Welcome to our master's degree in counseling webinar.
Thank you for meeting us here today.
I am excited to go through this information with you and to talk with you about our master's in clinical mental health counseling at Divine Mercy University.
This webinar is being recorded, and if you're missing anything, we will send the information to you at the end of the webinar in an email.
Also, if you have questions as we go through the information, please feel free to save them till the end, maybe jot them down where you are.
And at the end, you can pop them into the chat window, and I will be happy to answer all of them for those who can stay on a little after the webinar ends.
So, again, please save your questions for the end.
I'll ask you to put them into the chat function, and I will answer them, at the end of the presentation.
Alright, so five reasons to earn a master's degree in clinical mental health counseling.
I'm Julie.
I am presenting the webinar today, And I will have my contact information for you at the end of the webinar as well.
So you can give me a call anytime if you have questions.
And you'll have my email address as well.
That's me on a very bad hair day.
Okay, here we go.
So welcome to Divine Mercy University.
Our school was actually founded in the late 90s under the name Institute for the Psychological Sciences.
And if you poke around our website, you will probably see that, you will certainly see that name.
That school college still exists.
It houses our psychology side.
We have another online master's degree that we offer.
It's a master's in psychology, and it's a non clinical degree for people who already have a career in the helping professions, but maybe need a master's degree or need a deeper insight into the person.
And we have a lot of human resources professionals, directors of crisis pregnancy centers, people who work in school administration, and religious and clergy who use that degree.
We also have an on-site doctoral program housed in that college.
So we do have an actual campus in Virginia with actual doctoral students working on campus.
But what they found through offering those programs is that there was such a need for counselors, and particularly for counselors of faith.
So in 2015, they decided to add the second college, the School of Counseling, and the Master's in Clinical Mental Health Counseling that we are discussing today.
So when a school has more than one college, that's the point at which they take a university name.
So that's how we went from being plain old IPS to Divine Mercy University.
We seek to provide our students an effective academic and educational environment to support the education in the human sciences with a Catholic Christian understanding of the person.
Alright.
Our school is accredited.
We are regionally accredited by SACS.
That stands for Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.
The way so regional accreditation is the baseline you should look for in any US school you attend.
If you're looking at at a school that can't give you a simple yes to the regional accreditation question, that's your side to go very quickly in the opposite direction.
So we are regionally accredited by the Southern Association of SACS.
Each region of the country, in The US has a different accrediting agency.
Each one has a different name, but they're all regional accreditation.
So for the third time, AUGUST is called SACS.
It goes from where we are in Virginia all the way down around to Texas.
So UT, Auburn, UVA, all those schools are accredited by SACHS, just like we are.
When you start talking about psychology and counseling, there are a couple of extra accreditations that can be earned.
APA is the American Psychological Association.
That's kind of the big dog for all of this type of field.
Most people have heard of APA.
DMU became APA accredited back in 2016.
In fact, we became only the second school in the whole history of the APA to receive the full seven year accreditation grant on the first try.
Actually, I just wanna go back up to accreditation.
So we skipped a little part, an important part.
When you start talking about counseling, the extra accreditation for that type of program is known by the acronym CACREP, c a c r e t.
So CACREP is something we are working towards.
We are at the tail end of the process.
We've done everything we need to do to earn the accreditation.
Our document right now is with the consultants who are dotting the i's and crossing the t's to make sure all is well before we submit the document to CACREP for our on-site review and hopefully accreditation.
So right now, our degree is fine as is in 38 states.
Once we wrap up our KCRAP accreditation, the 10 states that do require it will come under our umbrella and our degree will be fine in 48 states.
The two holdouts are going to be Illinois and New Hampshire.
And that's because, essentially, you have to go to school in state to be licensed in Illinois or New Hampshire.
So, as long as you don't have plans to move to any of those two states, you should be just fine.
Alright.
If you have questions about accreditation, I'll be happy to talk more about it as we go to the end of the webinar.
So, DMU is unique and we are unique because primarily of our Catholic Christian meta model of the person.
This model is unique to our university.
It was developed by our faculty, and it was published in textbook form last fall.
It was winning awards from the Vatican before the ink was even dry on the pages.
So, this is very important to our identity as a university.
And that's why the vast majority of students choose our school.
You can certainly find a school that is less expensive.
You can certainly find a school that, will teach you get you through the degree more quickly, but only DMU has the Catholic Christian meta model of the person.
If you search that name on our website, you can find it easily.
There'll be a PDF there that you can download, that is about 40 pages of the theology and philosophy behind why we teach the way we do.
You could also buy the textbook and, you know, flip through it.
Some people do that ahead of time, once they realize they would like to attend our university.
