2013-04-30 Info Session

Webinar Transcript:

Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the Wake Forest University Master of Arts in Counseling and Master of Arts in Human Services general information session. Please note that your lines are muted. If you have questions during the presentation, please type them into the chat box located in the control panel and click send to submit your question. After the webinar, you will be able to obtain a PDF of the slide presentation and the archive recordings from your enrollment advisor whose contact information will be listed at the close of this webinar. Our panel who is leading today’s webinar, we have Pamela Karr who has a Master in Counseling from Wake Forest University. Pamela has been a Program and Admissions Manager at Wake Forest University since graduation in 1995. Pamela is a national career counselor in North Carolina License Professional Counselor. Her primary area of interest is in career counseling holding a leadership role in career counseling state organization such as in North Carolina Career Development Association and North Carolina Counseling Association. Pamela loves to help people especially students.

Next we have Nathaniel Ivers who is a professor within the counseling program as well as a licensed professional counselor in North Carolina and Texas. The majority of his counseling experience has been with the Latino and Spanish speaking immigrant population in Winston-Salem, excuse me. In Winston-Salem, he worked as a bilingual counselor at Catholic Social Services and Hope Home of Catholic Social Services as well as a PRN Alcohol Counselor in the Trauma Unit at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Another panelist on today’s webinar is Joe Hemmerling who is Lead Instructional Designer working in partnership with Wake Forest University to develop their online program. As an instructional designer, Joe works with professors to suggest strategies for adapting their courses to the online environment. Joe work to maintain a level of consistency between courses and to introduce new learning technologies and initiatives. We also have Eric Jimenez. Eric is an enrollment advisor for Wake Forest University Online of Master of Arts in Counseling and Human Services Program. Eric has been an enrollment advisor for over five years.

Eric along with Kimberly Robertson, Lionel Chambers and Jacqueline [inaudible] are the enrollment advisors for the program and their contact information will be listed at the close of this webinar. Lastly, we have Adam Hanna who is the student advisor for the Counseling and Human Services Program. Adam’s background entails supporting undergraduate students especially mentoring first year students and though on academic probation. The agenda for today’s webinar will be Pamela and Nathaniel providing an overview of the Wake Forest University Master of Arts in Counseling and Human Services Program outlining the curriculum and they’ll speak a little bit about the outstanding faculty that we have at Wake Forest University while Joe will demonstrate what a course looks like and talk about the online experience. Eric will discuss the enrollment requirements and Adam will speak about how student support can be a benefit to you and lastly we’ll conclude today’s webinar by answering any questions you may have so remember to type them in the chat box. And now, I’ll turn it over to Pamela Karr who will start out by speaking about by giving you a little bit more about Wake Forest University.

Pamela Karr: Hello everybody, this is Pamela Karr. Nathaniel and I are speaking to you from the beautiful campus of Wake Forest University where everything is bloomed and the temperature should be in the 70s today in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We are proud to be [inaudible] at Wake Forest and we’re very proud of our program. We follow the spirit of Wake Forest which is the motto of Wake Forest University Pro Humanitate. They are not just words to us. It means that we want to do what we can to serve the needs of our community and we’re looking for folks who want to do the same. It’s the Wake Forest motto. Our faculty, for instance, were present to help to the aftermath of 09/11. They were present after hurricane Katrina and they were asked by our colleagues to come help at Virginia Tech. They have been all over the world training in developing counselors and helping professionals. We also pride ourselves on our clinical skills focused. Our graduates are known by graduate school and employers for having especially well-developed clinical skills because we have two courses.

We have a basic course and an advanced course. Nathaniel will be teaching the basic course. We have a lot of field work involved in this program 800 hours out in the site I’ll tell you more about that later for counseling and 350 in the Masters of Human Arts Program. We think of ourselves as student centered. We know we’re student centered on campus and I believe from testimonials from the people who have gone before you they feel very well attended. It’s a very high touch environment from faculty who are regulars on campus. We have a commitment to excellence. We have high admission standards to match the one’s we use here and we have high expectations of ourselves and we also will have high expectations of you. Wake Forest University as a whole is ranked number 25 among the nation’s best university. The counseling program itself is not ranked, but cannot be ranked unless you have a doctoral program. We don’t have a doctoral program. We prefer to concentrate our efforts on the master’s level program.

So, now I want to talk to a little bit about the Master of Arts Program and a program overview for that. Two tracks if you choose the Master of Arts in Counseling, one concentrates on clinical mental health and the other concentrates on school counseling. The Clinical Mental Health Program and the School Counseling Program have about 14 of the same courses and then they each add three specialty courses, as you can see, of their own. We believe in educating well rounded professional counselors who can work in any site first and then once you know where your interest lie will help you to specialize in one. Clinical mental health people work everywhere. You can see some of the settings listed there, mental health and private practice. If you’re interested in college, you’re not at school you are a clinical mental health. School counseling is K-12 and focuses on the skills needed in that setting to work with children and teenagers and their families and the staff and we will prepare you to take a leadership role at your school.

