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.
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.
UMSL's PhD in Education, Emphasis in Counseling program holds advanced accreditation by the Council on Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) the only doctoral counseling program in Missouri that holds this prestigious accreditation. It is also one of the only counseling PhD programs in the country that offers students the opportunity to complete a multiple-article dissertation format which puts students in a better position to publish multiple articles from their dissertations.
The Ph.D. program is a beacon of quality and excellence in training scholars, researchers, academicians, and practitioners in the field. Our program deepens students' counseling knowledge and builds refined research, teaching, supervision, counseling, leadership, and advocacy skills. Students are lead by a faculty of exceptional teachers who are experts in their respective fields, ensuring the highest level of quality in education and mentorship.
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.
