Counseling (School Counseling or Clinical Mental Health Concentration)

Overview

What You Will Learn

• The many facets of being a professional counselor, including the importance of advocating for clients, and adhering to ethical and legal guidelines

• A breadth of different counseling theories and skills, including technological competencies

• An appreciation of and opportunities to deepen self-awareness

• How to understand people from a developmental perspective with consideration for client context, culture and diversity

The Counseling (School Counseling or Clinical Mental Health Concentration) program from National Louis University is to train highly competent and humane individuals in the greater Chicago area who are interested in working in schools or clinical mental health agencies in urban, suburban, small town, and rural areas. The faculty is committed to providing experiential opportunities for students that link research and theory with hands-on experiences aimed at promoting personal, scholarly, and professional development. The counseling curriculum prepares individuals to become licensed professional counselors and/or licensed professional educators with an endorsement in school counseling in the State of Illinois. Students will be trained to be diversity-sensitive counselors with expertise for working in an increasingly global society.

In pursuit of this mission, the program has the following goals and outcomes:

Program Goals

The program faculty design the program and individual courses in such a way as to:

• Provide students with the academic training and professional experiences needed to develop counseling knowledge and skills, including technological competencies as a professional counselor.

• Provide students with opportunities for self-reflection, and to impress upon students the necessity of continuing education, as well as the need for ongoing personal self-awareness and growth.

• Instill in students an appreciation for the worth of each individual, a developmental perspective on human growth over the lifespan, and an awareness of the importance of context, culture, and diversity.