Written By
Dr. Lee Grimes
Online Full Time Faculty, College of Humanities and Social Sciences
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Approved by faculty for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences on Aug. 28, 2024.
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Few professions offer the kinds of rewards and challenges that can be found in the career field of counseling. Counselors provide support to others who seek to meet personal goals or overcome struggles in their relationships, careers or overall life satisfaction. As an evolving discipline, counseling has grown to incorporate cultural competence or the knowledge and skills to meet the needs of diverse clients as the lens to view client needs.
What’s more, counselors often make it look easy as they listen and facilitate growth in the individuals, couples or groups of people who seek their services. Counseling is far from easy though and requires a master’s degree, supervised practice hours and a licensure exam — all factors depending on the state of practice.
Graduate students report that meeting the need for counselors in their communities can be a driving force in their seeking the knowledge and skills needed to become a counselor.
Meeting community needs could take the form of providing services aligned with representative community cultures, outreach to marginalized populations, bringing folks together through community engagement or specializing in methods and strategies specifically targeting recurrent community concerns.
This kind of specialized education and practice allows counselors to experience the reward that comes from contributing to their community and focusing on the diverse and unique needs found there.
Flexibility and accessibility are two of the reasons students choose to pursue education in the online environment. Meeting course requirements asynchronously (not at a set time) appeals to many students as well. Shift work hours that mean you do not get to your laptop until 3 am? No problem with the asynchronous learning environment. Traffic concerns that hinder commuting to a campus? No problem again in the online learning environment. Life in a rural area without a campus around for miles? No problem. Jump online and into the learning management system, and you are a member of the online campus.
But what about learning alongside others? And what about learning what works in a variety of communities and with a variety of people? This is where community and cultural competence in counseling and the online environment come into play. Let’s look at some examples.
Multicultural competence in counseling is built upon learning the dispositions, knowledge and skills needed for the profession. Grand Canyon University focuses on each of these through the design of courses that presents the content required and allows students to practice skills both individually and in a community of learners.
Discussion forums present counseling scenarios in which students add their ideas while learning from others’ insights in their class. Community is built in discussion forums through the skilled posing of questions that allows students to explore their beliefs, values and attitudes — all critical in the development of counseling dispositions and cultural competence.
For students to understand and appreciate the diverse cultural perspectives their future clients bring to counseling, counselors in training must reflect on their own values and beliefs, practicing the skill of bracketing ideas instead of imposing them on clients. With the emotional demands of counseling being high, professors incorporate the Christian worldview into discussions and offer students the opportunity to share inspirational messages via Prayer Forums and other online forums. Although these discussion communities are never required, students report that the community they encounter through the faith they share with fellow learners at GCU helps solidify the community they feel with one another.
But counseling is all about talking to people, you may add. How do I do that in an online program? As students move along in their program of study, courses include requirements to move beyond the community found in discussion forums and asynchronous learning environments. Students begin practicing the skills needed for individual and group counseling and do so through the recording of videos. Shared in communities with their classmates, students receive feedback on their abilities, so they can improve and grow as counselors.
Scenarios for practicing counseling skills are often created with multicultural considerations such as race, gender, sexual orientation, SES and instances of privilege and oppression, so that students learn to respond with cultural sensitivity and awareness. Additionally, students are required to participate in small group experiences to simulate the community and cultural awareness in counseling that is needed in the groups they will lead as counselors.
Field-based, practicum and internship courses in online counselor education move from the asynchronous environment to one with synchronous requirements, so that students experience a community of real-time learning with other culturally sensitive counselors in training. While planning for synchronous learning requirements adds a different consideration for the time commitment, students report that the opportunity to share and hear about the experiences from others increases their abilities, making the time expectation welcome.
Students in the Clinical Mental Health and School Counseling Programs at GCU begin practicing in the field or in agencies, private practices or schools when they begin practicum and internship classes. These courses require students to meet online for real-time or synchronous classes held at times set and communicated to students in advance. Meeting through Zoom or Microsoft Teams connects students to other students completing their field-experience hours, building a strong community of diverse learners.
Some of the activities that build community in synchronous courses are as follows:
As mental health needs increase, the need for culturally competent counselors does as well. Gaining the knowledge, skills and dispositions in your own community and then practicing them there upon graduation and licensure can become a dream fulfilled through the counseling program at Grand Canyon University.