And now, each track is 20 courses in length, its 60 credits to graduate, you have foundation courses first, core courses second then beginning practice and advance practice. An advance practice includes the clinical experience. You will do the clinical experience in your own community. We will help you. We have a person hired to do nothing but coordinate the clinical experience listen to you. We’ll start collecting information from you from the very beginning about what are my interest, what population do I think I want to work for and help you explore in your area. Picking a site is a partnership making sure we have a site that meets our expectations and supervision and in what they will let you do. You have to come to campus twice. We have to meet you. We have to see you face-to-face. It’s a Thursday night through a Sunday morning. You really do have to come so bear that in mind if you want to come with us. Right now, we’re really excited because our very first residency experience with the folks who entered last fall is going to be next weekend in May and everybody is really excited about meeting each other. People they’ve only talked to online and their professors and we’re really jumping up and down about that.

So, it’s designed for part time people who are working, that’s our focus, taking three years to complete, taking courses year round and you take pretty much one course each time. They lasts seven and a half weeks so we’ve designed to focus on one thing at a time, two courses every fall, spring and summer and no you can’t take it faster. That’s not the way it’s designed. Alright, now let’s look just a little bit at licensure. The clinical mental health graduates generally want to seek licensure as license professional counselors or a similar name in your state. Early on, we ask you to check the requirements of the state or states in which you plan to practice to be sure we can prepare you for this the best you can. School counseling graduates can seek licensure as license professional counselors as well and most of our graduates do, but you also have to apply to licensure as a school counselor with the Department of Public Construction in your state. If you do not choose this program and you choose another online program, please be sure they are accredited by CACREP, the Council of Accreditation for Counseling and Related Educational Program because it is the best way to be sure you can get certified license and to be sure your course will be accepted if you want to go on to a doctoral program. We have people who get halfway through another program and want to transfer here because they finally realize this is really important this CACREP and they didn’t seek it to begin with so try to go that somewhere else.

When you graduate from this program, nobody who graduates from Master of Arts and Program is licensable immediately from any program anywhere. You have to do three things. You have to take the right courses, you will done that here, you have to pass a national counseling exam, we will give you an opportunity to do that while you are a student and then you have to meet some additional supervised experience most of the time it’s two to three years it depends on the state, but we will keep your eyes on your state and what you need to do quite early in the process. Now, the school counseling licensure the course of study leads to a license co-counseling in North Carolina so there are some [inaudible] and some additional hoops that you have to do to get license in your state.

So, what can I do with these counseling masters? What is my career path? Clinical mental health counselors work in a variety of settings. We have a little game we play early in campus gives us a place in your community where you wouldn’t need a counselor and we can play stomp the chomp with this because there’s really nowhere police yes, military yes, schools yes and then a lot of people work in private practice after they get a little bit of experience. You provide individual and group counseling services to adults, children, adolescents, couples, or families. They assess, diagnose and treat clients. We specialize in a wellness approach so someone doesn’t have to be sick to benefit from counselors. Anybody can improve their wellness in mental health and balance. We teach you to consult with other people. We are very partner model, social workers, psychiatrist and anybody else medical doctors and then we work hard on teaching you how to develop a prevention program and provide crisis intervention when needed. So, the second courses advance skills and crisis, what it is?

Nathaniel Ivers: Intervention.

Pamela Karr: Intervention, yes. Now, professional school counselors work exclusively in K-12 settings of school counselors. It’s not your mom at school counselors. These folks are very involved in working directly with clients setting up programs partnering with families and with teachers. They provide individual and school counseling to students during school hours, coordinate activities, enhance the academic and personal domains of the students through personal guidance and then consult with others on behalf of the students. They also provide crisis intervention service when appropriate. We just presented a day-long seminar focusing on what would influenced people to behave the way did [inaudible] and several other online students were present at that conference very well received. And now, I’m going to let Nathaniel talk a little bit about our other program the Master of Arts in Human Services.

Nathaniel Ivers: Hi, I’m very excited to stick with you. I hope that you can hear me well. I’m going to articulate well, but I’m excited to be here. This is my first time doing a webinar so this is a need opportunity for me. The Master of Arts in Human Services in a lot ways is very similar to our other programs with some unique differences and so I’m going to talk about those. The program states to produce graduates who are skilled communicators and leaders. The course of study starts with 10 counseling courses and they include the following: Basic and advance skills, theories and models of counseling, group procedures, career counseling, lifespan development, multicultural considerations and family counseling. The reason for this counseling basis is to develop a strong communication skills, empathy and leadership skills and etc. that are necessary for effectively working with clients, staff, board members, policy makers, persons and other agencies and volunteers. And so, that’s the beginning process is that all students will take the 10 counseling courses regardless of whether they are on the counseling track or the Master of Arts in Human Services track.

