Program Requirements
Our Counseling Psychology Ph.D. Program includes a variety of courses and other requirements designed to achieve the above goals and objectives. The Program includes foundational course work which is applicable across specialties within psychology, course work relevant to the specialty of counseling psychology, practicum training, a master's-level research project and a dissertation, and a one-year internship in professional psychology which is completed toward the end of doctoral studies. Before applying for their internships, students must also pass the doctoral qualifying examination and have their dissertation proposals approved.
The Program includes a minimum of 102 graduate course credits. This includes 30 credits in Psychological Foundations, 60 credits in the Professional Core, and 12 credits of Research Requirements. Students who have completed some of these requirements elsewhere may petition to waive certain courses or the master's-level research project. Continuous enrollment is required of all students in the degree program, even during semesters when they are not taking courses (students are not required to continuously enroll during the summer, however). The following table summarizes the major program requirements. Note that these are minimal requirements, and many students find it very helpful and sometimes critical to take additional practicum or coursework in order to gain additional skills before embarking on their internships and dissertations.
Course Waivers and Substitutions
Students who completed graduate coursework at other institutions or Marquette University departments which is equivalent to courses required in our Program may petition to have those course requirements waived. A Petition for Course Waiver or Substitution form (see Appendix A) must be completed for each course to be considered for a waiver. Students will need to submit the course syllabi from the original course taken to their advisors. Copies of course syllabi for our department which can be used for comparison purposes are available from the department secretary. The advisor and department chair both need to sign the form indicating their approval in order for the waiver to be accepted. In cases of disagreement between the advisor and chair, the petition will go to the full department faculty for a vote. Courses taken longer than 6 years previously normally will not be waived because the material that was covered is likely no longer current. The procedure does not need to be followed for courses which a new student previously completed within the department within the previous 6 years.
Students should also use this procedure for elective courses which are not already preapproved or for courses that they wish to take as a substitute for required program courses. Students need to get preapproval for substitute courses, however, because the faculty will not approve all courses which may at first glance appear to be similar to our courses but which we judge do not meet our standards.
Master's Degree
Students who are admitted to the doctoral program prior to receiving a master's degree must also complete an appropriate master's degree as part of their doctoral program-this normally involves a Master of Arts in Counseling. Obtaining the master's degree in Counseling along the way to completing the Ph.D. has important benefits, such as the accrual of post-master's clinical experience which can help meet the qualifications needed for various types of certification. If students discontinue their doctoral studies after earning the Master's degree for any reason, they will also have a very useful degree for many kinds of human service occupations.
Counseling Psychology doctoral students can meet the requirements of our Master's degree in Counseling by completing EDPS 322 (Measurement and Evaluation) and COPS 320 (Cognitive Assessment) to substitute for COUN 220 (Assessment in Counseling). COPS 321 may also be used to meet one of the elective course requirements in the Master's Program. Students may also substitute EDPS 321 (Intermediate Research and Statistics) for EDPS 261 (Introduction to Research Methods in Education).
Passing the Master's Comprehensive Examination is also required for the Master's in Counseling degree. The exam involves the presentation of a vignette describing a typical counseling case. This is followed by a standard series of questions which inquire about one's conceptualization of the case, assessment issues, treatment planning, and the ethical and legal issues that are involved. The exam is administered three times per year, normally in March, August, and October (see the Master of Arts in Counseling Program Handbook for more details). It is important to note that students who wish to graduate in August must take their comprehensive exam in the spring semester before the August graduation. The grading of the August exams continues into September, which is well past the deadline for the August graduation. Students who take their comprehensive exams in August consequently will graduate the following December (provided that the rest of their degree requirements have been completed).
Practicum and Internship Training
Students in the Counseling Psychology Program complete extensive practicum and internship training in a variety of mental health and educational agencies in the Milwaukee area. Students are required to complete a minimum of 1200 clock hours of doctoral-level practicum after having completed a minimum of 600 hours of master's-level practicum. Each semester of practicum is normally 300 hours in length (i.e., 20 hours per week times 15 weeks in a semester), so this ordinarily requires a minimum of 6 semesters of practicum. For full-time post-baccalaureate students, practicum usually begins in the second year after they have completed the prerequisite coursework (i.e., COPS 216, Introduction to Counseling, EDPS 266, Development, COUN 217, Individual Counseling, COUN 222, Theories, COUN 230, Psychopathology, and COPS 283, Ethics). Students must also take COUN 218, Group Counseling, COPS 320, Cognitive Assessment, and COPS 268, Multicultural Counseling, either prior to or concurrently with COUN 269, Counseling Practicum (i.e., these three courses must be taken before beginning practicum or during either one of the required two semesters of COUN 269). Normally these 1800 hours of practicum are completed at a minimum of three different sites (often two semesters at each site). The purpose of this is to expose students to a variety of sites, populations, assessment and treatment approaches, and supervisors. For those who enter the program having already completed post-Master's clinical practice, only the first two semesters of practicum (COUN 269) can be waived-none of the COPS 369 requirement can be waived.
