PhD: Counseling

Impact the Field of Counseling

The Ph.D. program in counseling is based on a researcher practitioner model; it is primarily designed to train researchers, scholars, academicians, and highly skilled practitioners with an emphasis on promoting social justice. We train Ph.D. students with the skills, attitudes, and knowledge valued in academic, research, and service-providing settings. Our program infuses social justice throughout the curriculum and prepares students to acknowledge and validate their clients’ complex and diverse cultural identities and fight against systemic issues of racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, and other forms of social injustices. The Ph.D. deepens a student's counseling knowledge and builds refined research, teaching, supervision, counseling, and leadership and advocacy skills. The University of Missouri—St. Louis (UMSL) Ph.D. program holds advanced accreditation by the Council on Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP); it is the only doctoral counseling program in Missouri that holds CACREP accreditation. It is also one of the only counseling Ph.D. programs in the country that offers students the opportunity to complete a three-article dissertation format which puts students in a better position to publish multiple articles from their dissertations.

The UMSL Ph.D. program is nationally recognized and regularly graduates students who go on to make meaningful and lasting contributions to the field. Many graduates of the program are practicing counselors or counselor educators. Graduates of the doctoral program have been placed in academic positions at major universities throughout the USA. A major emphasis in all of our graduate training is our commitment to cultural diversity and social justice.

Graduates of the program will have a degree that clearly distinguishes them from the entry-level practitioner -- to the level of research, advocacy and leadership, counseling, supervision, and teaching of an expert in the field of counseling. The Ph.D. degree internship (a 600-contact hour field experience) requires a combination of research activity, graduate teaching, supervision experience with master’s-level students, leadership and advocacy, and counseling practice in a balanced that students design with the advisors and committees to meet their unique career goals. The Department has a counseling social-justice-focused training center on campus, the Counseling and Social Advocacy Center (CSAC), where students get practical experience under close supervision.

Our program consistently attracts diverse students from across the nation as well as internationally. Students achieve high levels of competency in the areas of research, supervision, teaching, leadership and advocacy, and clinical work. Faculty offer intentional and ongoing support to Ph.D. students throughout their time in the program to help ensure their success. In 2021-2022 seven students earned their doctoral degrees in counseling. The completion rate for the program was about 99% as most students who start the program complete it. Our students are consistently able to find jobs in the field after they graduate. Most graduates (about 98%) are employed in the field.