After that, after taking those 10 courses, students will take two additional courses that are specifically designed to train administrators and leaders who would have administration and leadership roles in health and human services agencies. We think this combination of counseling and management training will uniquely qualify graduates to move up into administration and leadership in the vast network of human service profession. Alright, now we’ll talk a little bit more specifically about the courses. There are 13 courses in all, 39 credits to graduate. There are four foundational courses which are 12 credits each, core courses who are six — there are six courses and I will talk a little bit more about those and human services courses, three courses in all along with the counseling requirements of coming to a residency. The individuals who choose to do the Master of Arts in Human Services. We’ll need to attend to two residencies and just the counseling one, the two counseling residencies. They are Thursday night through Sunday morning and they are requirement as mandatory that the students be there.

In total, the program is seven semesters in length. They are two years plus one additional semester and the students in this program will take courses year round. I want to talk a little bit more specifically about the other two courses the students will take that is specific to human services. Ares of study in these courses will include knowledge, theory and skill used in the administrative aspects of human service delivery systems including organizational management, supervision, strategic planning, budgeting, grant and contract negotiation and legal/regulatory issues. Also it will include managing the professional development of staff, recruiting and managing volunteers and advocacy techniques. Along with those two courses, there will be a course on field experiences and this will be completed at a site in your community. Field experiences and learning experience in the human services delivery organization in which the student will complete 350 hours of onsite work with the agency. Student’s university supervisors and onsite partners will determine the student’s role, activities, outcomes and instructional needs based on the placement side possibilities. It will be done during the last or seventh semester. It consists of 350 hours of onsite experience and a class devoted to interaction and coaching from your instructor with other students involved.

So, one of the questions you may be asking is why would I choose this program over a counseling program? And really it depends on your career goals. If you are already working in an agency at a bachelor’s level and getting a master’s degree in human services would help you kind of move up on the pay scale or move up into the administration or leadership this degree maybe what you’re looking for. If you’re looking to do individual counseling, group counseling, family counseling and school counseling this would not be the degree that you would want to seek because you will not be able to receive licensure either as a school counselor or as a license professional counselor with this degree so it really depends on your unique situation and whether it would be helpful to you to do so. On that, depending on the employment setting and the consequence serve, job titles and duties of an individual with a human services degree will vary greatly. The roles of those with the Master of Arts in Human Services are often connected with leadership and management. Human service find work in such diverse settings as nonprofit, group homes and halfway houses, correctional centers, working with individuals with mental disabilities and Community Mental Health Centers or in hospitals, [inaudible] and Youth Service Agencies and programs concern with alcoholism, drug abuse, family violence and aging.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has ranked the human services occupation among the most rapidly growing in the country and currently job opportunities for those with masters degrees have the following titles such as human service program manager, program implementation specialist, counseling services administrator, executive director of senior services, community outreach specialist, or development specialist in grant writing and donations. One individual who is a current applicant in the master of human services said the following: “Human services attracts me because it is a broader degree, leaves me plenty of room to be able to figure out where I want to focus my career as there are lots of options.” The field experience carefully chose and is very important where you will choose with open doors and we will provide you more information about that as you go throughout the program to help you find the field experiences it will be most helpful to you. As you all know, when you’re searching for a job one of the first thing that they ask for is experience and so in your field experience opportunity with is tight to a class this will help give you that opportunity to say, “This is how much experience I have in this particular job and I think I can go — I can enter whatever career it is with a fresh understanding of what the requirements are to be successful in that.” Alright, one —

Pamela Karr: Go back one slide to the certification if you would may.

Nathaniel Ivers: Yes, one more slide.

Pamela Karr: Here we go.

Nathaniel Ivers: [cross talking] quickly about the human services board to certify practitioner credential. That’s a credential that I have. All students who graduate from our Master of Arts in Human Services Program will be eligible to apply for the HS-BCP. It says BPD right there. It was actually BCP. So, once you complete your acquired course work, you will take an examination that’s given through the CCE and if you pass that examination after a year of experience post masters degree you can receive the human services board certify practitioner. It’s not a requirement that you take this test to, but still a requirement for our program nor it is absolutely necessary to get a job, but we believe it will make you more competitive in the job market showing that you have met the minimum requirements to receive the certification. Alright, I will now kind of shift gears a little bit and talk about our wonderful department. This is a picture that we took in the fall so we’re all a little bit older now, but they are not a whole lot older, but I will start from the top.

