Coursework and Learning Outcomes
M.S. in Marriage and Family Therapy
Year 1: Summer
Procedures for gathering, analyzing, and synthesizing information; reviewing the literature; designing studies. Section selection to be made with department graduate adviser.
Development of self-understanding. Cross-cultural communication skills needed for becoming an effective counselor.
Legal, ethical, and professional issues in counseling and marriage and family therapy practice, research, and training. Cultural underpinnings and clinical implications of legal and ethical codes.
Family development examined within sociocultural and temporal contexts. Addresses predictable and crisis transitions and implications for family therapy treatment.
Historical and empirical foundations of marriage and family therapy. Classic systemic theoretical models of practice from vantage point of assessment. Related change strategies and techniques.
Year 1: Fall
Issues, insights, and techniques for improving effectiveness in working with culturally diverse populations.
Contemporary marriage and family therapy theories including: post-modern ideas, such as narrative therapy and collaborative language systems, integrative and evidence-based approaches; alternative approaches to family therapy, such as coaching and mediation.
Systemic models of intervention for families, couples presenting problems related to substance abuse. Includes treatment issues of interdependence, power, intimacy, generational patterns, addition and relapse. Fulfills marriage and family therapy and LPCC requirements.
Counseling theories, processes and approaches appropriate to children and adolescents in multicultural school and community settings. Application of theories and research for individual, group, family and larger systems interventions.
Supervised experience in relationship and family therapy under live supervision. Application of assessment methods and basic techniques. Clinical hours may be counted toward 500 clinical hours and marriage and family licensure eligibility requirement.
Year 1: Spring
Descriptions of mental health disorders within biological, individual, familial, and larger social contexts. Focus on Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classification system and relationship to family functioning.
Advanced supervised experience in relationship and family therapy under live supervision. Advanced techniques and treatment planning. Clinical hours may be counted toward 500 clinical hours and marriage and family licensure eligibility requirement.
Multicultural and social justice; crisis and trauma counseling and therapy to include historical and philosophical origins of current theories and practices and implications for multidisciplinary treatment. Trauma and diversity.
Group process, theories of group interaction, and group leadership techniques with children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families. Fulfills requirements for licensed professional clinical counselor and marriage and family therapy licensure.
Year 2: Summer
Roles and approaches of family counselor in working with schools for children’s school-based problems. Family systems theory and practice applied to family-school interface, cultural interaction, specific symptomology, and professional and ethical issues.
Procedures for gathering, analyzing, and synthesizing information; reviewing the literature; designing studies. Section selection to be made with department graduate adviser.
Community-based clinical marriage and family therapy experience, with AAMFT approved supervisor or equivalent. Individual and group supervision at site and on campus. Clinical hours may be counted toward 500 clinical hours and marriage and family therapy licensure eligibility requirement.
Year 2: Fall
Study of selected areas in counseling, marriage and family therapy, school counseling, or school psychology culminating in a written project with emphasis on counseling as a profession.
Community-based clinical marriage and family therapy experience, with AAMFT approved supervisor or equivalent. Individual and group supervision at site and on campus. Clinical hours may be counted toward 500 clinical hours and marriage and family therapy licensure eligibility requirement.
Explores and applies theory and practice of therapy with couples in premarital, marital, non-marital, divorce, recoupling, and remarriage situations. Intra and intercultural issues and gender factors in coupling. Discussion of specific problems such as infidelity or depression.
Year 2: Spring
Approaches to understanding sexual functioning and intimacy through multicultural, historical, and relational clinical theory frameworks. Specific sexual issues presented in therapy, treatment planning, and intervention. Fulfills marriage and family therapy and LPCC licensure requirements.
Study of selected areas in counseling, marriage and family therapy, school counseling, or school psychology culminating in a written project with emphasis on counseling as a profession.
Community-based clinical marriage and family therapy experience, with AAMFT approved supervisor or equivalent. Individual and group supervision at site and on campus. Clinical hours may be counted toward 500 clinical hours and marriage and family therapy licensure eligibility requirement.
Final Summer
Community-based clinical marriage and family therapy experience, with AAMFT approved supervisor or equivalent. Individual and group supervision at site and on campus. Clinical hours may be counted toward 500 clinical hours and marriage and family therapy licensure eligibility requirement.
Program Goals and Student Learning Outcomes:
Program Goal 1. Graduates demonstrate ethics, knowledge, and practice of the MFT discipline fulfilling requirements for MFT California State licensure required by the Board of Behavioral Sciences (BBS)
- Student Learning Outcome 1. Graduates will pass the California Law and Ethics Exam
- Student Learning Outcome 2. Graduates will be employed in the MFT profession
Program Goal 2. Students demonstrate knowledge and competency in delivering MFT professional services to diverse and underserved communities
- Student Learning Outcome 3. Students will demonstrate knowledge in intercultural dimensions of counseling with diverse and underserved communities
- Student Learning Outcome 4. Students will demonstrate competence in delivering MFT services to diverse and underserved communities
Program Goal 3. Students demonstrate understanding, knowledge, and application of MFT research and scholarship into practice
- Student Learning Outcome 5. Students will demonstrate understanding and knowledge of research and scholarship related to the MFT practice
- Student Learning Outcome 6. Students will demonstrate the application of research and scholarship related to the MFT practice and scholarship related to the MFT practice