So what the Catholic Christian meta model of the person will do is teach you at in your time as a student here, our professors will teach you to frame a treatment plan based on the Catholic Christian understanding of the person that we are integrated in, body, mind, and soul.
Unfortunately, all of the other schools, even the Catholic ones at this point, will tell you that you have to check your faith at the door, that it doesn't have a place in therapy.
And that's just not true.
So, EMU faculty will teach the students to frame the treatment plan based on that understanding of the person so that whether your client believes in God or wants to talk about God is beside the point.
We know that the objective truth of who we are and how we were created does not hinge on our belief or unbelief.
So even if you encounter a client who doesn't believe in God, who doesn't want to talk about God, that's okay.
You can still help them reach flourishing.
The other thing the meta model does is it teaches such a nuanced understanding of the person that it would take a non DMU trained therapist to really, you know, a lifetime of practice to gain this understanding through trial and error if they ever fully do.
So you can help your clients, reach flourishing if they never want to talk about that.
And you will graduate with a leg up even on seasoned therapists.
And that's not just me talking and making this up.
We hear this from our internship sites all the time.
Our students in the counseling program are far better prepared than their peers who are supposedly at the same level.
And largely, that is due to the Catholic Christian meta model of the person.
Okay.
So number one reason to earn a master's in clinical mental health counseling.
This degree does prepare you for licensure as a mental health professional.
Typically, to be licensed, you would have to sit for both a national and a state exam, although that varies by state.
And then you would have to work under supervision for a time before you're fully licensed.
So just like a doctor does a residency after medical school, it's similar for counselors in that, although you'll be working and being paid as a therapist, somebody will be talking with you about your cases and checking over your notes just to be sure all is well before they turn you loose on the general public.
As you move through your studies, your professors will give you assignments that relate to licensure just to make sure that you understand the process and that you're headed in the right direction.
Lastly, a great resource if you haven't found it yet is counseling.org.
I encourage you to check out that website, counseling.org.
They have a great state by state knowledge center.
You can just click on your state.
It'll tell you which exams you have to take, how long you have to work under supervision.
It also has contact information for your state licensing board.
Second reason to earn a master's in clinical mental health counseling is, that our learning is distributed over the various platforms, the online residency practicum and internship, to make sure that you get the skills you need in the best way we can teach them to you.
As you move through your classes, you'll come to campus three times for what we call residency.
And they use that time together here over in Virginia on campus over a long weekend, to teach the counseling skills that don't lend themselves to online learning.
So things like nonverbal communication, situational ethics.
There are always a ton of presentations going on by faculty, students, and student groups.
It's also a big gateway weekend.
So all the professors are there with you.
And they're looking to make sure that each student has gained the skills needed to be ready to move on to the next section.
So the first one is always eight weeks after you begin.
So right now, we're enrolling for our August cohort, but you still have time to get into that.
Students who begin school in August will come to campus for the first time early in October.
The second residency is always one year later, so you'd come back the following October.
And then the third one is six months to a year after the second one, depending on if you're full time or part time.
Each residency is four days long, so you would arrive on a Wednesday evening and stay through a Sunday afternoon.
While you're here, they'll expect you to be on-site and attend the whole program.
There is a fee for this training that's built into your tuition.
The breakdown is 1,500 per residency.
That fee covers your training, obviously, but also your hotels, your hotel and most of your meals while you're here.
And then once you've finished your third residency and the bulk of your online classes, you will then step into practicum and internship.
And practicum and internship are done in your own area based on the kind of counseling work you'd like to do.
Practicum is when practicum comes first.
And that is one hundred hours of training.
And this is on the job training to get you ready for the real hands on counseling work of your internship.
At least forty of those hundred hours will be direct service with actual counseling clients.
Once you finish that training, you'll then step into your two internships, each of which is three hundred hours long and spans sixteen weeks.
We do have a director of internship who will work with you individually to help you identify a few places in your area that you would like to work based on the kind of counseling work you'd like to do.
Our internship placement is 100%.
So you will get one and we will help you with it.
All right.
Third reason to earn a master's in counseling is our faculty.
So, our faculty is growing by leaps and bounds.
And they are great.
They are all practicing and experienced clinicians.
So they do understand what you need to learn to live out a vocation as counselor.
So on the far left, we have Doctor.
Payne.
He's the dean of the School of Counseling.
And then the two gentlemen to his right, Doctor.
Keyes and Doctor.
Sharp, are our directors of internship.
So Doctor.
Keyes handles everything East Of The Mississippi, and Doctor.
Sharp handles everyone West Of The Mississippi.
So they will be the ones helping you to secure internship placements.
All of the bios of our professors are available on the website.
You can navigate there and see what they've been up to in their professional lives.