The first one is Ed Shaw, Dr. Ed Shaw. He is a medical doctor and also has a Masters Degree in Counseling and also is a co-director of the [inaudible] Center which is charged with helping individuals who are caregivers of people with dementia as well as people who had dementia themselves. Heidi Robinson teaches our undergraduate courses on campus to the career courses for students who are exploring which careers they want to choose. The next is our lovely Pamela Karr who spoke to you earlier. Jennifer Rogers is the next one and she’s an assistant professor in the department. She teaches courses such as group and theories. Carla Emerson is our clinical program director. She is the one whom Pamela Karr described as the one who will help you with your clinical experiences as you get to that place.

Pamela Karr: And before we get to the handsome Nate, we’re celebrating. We’re already celebrating around here. Jennifer Rogers just completed her PhD. She is a doctor so the students made her such a fun video and Carla, just found out yesterday, it’s a girl so we were celebrating that too.

Nathaniel Ivers: That’s right. That is a really exciting point. Thank you for adding that and then we get to me and you already have the brief bio from me so I’m just going to stop there. We have next to me [inaudible] Clark. He specializes in addictions and he also teaches the advance counseling skills course and crisis intervention. Brian Calhoun is next and he helps with Heidi in our career courses for undergraduate students that wait for us. On the left sitting down is Jose Villalba and he recently accepted position in administration where he will be helping with recruitment and retention of minority faculty members. Next to him is Debbie Newsome who teaches career course and also teaches the helping skill course and the assessment and appraisals course. Next to her is Karen Mccormick. Karen is an administrative assistant and is extremely with any needs that we have. Next we have Dr. Sam Gladding. He may not need much of an introduction because he written most of the books in counseling, but he is also the department chair of the department and he developed the professional orientation course.

Pamela Karr: And he is heading to China this summer to be — to teach counseling courses over there as part of a Fullbright.

Nathaniel Ivers: Which is really exciting. And then we have Donna Henderson. She is the coordinator of the school counseling track. She also develops the human development course.

Pamela Karr: And she is the director of the Online Learning Program. She and I work together to ensure that the quality of this online program stands up to the quality of our long-established on campus program.

Nathaniel Ivers: Yes. And that the last person that’s pictured here is [inaudible] as she recently actually took a full time position on campus so we no longer have her services as she was extremely helpful in setting up agreements with various states to help us provide this online program.

Pamela Karr: Right. She’s the graduate of our program as well and is common to use our license in less administrative ways.

Nathaniel Ivers: Alright. So, that’s the faculty in a nutshell and it would take — I do really think give them justice in this small brief bios that I gave about them, but they are wonderful group that work really well together and care dearly about the students whom are under them either on campus or in the online program. Alright, next slide thank you. One of the questions that you all maybe asking is why are we providing an online counseling program and there are really a few reasons that we noted up here. First of which, the world needs more counselors. I’m sure with the recent events and maybe even not so recent events in the past decade we all can see how mental health at times when un-served or less served than it should be can cause some major problems so the World Health Organization reports that over 450 million people of have unmet mental health needs. United States sergeant general estimates at least 20% of the population has mental disorders and neither of this figures include those with life struggles such as divorce, career difficulties, or other challenges. These hurting people deserved the comfort, encouragement and support counselors can provide.

The second aspect is we believe that we here at Wake Forest in the Counseling Department prepare exceptional counselors, but unfortunately although we’ve had an exceptional program we’ve only been able to serve approximately 30 students at a time and that’s 15 students per year and these students has done exceptionally well as evidenced by evaluations by site supervisors, by employers, by their high marks on the national counselor exam and they’ve gotten jobs in the communities in which they want the jobs so we feel like we’ve created a really good program that really prepares people to be very good counselors, but unfortunately throughout the years we’ve only been able to serve 15 students per year, 30 students in all during the program and we felt that we could take the learning that we’ve — and the knowledge that we’ve created in how to help people prepare to be counselors and extend that to individuals who for one reason or another can’t come to campus either you can’t leave where you currently live and come to Winston-Salem for two years maybe that you live in the area, but you can’t take off two years from the job that you have and dedicate full time student learning into your repertoire as things that you have to do, but you could dedicate time to do the program at your leisure. That’s one of the nice things about the online program is that —

Pamela Karr: At your convenience, but I don’t know if etc. leisure. What do you think? How many hours of week of that do you think it takes?

Nathaniel Ivers: Let’s say approximately 20 hours would be something to expect in that.

Pamela Karr: Right.

