Papers and projects
Papers and projects
Students will interview in person (face-to-face or virtual) a licensed professional counselor (LPC or LMFT). The counselor must have their degree in counseling. You are to review the assignment guidelines, provide a brief summary of the individual you interviewed and write a reaction paper to the interview, demonstrate your understanding of the following counseling specialities, motivation for becoming a counselor, counseling theory, counseling techniques, multicultural issues, advocacy, trends in the field, and competence.
The paper should reflect your awareness of the profession covering the points listed above, role as a counselor, and your reflection on what led you to your journey of becoming a counselor instead of just a summary of the interview. This paper should be 6-8 pages in length.
Key terms: LCPC; interview; reflection; counselor
To provide optimal services to clients, the community, and associated stakeholders, counselors must be familiar with current research in the field. Counselors also need to be skilled in synthesizing and presenting this information for the purposes of education, prevention, and advocacy. The emphasis of this research poster will be on a topic related to the profession of counseling that is of interest to you (e.g., counseling children of divorced parents, counseling adolescent females with eating disorders, counseling mandated clients, counseling adult survivors of child abuse). Students will work in pairs to complete the assignment. Each group should meet with the instructor to discuss their topic for approval. Formal APA rules of writing are to be followed. References should be peer-reviewed articles from scholarly journals. A minimum of 8 references should be used. Students are encouraged to reference the poster template provided as they develop and design their posters. Each group will print one poster (color/black or white; matte/glossy; size 36x48) to display at the symposium on campus at the end of the semester. During the symposium, students will discuss their findings on their poster with attendees
Key terms: LGBTQ; Queer; Advocacy; Symposium; Poster; Research; Reflection
Note: This paper has been withheld until approved for public viewing by the interviewee.
As counselors and agents of social change, we impact the community and the profession in various ways. Our voices and knowledge create change for our profession and for our clients. There are several avenues to effect such change, which include contacting legislative bodies that create laws that affect our profession and clients, providing direct services to raise awareness of an issue, addressing the concerns of clients, addressing injustices, advocating to improve conditions for an individual or groups, and/or researching human services for our clients and ourselves. Such opportunities involve education and advocacy.
You will select a mental health agency that provides services to the community. You will contact the agency and schedule a meeting with someone on staff who can inform you of the types of services provided by their agency. You must visit the agency in person or virtually (i.e. Zoom) to conduct the interview. You will prepare a handout that can be shared with the class and submit a 2-3 page reflection paper on your experience and understanding of the role of advocacy in the profession.
Key terms: PFLAG; Queer; Adocacy; Mental Health; Education; Reflection
This paper will focus on your personal reflection related to these five questions:
How individuals start to develop maladaption (mental health problems) not related to diagnosis;
How this maladaption presents from a behavioral, emotional, and/or environmental perspective;
What individuals should address to overcome the origins of their maladaption you provided in part 1;
What is your opinion of your role as a counselor to help the client in overcoming the origins of their maladaption; and
How your own personality and identity impacts your role in this process described in answer 4.
Key Terms: Counseling; Theories; Maladaptation; Reflection; Behavioral; Emotional; Environmental; Counselor; Personality; Identity
An 4 – 7-paper (Not Including Title Page or References) in APA 7 format to practice your ability to conceptualize a fictional client. This paper will examine student’s current ability to conceptualize a fictional client using the language of their personal theoretical development reflection paper. Please focus on providing:
An overview of the fictional case study,
A conceptualization of the fictional client’s issues based on your personal theoretical development, and
A mock treatment plan including one goal, two objectives, and two interventions per objective. This mock treatment plan is used to address the fictional client’s issues you conceptualized in part b.
Please include 3 peer-reviewed references (not including the textbook) within the last 5 – 10 years to support your conceptualization and/or mock treatment plan. You may also include seminal pieces as references (the works of the original theorist[s]) as a qualifying reference.
Key terms: Counseling; Theories; Maladaptation; Reflection; Behavioral; Emotional; Environmental; Counselor; Personality; Identity; Adlerian; Interventions.
A comprehensive 7 – 10-page paper involving a) case conceptualization using your theory(ies) of choice, b) goals related to your conceptualization, c) objectives related to the created goals, and d) interventions related to the objectives.
This paper is designed to assess the student’s personal model of counseling and their ability to conceptualize and treat a fictional client. (CACREP Standards: 3.E.1, 3.E.3, 3.E.11., 3.E.21.). Students will read a fictional case study and provide case conceptualization and treatment plan from the lens of one to three theoretical perspectives. You must use 7 peer-reviewed references no older than 10 years unless it is a seminal piece (Using the theorists original work). The textbook will not count as one of your qualifying references; however, you may cite your textbook if you choose.
Key terms: Counseling; Theories; Maladaptation; Reflection; Behavioral; Emotional; Environmental; Counselor; Personality; Identity; Adlerian; Feminist; Interventions.
Note: This paper has been withheld for privacy reasons.
Students are to conduct a one-hour interview with a person over the age of 70. This paper is a brief, informal assessment of an individual who is in an advanced stage of development. A complete assessment is not possible under these time constraints. So, focus on one or two appropriate issues and discussx the relevant concepts and theories. Your textbook should be a very helpful resource with this assignment. Your discussion should include how you set up the experience, a list of the questions you asked, and the rational for those particular questions. This paper should demonstrate how well you understand the person in your interview and how well you can obtain relevant information about a person in the field. This paper should be 4-6 pages in length and use APA format.
Key terms: Development; Growth; Reflection; Interview; Theories; Concepts; Elderly
Part of knowing how to treat children and adolescents is knowing what they look like. This includes being knowledgeable about their development, both normative and nonnormative, and being able to interpret how one is developing within one’s sociocultural context. The purpose of this assignment is to become familiar (or remind yourself!) with different points of the lifespan.
To complete this assignment, you will choose to go to a place where you can observe one of two populations: (a)children, or (b)adolescents. You will observe a child or children for approximately 60 minutes. You may choose to observe one child/adolescent or multiple children/adolescents, depending on what is in your best learning experience. You can observe family members. After the observation, you are to write a 4-6 page, APA formatted paper integrating concepts from lecture notes, readings, and class discussion into your assessment of the person’s development. You will be evaluated on the extent to which you appropriately incorporate class material with your observations, the extent to which you address each required content area, thoroughness, and professionalism.
Key terms: Development; Growth; Reflection; Interview; Theories; Concepts; Adolescent
Note: This paper has been withheld for privacy reasons.
Students are to complete a narrative of your own life span addressing your journey through those developmental stages you have lived up to this point. This paper can be more than just your life story; it is your story from the perspective of the way you uniquely experienced the developmental tasks for each stage; your cognitive, biosocial, and psychosocial progress from birth to present time.
This narrative can also take one or more critical developmental experiences and explore the influence those experiences have had on your adult life. The result will be approximately 50% narrative and 50% developmental data, concepts, and theory. It is recommended you interview people who “knew you when…” so your insights are based on more than just your memory. You might also go beyond current time and conjecture about your future and how you expect to traverse those upcoming developmental tasks. Your grade will be determined by the quality of your writing and the depth of your developmental assessment. This is where you will demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of human development theory and concepts. Your paper should be 10-12 pages in length and use APA format.
Key terms: Narrative; Reflection; Development; Theories