. And, again, I don't see a problem with us getting it, but, you know, again, we just started our first class. We're working on our second class now and, you know, so it's gonna be a few minutes before we get the to the application process for.

30:59Hi. This is Mary Smythe, and I was wondering, is it a requirement to be working in a counseling position while you're obtaining your degree? I'm a retired LCSW with a thirty year career in mental community mental health, but I've I've recently retired, and I wanted to do this program and then go back to teaching. Mary, no. I think that, you would be probably the third or fourth person that's in the same boat. We have several retirees that wanna do the same thing and kinda wanna get this degree, go back and teach. And, you know, there's a huge need in the counseling area, as most of you may know, if not all of you that are in counseling already. You're gonna need this degree if you wanna go and teach down the road.

31:50And to be a teacher in counseling, you're gonna have to have a a CES degree. So, no, Mary. I think that you'll be fine. The fact you got thirty years under your belt, you probably know a few things. So, yes, you'll be fine. Okay. Thank you. And I'm sorry. Did you pronounce your last name as Smythe? Yes. I wanna make sure I understand. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. Who else we got? So if there's no other questions, I'm hoping that I hear from several of you on my Calendly. I'll be following up over the next few days with calls to everybody that attended. And, I look forward to talking to you folks, and, I appreciate everybody that attended. Thank you very much.