Nathaniel Ivers: But anyway those are sort of the main reasons why we’ve decided to create the online program. Number one, we believe that we need counselors. We think we have an exceptional program that can train counselors to work with the many individuals out there who have extensive needs and we would like to reach those students, those individuals, especially those who couldn’t come to campus and dedicate full time to being a student. I’m going to talk a little bit about the faculty experience with online learning. I taught my first course this semester. It was during the first half of the semester so the first seven and a half weeks of the semester I developed this course during the fall semester and so I fairly knew in this process and also being new at this I also had my reservations, my concerns, I wondered if the teaching skills that I had would generalized an online population and I can say I think unequivocally that I’ve been pleasantly surprised by everything that I learned. First of all, I’ve learned that the online format can accommodate different learning styles. When I was an undergraduate student I took an independent study course in statistics and I felt — I struggled mightily with it.

I was teaching myself what I felt was a foreign language and I really had nobody to turn to, to help me other than some friends and family and most of them really don’t know the statistical analyses that I was trying to solve anyway and so I felt like I was really alone and I was an auditory learner and this was very visual in nature. I have also just reading. And so, I had a year to complete the course and I had to extend it three more months. I basically took 15 months to take one course and felt like I didn’t learn as much as I could. So, that was kind of knowledge that I took into this and what I wanted to do was create a program, a class in research in statistics for these master students that would be interactive in nature that would help those who are visual learners, those who are auditory learners, those even who are kinesthetic learners learn the material and I wanted them to feel like they were supported in this process so that they weren’t just learning by reading a textbook, they are actually having a classroom experience. And so, I believe through the different technologies that we have here and the support that the students received that we’re able to meet that goal.

The course content is presented verbally and visually. It is often interactive and experientially as well. So, some examples of how it’s expressed verbally is we have power point slide to have voice over so you’re not just reading a power point slide, but similar to what you’re experiencing here, but in an asynchronous you can hear the professor describe in detail the different concepts that you’re learning. We have WebEx. With WebEx, we have office hours in which students can come on and asks us specific questions that they might have and also professors at times if they notice that a lot of students are having difficulty will create a WebEx presentation and send a link to students be able to look at that as well. We also have videos, Youtube videos and other videos, that we present that I think help students understand the material. Others that visual aspect which has power point presentations and videos interactive in nature and that’s one of the things I really wanted to do with these statistical packages because if you say stat situation especially with a correlation equation for those of you who maybe familiar with that this can be very daunting and usually textbooks don’t do a great job helping relieve some that overwhelmingness that comes from it.

I wanted to make a step by step process for students so they can understand how to calculate these processes and so with the help of Joe Hemmerling who will be talking later we created these — we put the equation in a format where students can take numbers related to a case example and they can drag the numbers into the equation and if they drag it to the wrong place it won’t stick, but if they drag it to the right place it will stick and once they get all the numbers drag in the right place then they will be move to a slide that will give them a step by step method for calculating this equation. It doesn’t mean that people will leave this presentation knowing perfectly well to solve a correlation equation, but I think it helps them in the process of learning the material as they interact with other students. Another thing that we created with this statistics workshop which was a forum where students could go and ask questions of other students who are having similar difficulties and they could help each other throughout this process.

I have spoken about the research and staff course [inaudible] that is one that I created, but we have other courses that I think has been have also created this interaction which is really wonderful. Our human development course has a virtual child which is a program that peers and created wherein students can create this virtual child online and they will make decisions based on where the child is developmentally to help the child grown and based on the decisions of those parent “makes” the child will grow in different ways and will hit their milestones or not based on the decisions that you make which I think is really need. We also have discussion groups. We have group activities. One of them that I had was an assignment in which students had to do a literature review on the mental health topic and students repaired together to give each other feedback on their literature paper before they turned it in and I thought that was a good way for students to learn from each other. Other experiential opportunities, we have an emergent experience project that the students will be engaging in when they take their multicultural course. Students in when they take their basic health in field course as well as events helping field course will be put in to triad groups in which they will have opportunities to practice the counseling skills that they are learning.

In essence, this is not the end of study course that I took. This is very interactive, very supportive with [inaudible] on campus course and also teach me online courses and I want to end with a quote that a student provided after taking the three search of staff course with an email that you sent me so it’s an absolute feedback that I really enjoy. This said, “I wanted to let you know that I truly appreciated everything you have done to provide us with assistance throughout this course.” I’m kind of padding myself on the back here. “Your post and links to additional instructional material have been very helpful. I want you to know your efforts did not go unnoticed. At first, this class is intimidating to me (as research and statistics generally are) you and Chris and Chris was effective sharing instructor in helping with this course not only help me learn the material, but I ended up in join the work as well.” These courses as Pamela discussed are developed based on CACREP standards. This ensures that students are being exposed to and learn the material the necessary by the accrediting body for the profession. And that is all I have. I’m going to turn the time over to Joe.

