Mission Statement
The mission of the Department of Counseling is to prepare interpersonally skilled and culturally attuned professionals who promote mental health and wellbeing. These professionals support the holistic wellbeing of individuals and families across the lifespan in communities and schools throughout Montana and beyond.
Programs Offered
Montana State University’s graduate counseling program offers students an intensive training opportunity, focused on the acquisition of professional counseling knowledge and skills required to facilitate healing and growth for individuals, families, and community systems.
The counseling program offers three graduate counseling degree options: Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Marriage, Couples, and Family Counseling, and School Counseling, and certificates in Addiction Counseling and Mental Health Support. The links provided below provide more detailed information regarding the distinctions between the three concentrations and how to determine which track best matches a prospective student’s career goals. Counseling students will graduate with strong foundational knowledge and experience that will facilitate their success as counselors in a variety of professional settings. All three of our master's-level programs are accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP).
The Clinical Mental Health Counseling option combines didactic and experiential course work to give students grounding in theories and principles of mental health counseling and extensive experience in supervised application of those theories and principles. The goals of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program are the following: to enhance students' personal and professional development as counselors; to increase their ability to understand the characteristics and concerns of various client populations and their environments; to develop their knowledge and skills in use of theory-based counseling models; and to train them in the use of scientific methods of inquiry and evaluation.
This program option is designed to prepare counselors to address a variety of mental health and relationship issues from a family systems framework. Students in this program are trained to work with individuals, families, or couples from a systems perspective. In addition, this program option prepares students to work with both children and adolescents. The Marriage, Couples, and Family Counseling program meets educational licensure requirements for a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in the State of Montana. Up to 1500 hours of the supervised counseling experience obtained during the program can be applied to the 3000 hours of supervised counseling experience needed prior to licensure in the state of Montana.
After licensure, graduates of the Marriage, Couples, and Family Counseling option work in a variety of counseling contexts where they see children, adolescents, individuals, couples, and families. In this program, you are prepared to work with individuals, as well as with couples and families. This extended focus beyond individual counseling provides a well-rounded training experience.
