Canada - Country Spotlight

By Melissa Hoyos, CityU Alumni Relations

Opportunities to meet world-renowned practitioners from the counseling and mental health field aren’t beyond reach for City University of Seattle students in British Columbia.

Students, faculty, and alumni from the Master’s in Counseling Psychology program and community professionals gather quarterly for special workshops at the Vancouver campus. Guests network and listen to published scholars and practitioners. These lecturers range from Ben Furman, a Finnish child psychiatrist and media personality, to a number of Canadian professors.

Arden Henley, CityU of Seattle’s coordinator of British Columbia Counseling Programs, says the workshop program began six years ago to make cutting-edge information accessible to students and faculty.

“(Workshops are) a reflection of the broader philosophy of the team here to connect our students to the professional community in Canada and worldwide,” says Henley, who helped start the Master’s in Counseling Psychology program 12 years ago.

Avraham Cohen, CityU Vancouver senior faculty member, and colleague Heesoon Bai, Simon Fraser University’s director of graduate programs in education, presented the last workshop in January titled The Gift of Presence: Theory and Practice of Mindfulness. The Canadian Journal of Counselling published the Buddhist and Daoist perspectives highlighted in their workshop.

“The main focus of this workshop is mindfulness practice for practitioners. We are very interested in what we call ‘the inner work aspect,’ which is the inner and personal psychological dimension, and will be developing this aspect in workshop format as well. We see the spiritual, the psychological, and the inter-subjective all along an interconnected continuum, which is an area of development for us,” says Cohen, also the program and internship coordinator.

More than 100 Master’s in Counseling Psychology graduates have completed their degree programs and have become counselors or therapists. Nearly all of the graduates also have received their registration with the British Columbia Association of Clinical Counselors or B.C.A.C.C.

Henley says students in the program learn about the basic competencies of psychotherapy, corresponding critical ethical and legal issues, and diversity and cultural psychology. They also study specialized areas such as grief and loss as well as addiction.

Students participate in internships at local mental health and social service offices and work at the CityU’s downtown eastside Vancouver community counseling clinic. There, students help with pro-bono counseling in a high-need area.

Students also may schedule quarterly program courses in two different ways. They can enroll in Saturday face-to-face classes or in the inclusive delivery hybrid model, which includes on-line preparation and review and quarterly four-day intense face-to-face instruction.

“It’s very exciting to be here on Saturday. Our teachers are the best practitioners in the community,” Henley says.

Michelle Crowley, a 2004 program graduate, continues to say in touch with classmates she met while earning her degree at the Vancouver campus. She’s now a family counselor at the Vancouver Family Preservation and Reunification Services.

“A large portion of our class time was dedicated to group discussions, telling stories, and learning from each other. My peers helped bring many different perspectives into the room, which is invaluable for working with the varied population that exists outside of the classroom walls,” Crowley says.

Graduate Doug Elliott also earned his Master’s in Counseling Psychology degree in 2004. He’s taken advantage of the workshops in the past to catch up with old friends and staff members. He enjoyed the flexible schedule as a student.

“At CityU I was able to start sooner and when I graduated I was pleased to discover that my program had been clearly designed in such a way that I was fully qualified to meet the provincial standards for becoming a registered clinical counselor,” he says. “So I got (licensed) right away and could start my practice.”

Alumni like Elliott make up many of the workshop attendees who request additional workshops from presenters, including Cohen and Bai.

“The feedback we receive, which certainly coincides with our ideas, is that the material, our way of presenting, our way of being both individually and as co-presenters, is completely congruent with the material we are presenting,” Cohen says.

“As well, we are told that the opportunity to be involved in a personal way that integrates well with the curriculum is very much appreciated.”

E-mail ahuang@cityu.edu to learn about past and future workshops. Visit www.cityu.edu/mc or call 1-800-663-7466 for more information on the Master’s in Counseling Psychology program.

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