Joe Hemmerling: Hey, everyone. Thanks a lot Nate. So, what I’m going to do is give you kind of a brief tour of the Wake Forest. I let you know sort of what you can expect coming into the program, but before I get into that I want to talk a little bit about some common misunderstandings about online education. So, the first myth that I would like to address is that online education is isolating and it’s totally understandable why someone could think this way because obviously being online you don’t have the same classroom experience you would in a traditional setting. You lose some of that face-to-face interaction that a lot of us has come to take for granted. So, yes there are definitely certain challenges presented to the students and online environment, but by now we’re all familiar with online social media. We all know that the internet just has this tremendous power to bring people together from across the world and the technology advances the world only seem to be getting smaller.

So, the online classroom environment is rich with opportunities for interaction. In an online classroom, you’ll still have class discussions, you’ll still have group projects and thanks to advances and online collaborative tool you could still have opportunities even for face-to-face interactions with peers and instructors. In fact, since online education takes place entirely outside of the traditional classroom space and the restrictions that go along with that the depth of collaboration possible between students can actually become greater. The second myth that I wanted to address is that online education means a lot of reading and a lot of test taking and I think Nate spoke to this somewhat also prior to me. There’s this idea that it’s basically like a correspondent course or you compared it to an independent study and some people worried that basically it means you going to have to read a book and then take a test and I want to assure you that nothing can be further from the truth. Well, textbooks and readings generally play a larger role in delivering content in they might in an on ground course. Your learning will still be supplemented by lectures in the form of presentations, videos, podcasts and written notes and your learning will be facilitated by knowledgeable instructors who are will be working constantly for your success and more importantly you’ll be connected to your instructor and your classmates in the online course.

Exams will constitute only one part of how we assess student performance. The focus will be on assignments that are applied, challenging and collaborative. You’ll find the graded activities you complete or every bit is diverse as if not more so than the one that you would have taken in an on ground course. So, let’s take a look at what you can expect from your online program. First, I just wanted to let you guys know that our distance learning program really only require internet access so there’s no particular software or anything that you need to purchase to be able to access your online courses. If you got a connection, you’ll be able to get in to that Sakai website and take your course. Now, in terms of sort of concrete advantage the first one should be as probably kind of obvious to all here and its flexibility. You weren’t tied to a specific time or place on a certain day of the week. Your education takes place around your schedule and you have the flexibility to take your class work anywhere that you can pick up an internet connection from. Furthermore, with constructional strategies like podcast and another mobile-ready content you have the ability to take lectures with you on the go.

You can also look forward to detailed instruction. You will receive instructional content in a variety of ways including podcast, web resources and interactive flash activities. Your course will give you a convenient library of material since the online classroom is primarily asynchronous all of the instructional material stored in a stable environment where you can view it and review at your convenience. This way your learning can take place your pace and it can be access from anywhere. You can look forward to connection interaction. You’ll gain individualized attention from faculty and develop relationships with fellow learners as you interact with them in creating a vast network of professional context and finally you can look forward to timely in detailed instruction. So, the course content is continually updated, assignments and discussions encouraged you to share the specific issues that you deal with at work and allow you to apply lesson from each course. Now that I’ve given you a brief overview of Wake Forest Online Program I’m going to give you a quick tour now of the site itself so give me just one moment while I pull up my screen. Alright, does everyone seem that they should seen the CNS 740 Professional Orientation to Counseling Course?

Pamela Karr: I see it.

Joe Hemmerling: Okay. And nothing else is showing up right?

Pamela Karr: Nope.

Joe Hemmerling: Okay, good. I just want you guys staring at my inbox while I’m going through this. Okay, good. So, this is CNS 740 Professional Orientation to Counseling. This will be one of the first courses if not the first course that you would take on entering the program and just a heads up before I go into the demo this is just a brief sort of tour of the course space. Once you enroll in the program that you’ll be given access to an orientation course that will give you a much more thorough look at the different tools and strategies and etc. that you’ll encounter in the program. So, this is Sakai along the top. Here, you’ll see the courses that you’re enrolled in. Along the side over here is the navigation menu and this is what you’ll use to kind of hop around within your course. The announcement page is where you’ll go to get kind of updates from your lead instructor or your practitioner instructor and this is kind of where they will direct class wide communications for everyone. Every course will have a principal syllabus containing information and important course policy is, but the module section is where you’re likely to spend a lot of your time learning.

So, in a given week every week will begin with a overview page and this overview page contains a personal video introduction from the instructor and along the bottom you’ll see linked to what the lesson content for the week. Lessons are designed around different aspects of the week’s topic or seem so you’ll begin lesson by doing some readings from your course text, general articles or other resources. The instructional content for the lesson will be delivered in a variety of ways including text lecture, interactive presentations, podcast, videos and links to web resources. For this particular lesson, you’ll see we’ve got a couple of videos one of which was created by Sam, the instructor for this course, and interactive timeline activity down here. Every week will also contain a variety of learning activities like discussions, assignments and journal activities etc. You’ll have an opportunity to demonstrate your mastery of the course concepts in more ways in just taking cast or handing in papers. For instance, in assignment 1.1 of this course your assignment is to put together a brief presentation on the important figures of the history of counseling using a program called voice thread which is an online application use to create and share narrated presentations. Your voice thread account will be free when you sign up for Wake Forest.