There's also contact information for each of them if you have specific questions that only they can answer.
Fourth reason to earn a master's in counseling.
Well, you are employable.
This is an extremely versatile, flexible degree.
There are a number of jobs you can do.
Most people do go into this to become a therapist.
And you'll see that that's kind of what these jobs are focused on here.
A lot of people wanna know how much am I gonna earn.
Well, that varies widely depending on what you wanna do.
If you want to go work in a homeless shelter, you're going to earn a homeless shelter salary.
If you live in a metropolitan area and you go into private practice and hang up your shingle, you know, you can earn in the 6 figures.
So, really, it depends on your choice, what interests you, what kind of area you go into.
Some people also don't become therapists.
You know, I in in my town where I live, the division of social services, the director of the whole division, is someone who has a master's in counseling.
For a time at DMU, our dean of students had a master's in counseling.
So like I said, it's extremely versatile.
Most people go into it to become a therapist, but, there are lots of things you can do with the degree.
And your search engine is your best friend to kind of figure out what kind of salary you might make.
Fifth reason to earn a master's in counseling.
Well, it's extremely flexible.
It's available twenty four seven, whenever it suits you to access the material.
So as long as you have your computer and the Internet, you can be anywhere in the world you wanna be and still get get your schoolwork done.
As you move through your online classes, your professors will arrange for real time meetings between themselves and you students to do things like discussion group, question and answer, review, that kind of thing.
So obviously, there will be times when it's just you and your computer and the work you have to get done.
However, you will work very closely with your professors.
You'll also work very closely with the other students in your cohort, to build your counseling skills, obviously, but also to build the professional friendships and relationships that you'll need once you become a mental health professional.
Alright, so our interest requirements are pretty straightforward.
A bachelor's degree, with a GPA of three point zero overall or in your major or in your last 60 credits.
Now, if you're close to this, if you're, you know, if you're not quite making the mark, that's not necessarily a deal breaker.
You would just need to contact me directly, and we could talk about, how to go about receiving a waiver of that requirement from the dean.
That is entirely possible.
We also require the GRE.
If you've never taken that before, don't freak out.
We do not use the GRE to make admissions decisions.
We just need you to do it.
We don't really care what your score is.
If I had to take the test for this program, I'd go tomorrow.
I'd mark c for every answer and just rip that Band Aid off.
And, of course, I can share more information about that in writing.
I will say all of that in writing.
We just need you to do it.
We don't care about your score.
Alright.
The first step in the application is just an online demographic form.
It takes twenty or thirty minutes.
You can do it today if you want to.
Once we have that, our financial aid office will be in touch to discuss our scholarships, which ones you should pursue, and what you can reasonably expect from us given your particular financial situation.
Once your application and your financial aid work is done, we do have an interview process.
There are three on or excuse me, two online interviews to be done.
The first one is easy.
Just a quick thirty minutes with me where I will give you, personalized coaching session to help get you ready for the big interview, which is a three hour online group interview with two or three other applicants to the program and two faculty members.
So tuition is $8.66 a credit.
This is a 66 credit master's degree.
So $8.66 times 66 is 57,156.
We have an application fee of 55 that's not here because as a thank you for attending this webinar, we will waive that fee for you.
There's also a $50 technology fee per class for a total of 1,100.
Lab fees are $3.75.
And the residency fee we talked about that covers your hotel and meals while you're on campus for your training, 1,500 per residency for a total of 4,500.
All that together gives you a total tuition value for the whole program, start to finish, of $63.01 31.
So that's $63.01 31.
You see that there.
Alright.
We have a number of ideas for ways to make that affordable.
We do participate fully with the federal loan program.
So if you felt like you wanted or needed a student loan, we can certainly set that up for you.
If you're working while you're going to school, some employers do offer tuition reimbursement, so it's worth investigating to see if that might be a benefit for you.
We're also approved for the VA and the GI Bill.
We if those benefits if you have them or if they can be assigned to you, we participate with all of those.
We also have a very nice scholarship program available.
You can find them very easily on our website.
Our scholarships are designed very nicely so that everybody qualifies for something.
The way scholarships work is you can apply for four and you can accept two.
We also have a matching scholarship.
So any nonprofit support you can find from outside the university, whether it's church related or not, we would match up to 2,000.
We also have a cash plan we can set up internally that's interest free.
So if you're working and you feel like you can chip away at it a little bit each month, we can set that up at no charge.
As a Catholic counselor trained in this method, you do become quite a valuable resource.
If you're a person of faith and you're not Catholic, you're still a valuable resource to any faith community.
So I would for sure talk to your pastor, talk to your bishop, hit up any fraternal organizations you might belong to, like the Knights of Columbus, and see what kind of nonprofit support you can find from outside the university.
