• CED Home
• Mission
• Faculty
• Admission Policy
• Retention Policy
• Degree Requirements
• Handbooks
• Practicum Packet
• Internship Packet
• Community Counseling Program
• School Counseling Program
• Counseling-Student Affairs
• Course Syllabi
• Course Rotation
• Professional Links
• Forms
• On-site Supervisor
• SoEHD Home

Counselor Education

Evaluation, Remediation and Retention Policy

The Counselor Education faculty members participate in an ongoing review of student progress in order to make decisions about student retention in the program. This review process helps to ensure that students a) are completing program requirements successfully and making reasonable progress towards graduation, and b) have achieved an adequate level of professional and personal development in keeping with their future role as professional counselors. Faculty recourse to a student's failure to meet the academic or professional expectations may be either remediation or removal from the program.

Academic minimums for retention

In tandem with the general academic standards for graduate students at UHV, Students in the UHV Counseling Program are expected to maintain a minimum of a 3.0 grade point average for all coursework. Students that demonstrate persistent difficulty with meeting the GPA standard must devise a remediation plan with their advisor that focuses on the enhancement of the students, abilities to succeed in graduate school and specifically to meet their remaining graduation requirements.

Personal and professional development minimums for retention:

The professional and personal behaviors and competencies related to counseling that students are expected to demonstrate proficiency in are:

1. The ability to express empathy and to establish rapport with clients and students.
2. The ability to utilize basic micro-skills to help facilitate client and student change.
3. Appropriate professional responsibility and work ethic in both academic and field placement settings. This includes activities such as being on time for appointments, abiding policies and procedures of the field placement site, and communicating difficulties to the site-supervisors and instructors in a timely manner.
4. Sound judgment when sharing personal experiences and values.
5. Appropriate communication skills, including the ability to engage in concrete and focused communications.
6. Effective and non-aggressive conflict resolution skills.
7. Self-awareness, defined as the ability to recognize one's own values, perspective, attitudes, how these are related to one's behavior, and to distinguish between these and the values and perspective of other people.
8. Self-awareness includes the ability to engage in Self-care in order to address areas of individual and interpersonal difficulty, and being able to accept personal responsibility for change and growth in these areas.
9. The ability to give and receive constructive feedback.
10. Openness to differing viewpoints.

When a faculty member becomes aware that a student demonstrates interpersonal and professional difficulty that may impede a student�s ability to function as a professional counselor, the faculty member will consult with other department faculty and seek to explain to the student what concerns the faculty have.

Faculty members pay special attention to the grades and conduct of students in the following courses: CED 6333: Counseling Techniques, CED 6311: Multicultural Counseling, CED 6303: Counseling Practicum, and CED 6348: Counseling Internship. If a student earns a grade of C or below in CED 6333 or CED 6311, or an unsatisfac'ory grade in CED 6303 or CED 6348, this will prompt an immediate review of the student's progress and of their appropriateness for continued matriculation in the program.

Remediation of academic, personal, and professional deficiencies:

In accordance with each student's right to due process, faculty members are committed to working with students who experience academic, interpersonal, or professional development difficulties. If a student's appropriateness for continued matriculation in the program is in question, then it is that student's right to know what specific areas he or she is identified as being deficient in and to expect that a faculty member will work that student to create a plan for remediation of any deficiency areas.

Students can expect any remediation plan to:

1. Detail the specific deficiency areas and concrete steps for correcting or improving the student's competency in those areas.
2. Have a timeline in which the student is expected to demonstrate that the remediation attempt has been successful, including intermediary benchmarks for feedback along the way to completing the plan.
3. Include a list of the student's rights and responsibilities.
4. Indicate clearly what constitutes successful remediation of student's deficiency areas.
5. Indicate clearly what the consequences of failing to complete the remediation plan in the agreed upon timeline are, up to and including dismissal from the program.

If the student's deficiencies are primarily interpersonal or professional in nature, then the faculty members may request that the student receive personal counseling and that the student provides documentation of having received this service. Faculty members may decide that students that refuse to engage in this or any other type of remediation are unfit academically, interpersonally, or professionally to become a counselor and therefore decide to remove said students from the program.