About the Department
Within the mission of SOEAP to "build learning communities through critical reflection," the purpose of the Department of Counselor Education and Human Services is to prepare elementary school counselors, secondary school counselors, post-secondary student service and administrative personnel, school psychologists, and counselors who will work for community mental health and other agency settings to be highly competent and distinctive in their chosen profession.
The ultimate objective of the graduate programs within the Department of Counselor Education and Human Services is embodied within the Marianist Catholic ideals and departmental model. The objective is to develop fully functioning human services practitioners qualified and capable of implementing a role consistent with the philosophy reflected in their training. Essentially, this role consists of facilitating individual and community growth and assisting children and youth, in spite of ability or disability, and adults from diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds in reaching their maximum academic and personal development in various educational and organizational settings. Preparation is within a triadic conceptualization of reflection (qualitative knowledge), science (quantitative knowledge), and practice (per formative knowledge).
Consistent with the program purposes of the School of Education and Allied Professions our students must:
- Understand salient social demographics in order to determine what professional practices are most efficacious for the individuals they serve.
- Understand the active nature of human service practice. Practitioners must possess requisite "how" and "why" knowledge.
- Understand that professional practice involves integrating knowledge from a myriad of different settings and sources.
- Understand that critical reflection, an essential aspect of effective counseling, involves both internal and external processing of information—practitioners rely not only on their own personal and professional resources, but also tap the expertise of a variety of significant others.
- Understand that learning in the context of a community requires intellectual humility and openness to ideas on the part of all constituent members.
- Understand that a learning community values the ideas of both those with and without position power as they engage in ongoing intellectual discourse about individual and community growth.
- Understand and acquire the competencies to practice in diverse and multicultural settings.
- Understand and acquire the skills needed to use technology affectively in their services to others.
Equality Statement
The University of Dayton Department of Counselor Education and Human Services is committed to providing all persons equal access to its programs, facilities, and employment without regard to race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, physical disability or mental disability (unless the disability is essential to the practice of counseling), or indentification as a disabled veteran.