There's also an interesting federal program called National Health Service Corps.
And if you use your search engine and search that name, I promise you it'll come up first link.
Excuse me.
This is a tuition forgiveness program.
And the way it works is if you're willing to work in an area designated either low income or underserved for a certain time after you graduate, towards your tuition cost in exchange for that service.
Since you have to work under supervision anyway after you graduate, this is an excellent way to go if you can work it out.
Again, just search National Health Service Corps and you can check it out online.
We also partner with a number of diocese and, different organizations.
So, if you have been a member of any of these organizations, if you're a FOCUS missionary, if you teach for Christ, if you attended Belmont Abbey College, or if you happen to live in the Diocese of Yakima or, Calgary, we do partner with these entities.
And we have a tuition reduction agreement with them.
So the way it works at DMU is you can apply for scholarships or you can take a tuition reduction through a partnership.
Scholarship typical award varies by person.
Partnership agreement usually is a better deal if you can arrange for one.
If your diocese isn't listed, we would be happy to help you set one up.
Just request you can email me and request the paperwork, and we will help you with that.
Alright.
Okay.
We talked about this.
I think this is was covered.
So this I call the discernment page.
These are some questions you should consider to try to figure out if this is the right path for you.
Do you have a desire to help heal the whole person and to help people flourish?
Do you want a career that enables you to answer the question, how can I help people?
What can you do to make a positive contribution in others' lives?
Can you be an instrument of healing?
And fourthly, if you were to apply and be admitted, is this something you'd be committed to finishing?
Are you someone who finishes what they begin?
So I ask you to seriously consider these questions as you, consider making an application to our program.
As I said, the application process is pretty straightforward.
First step is just an online demographic form, takes twenty or thirty minutes.
You can do it today if you want to.
Once we have it in hand, Financial Aid will be in touch to begin talking with you about tuition and scholarships and what you can reasonably expect from us given your particular financial situation.
Once we have your application documents, we will set you up for your interviews and hopefully admission.
And then you will once you're accepted, you will begin your onboarding and orientation, and class begins on August 18.
Alright.
You didn't give me oh, there it is.
This is what we're looking for.
So this is my contact information.
My direct number there, (540) 736-8442.
That's my email address.
And as a thank you, as I mentioned, we're giving you a waiver of the application fee.
The code is CCMMP1999.
I believe that's good for ten days.
So you have till midnight on the June 27 to get that started.
Now, I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to listen to this webinar on a master's in clinical mental health counseling at Divine Mercy University.
As promised, if you have questions, I'll be happy to answer them.
I'm going to go look at the chat now and see if some of you are out of time and you have to hop off.
That's perfectly fine.
I understand.
You will be sent a recording of this webinar, after we finish.
All right.
So let's see what we have here.
Is there mentorship in applying for licensure?
So, yes.
Our professors, as I said, will give you assignments that relate to licensure, just to make sure that you understand the process and that you're headed in the right direction.
Licensure happens after you graduate.
So, you know, you kind of are outside of the university once you begin the actual process of licensure, but they don't leave you hanging.
The professors are here for you.
You'll have a relationship.
You will not be on your own at all, I promise.
Okay.
My GPA isn't I think that means I know what that means.
Your GPA probably you're worried about it being less than what is required.
That's not necessarily a deal breaker.
So, what I would encourage you to do is to begin the application.
I will assist you in requesting a waiver of the GPA requirement from the dean.
I have had students request scores of them over my five years at the university.
And in those five years, I've only had him say no to one person.
And I think we just caught him on a bad day.
So generally, those requests for a waiver are approved.
All right.
Our nonprofit, so FOCUS is a special, group to us.
A lot of our students come from FOCUS.
So we do have a partnership agreement with FOCUS.
So it's tiered.
So if you were a student in the bible study or a student leader, that's one tuition reduction, and then FOCUS missionaries have another tuition reduction.
And then I think employees of FOCUS, get even a third amount.
So if you were affiliated with FOCUS in one way or another, yes, there is a special scholarship, and yes, I'd be happy to talk with you about it.
I'm sorry I don't have the numbers memorized off the top of my head right now.
All right.
Any more questions out there?
Now's your chance.
Alright.
Thank you again, for attending.
And I look forward to hearing from all of you.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.
Feel free to give me a call anytime.
If I can't answer immediately, I'll get back to you right away.
Alright.
We don't have any, lay members of religious orders except for Regnum Christy right now.
However, we would be happy to set that up.
Again, I would be happy to send you the paperwork.
Just, send me an email.
Right.
Thank you again, everyone.
Have a wonderful weekend, and I look forward to talking with all of you in another time.
Bye now.