The first two semesters of practicum (COUN 269) focus primarily on intake and intervention skills, while the following four semesters of practicum (COPS 369) add psychological evaluation responsibilities and more specialized training. Each semester of practicum is supervised by a licensed counseling psychologist and includes a developmentally-oriented curriculum which focuses on increasingly advanced topics as students progress through their clinical training (e.g., intake assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning in the first two semesters of practicum; formal psychological evaluations in the third semester of practicum; beginning to specialize, supervision of master's students, consultation, and program evaluation in the fifth semester of practicum). Emphasis is also placed on obtaining exposure to a variety of client populations and settings so that students are broadly prepared to begin professional practice.
Licensure requirements for professional psychologists in the United States also require that students complete a predoctoral internship. Students in our Program must complete a minimum of 2000 hours in an appropriate behavioral health setting as a psychology intern. The internship must be completed in no less than 12 months (i.e., working 40 hours per week for roughly 50 weeks) but in no more than 24 months (e.g., working 20 hours per week for 100 weeks).
Research Requirements
Our Counseling Psychology Ph.D. Program is designed to prepare graduates who are highly skilled at both research and practice. Therefore, research in addition to clinical practice training is infused throughout the Program, and students are expected to be active researchers throughout their doctoral studies.
We view the acquisition of research skills from a developmental perspective. As with clinical skills, students need to learn how to do research over time, starting with more elementary aspects and gradually undertaking more complex responsibilities. As students proceed through their coursework, cumulatively learning about and gaining experience with research methodology and the field of counseling psychology, they will be able to engage in research more independently as they approach their dissertations. Learning how to do research starts in the first semester, and proceeds all the way through the end of students' dissertations and internships.
All of our courses integrate research into the course activities in one way or another. Even our practicum courses, which obviously focus a great deal on the development of clinical skills, require a consideration of the reliability and validity of clinical assessments and the empirical support for any interventions that are considered in a particular case. We also have a four-course sequence of classes which explicitly focus on the development of research skills. Three of these focus on quantitative skills (EDPS 321, 322, and 323) while the fourth (COPS 324) focuses on qualitative skills. Most of our new doctoral students have taken the prerequisites for 321, Intermediate Research and Statistics (i.e., EDPS 261 and 275 or their equivalents) in their previous coursework. On occasion, even students who have previously completed these classes retake one of them if a long time has passed or for other reasons they do not feel confident about their ability to enroll in EDPS 321 at the beginning of their program.
Collaborative Research Project . While the Program coursework is designed to help students develop many important research skills, several aspects of research cannot be learned without actively engaging in the research process under the guidance and supervision of experienced researchers. Therefore, we expect students to be actively involved in research throughout their doctoral program so that they can begin to apply their classroom learning, as well as learn other aspects of the research process that are not easily taught within the classroom. To ensure that this happens, we have two requirements for completing the "Collaborative Research Project" (CRP): participation on a research team, and writing a report of a research project in which the student participated.
Research Learning Agreement
Students who have conducted research as part of a prior graduate level training in one of the behavioural sciences should discuss that experience with their advisors to see if they have already met the requirements of the CRP. Undergraduate research experience cannot be used to satisfy this requirement. To formally request that this requirement be waived, students can submit a "Research Learning Agreement—Progress Report" summarizing the experience, along with the research report that they wrote as part of that prior research experience, to thier advisors.
Dissertation
Students' dissertation research is normally a significantly larger undertaking than the CRP and usually aims to provide an original contribution to knowledge in counseling spychology. The dissertation is described in detail in a later section of this handbook. Students are also required to complete the Collaborative Research Project before they propose their dissertations or take their doctoral qualifying exams.
Recommended Course Sequence
The table below offers a recommended course sequence for students who proceed through the program on a full-time basis, taking 12 credits per semester fpr ,most of the first three years. If done using this schedule, the entire Program, including dissertation and the one-year predoctoral internship can be completed within five years (four years of coursework and the dissertation followed by one year of internship). This requires a high course load while also completing practicum, preparing for the master's comprehensive and doctoral qualifying exams, completing the Collaborative Research Project, and writing the dissertation proposal. Note also that the doctoral qualifying exam and dissertation proposal need to be completed before applying for the internship. We find that students vary greatly with reqard to staying on this schedule, but certainly students with significant family or other responsibilities may find it impossible. There obviously are also advantages to taking a slower pace and ensuring the dissertation is completed before the internship.