In order to participate in assigned learning activities, you’ll have to navigate the appropriate location in the learning management system. So, for this discussion you have to click the forums link the main course menu and once you do that you’ll see all of the available forums and topics. To view the topics instructions you click the view fold description and then the post will — or so that discussion prompt will appear and then clicking the topic itself you can see that the discussions appear in threaded form with initial post and replies. For some courses, you’ll be required to keep a public or private blog. So, for CNS 740 students are required to respond to reflective prompts in a private journal. Here’s a sample student blog. You could see the students photo over here along with a brief profile next to their entries and below there’s an option read comments left by other students, but of course they are not any on this, but you can leave comments and view other comments left by others. So, that is as I’ve said just the briefest of the introductions to the Sakai online learning platform and if you — we look forward to you signing up and getting to know a little bit more intimately. So, with that I will hand the presentation back over.

Speaker 1: Thank you Joe. Now, we’ll turn to student support services. Adam will share a little bit more about student support services and how they can be a benefit to you.

Adam Hanna: Hi, everybody. This is Adam. I’ll be your student advisor so what that means for you is that during your time in the program I’ll be your main point of contact. So, it’s my goal to make sure that your journey to graduation is as seamless as possible so I’m going to assist you with any questions or concerns that you may have and I will also help you out with any administrative needs. So, for example a registration. Each term, I’m going to be enrolling you in our courses based on your degree plan and I’m going to be doing that based off of — once you enroll in the program, based on your concentration, I will enroll in your courses for the next term and I’m also here if you ever find that you’re struggling or you feel overwhelmed. I’m going to help you create strategies become more efficient in time management or if you ever need just someone to call and screen invented [ph] I’m also here to help you with that anything to help you maintain your goal towards graduation. Lastly, statistic show that progression from term one to term two is an important indicator student success so I’ve created a communication plan which is designed to help you make it to term to. So, if you have any questions I’ll be your main point of contact you go to even if you’re not sure who to direct that to I’ll be sure to find the answer to those questions that you may have. Next, I’m going to turn it over to our enrollment advisor, Eric Jimenez.

Eric Jimenez: Thanks Adam, thank you Megan. Like I said, my name is Eric Jimenez and I’m actually one of the advisors here on our team of four. I’m the one who mainly hand this all the way to force and recues, online masters and counseling and masters in human services program. The items required for the application package are shown here on the screen. Enrollment advisors will work with you to complete an application form to capture your contact information, your intended entry term, details on your prior academic history and the recommendation letter providers. All applications must have a four-year originally accredited US Bachelors degree or equivalent with official transcripts from all institutions and directly to us the campus. Applications who earn their Bachelor’s Degree outside of the United States must submit their records for a course by course evaluation or official transcript mark sheets by the education credential evaluators or ECE and we can provide you with more information on this as you work on your application package.

The details of the program you must have a GPA graded at 2.5 and a GRU score at a 300 or greater and hold a score greater than three in writing. A letters of recommendation, is required from previous faculty member or an employee supervisor who is qualified to evaluate your potential success in the programs. This letter — these three letters will be sent directly from the recommended to our admissions office. We also require a personal statement accompanying the application form is a $75 nonrefundable application fee. After you submitted your application we will go through an interview process which is done via webcam as an interview — being the interview. We’ll also work with you on your application materials individually addressing any questions or concerns as you move through the process. If you have questions, you can contact either myself or anyone else in part of the advisor teams which is Jacqueline [inaudible], Lionel Chambers and Kimberly Robertson. An information we provided at the end of this presentation and we will be [inaudible] as well to address the questions you may have been answering as well. Thank you.

Speaker 1: Thank you Eric. I want to remind anyone if you have any questions, please type them into the chat box located on the control panel. We also would like to make you aware of some upcoming important dates for the fall term. The application deadline is June 1st and the fall term starts August 27th. The spring application deadline is November 1st and classes starts January 14th, 2014. Thank you for submitting your questions. We got a lot of great questions today and I’ll start with the first question. “I’m in the military so if I deploy can I take a break in the program?” And I think Pamela this will be one for you.

Pamela Karr: We have worked with people who need to take a little time out yes and so there are different ways of dropping, withdrawing, requesting to be reinstated and part of my job is to help guide somebody through this circumstances and help them figure out what’s the best for them.

Speaker 1: Thank you, Pamela. We have another one for you Pamela. This question say, “I wanted to know if you are hoping to be a full counselor, but also want to have the freedom to lead K-12 would you recommend taking the mental health counseling route?”

Pamela Karr: I’ll let Nathaniel answer that.

Nathaniel Ivers: Actually, you would wanted to the office set. There’s more flexibility if you become a school counselor and moving in to the clinical mental health field than there is getting a degree in clinical mental health counseling and trying to move into the school and the reason for that is related to life ensure. Those who graduate with a degree in counseling with an emphasis in school counseling still can take the national counselor exam and accumulate the hours of supervised experience necessary to get their license professional counselor credential or whatever the comparable credential is in your state, however, those who graduate with masters in counseling with an emphasis in clinical mental health counseling generally speaking do not need a requirement necessary to be a license school counselor.

Pamela Karr: Without additional course work.

Nathaniel Ivers: Right.

Speaker 1: Thank you Nathaniel. We have another one for you Nathaniel. The question says, “I plan to continue on to get a PhD in Psychology so which program would fit me better? My goal is work in research.”

Nathaniel Ivers: Well, I don’t know if it would really matter. The folks on the school track and the clinical mental health track are each have to take the research course — the research and stats course and so they receive an equal experience in that respect. It really probably depends on what specific degree you’re looking for in psychology is counseling clinical school developmentally. It really depends on that, but I’m going throw a quick plug for counseling here too. We have doctoral programs and counselor education and usually on masters degree and counseling better prepare you for doctoral degree in counsel education and it does for a doctoral degree in counseling your clinical psychology and the reason I say that is some of your credit hours from your masters degree program may not transfer as well to a psychology doctoral program. You may see yourself taking additional courses than a typical psychology Master’s Degree student going into a doctoral program.

Pamela Karr: But it does happen and it has happened.

Nathaniel Ivers: Yes.

Speaker 1: Thank you, Nathaniel. The next question is for Adam. “Our courses taken at a different online graduate school transferrable such as lifespan development?”

Adam Hanna: So, it kind of depends on where the course was taken. We do accept transfer credits. We accept up to six transfer credits so typically that’s two courses. So, what we would need for a transfer credit is a syllabus and so once you already in the program if you just go ahead and talk to me specifically about what those courses are we would just want to obtain the syllabus and then be evaluated by our faculty and so it’s the process that you’ll have to go to get those transfer credits evaluated, but once you’re in the program we can speak further about what we need to do specifically for to get your transfer credit evaluated.

Speaker 1: Thank you, Adam. The next question is for Pamela. “How do you zero in on your counseling skills in an online setting? Is it only through the residency and internship?”

Pamela Karr: Alright. So, that was the biggest question we had that we had to debate before we said yes to this. How are we going to teach skills in an online format, but there are so many tools that available now for people to actually meet face-to-face and if Nathaniel describes that the skill course it is one of the courses that will require that a certain small number of people meet together at a particular time with an instructor watching them. So, what he has planned [cross talking] to do that.

Nathaniel Ivers: That would be online. We’re going to use — most likely we’re going to be using WebEx which allows just similar to what we’re using right now for this webcast, but we — it’s in the developmental state. It’s mostly in my brain at this point, but I think it’s one of the things that we will set this program apart from other online programs where they actually do all of their helping skills training in residency. We see the helping skills training at the developmental process so that can’t happen over a weekend and so yes some of that will occur at the second residency, but a lot of the learning will occur actually in a course all the counseling skills where we’ll assimilate what we call a triadic [ph] experience and so we will have groups of three students in a class of about 15 students meet together and they will work out time when they are available to do so because it will by synchronous. It won’t be asynchronous and they’ll meet on WebEx and they will rotate their roles. So, one person will act as a counselor, one will act as a client and one will be an observer who provides feedback. Each of the three will have each of those roles as they practice the different basic counseling skills that they are being taught during that time. They will record that and post it in such a way that the instructors can review it to determine how they’re doing in their process of learning these skills.

Pamela Karr: And that’s exactly the way we do it here they’re instructors wander around the side of the rooms with the three triad people are meeting and give them feedback and practice so we’re going to try to do these same thing we do here utilizing the marvels of technology to do so.

Nathaniel Ivers: Yes.

Speaker 1: Thank you Pamela and Nathaniel. I want to be respectful of your time so we’ll conclude the question and answer sessions. Thank you again for your questions. If our questions were not answered during the question and answer session an enrollment advisor will reach out to you directly. Again, I would like to remind you about some important upcoming dates. The fall application deadline is June 1st and the fall term starts August 27th. The spring application deadline is November 1st and classes starts January 14, 2014. For more information on the Master of Arts in Counseling and Master of Arts in Human Services tuition and financial aid you can speak directly to the enrollment advisor whose information is listed on the screen. Thank you for attending today’s webinar and enjoy the rest of your day. This concludes today’s Wake Forest University General Information Session, thank you.

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