School of Liberal Arts and Sciences

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Aneesh A. Khushman, MD, Dean

Professor

Jeffrey S. Black, PhD
Ruth H. Kuchinsky-Smith, PhD

Associate Professor

Matthew J. Miller, PsyD

Assistant Professor

Kim Jetter, MS
Ashlyn M. Jones, PhD

Adjunct Faculty

William W. Clark, PhD
Rebecca Fisher, PsyD
Nikema Missouri, MS
Hannah A. Porcella, MA
David J. Wiedis, JD

The School

Consistent with the university’s Mission, the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences provides graduate education that is meant to develop students who are professionally equipped and biblically minded. The School of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers a Master of Science in Counseling degree program. It trains persons to be licensed professional counselors with a focus in clinical mental health counseling. The program also develops students holistically, focusing on deepening their knowledge and skills as counselors, and enhancing character growth and spiritual formation seeking to serve Christ in the church, society, and the world. 

The Program

Helping People Find Answers

Human beings struggle in profound ways: broken marriage relationships, divorce, single-parent households; addiction, depression and suicide, anxiety disorders, and problems controlling eating, sexuality, and anger; ADHD and autism. How do broken lives change? Where do problems of living begin, and how does personal responsibility factor into human suffering? Where does brain functioning fit into understanding problems of living? Most importantly, how does a Christian understand and solve these struggles within the context of a relationship with Jesus Christ and the Christian community?

These questions and many more are the focus of the degree programs in counseling. Since its inception, the Counseling Department has trained men and women to be biblically-minded, professionally competent counselors who offer professional help in a variety of counseling settings. Graduates of the program serve in the church, inpatient and outpatient counseling agencies, addiction recovery treatment centers, crisis counseling programs, and as residential care mental health providers, pastoral counselors, and private practitioners.

Departmental Distinctives

1. Personal Attention and Respect 
   The faculty and staff are committed to giving students the same personal attention and respect they will one day give their counselees. From assistance with the application process and advice on registering for courses to classroom interaction and one-on-one small group supervision, faculty and staff make it a priority to focus on each student as a unique individual. This is essential to helping each student realize his or her full potential.
2. Development of the Whole Person
   Although helping students achieve academic excellence is important, the faculty believe that effective counselors are those who mature spiritually, relationally, and psychologically as they grow professionally. Inside and outside the classrooms and laboratories, students are challenged and assisted in developing and maintaining health in their spiritual, family, and private lives as they grow in professional competence as counselors.
3. Nurturing Community 
   The faculty believe people mature and serve others more effectively when their training takes place in a safe, supportive, and nurturing community. As a result, students are immersed in small group training environments throughout their counselor training.
4. Balanced and Relevant Curriculum
   By constructing and refining the curriculum, the faculty are vigilant to assure that all coursework is current, relevant, and practical for counselors who will soon be working with the most troubled people. The curriculum emphasizes contemporary scholarship and professional standards integrated with biblical truth.
5. Approachable and Involved Faculty
   The faculty are committed to teaching counseling by example. This requires personal involvement with students both inside and outside the classroom. The counseling faculty is involved with students as people immersed in professional life and ministry.
6. Real-to-life Laboratory Experiences
   The counseling faculty teach counseling as an art that must be practiced in order to be mastered. From the first day to the last day in the program, students participate in laboratories and/or practical field experiences that serve as realistic training environments. Students learn through hands-on, trial-and-error rehearsals under the watchful eyes and artful supervision of the faculty.
7. Dependency on the Spirit of God
   The faculty believe that counseling people when they are most vulnerable and talking to them about the most intimate and difficult struggles in their lives is a serious and sacred calling. Counseling must always be approached with humility. Even with the most advanced training and experience, no one is truly adequate for this task without help from God’s Spirit. The faculty are committed to helping students learn how to depend on the wisdom and power of God’s Spirit in their attempts to help others.

Core Values

Understanding people and their problems and helping them change are challenging tasks. Students in the counseling programs are equipped for this task by an experienced and diverse faculty who base every aspect of counselor training on the following core values:

1. The centrality of Christ in psychological health
   Christ is the ultimate source of life and health. People cannot truly experience wholeness-psychologically or spiritually-without knowing Christ intimately and obeying Him unconditionally. As our Creator and Lord, He alone can give us the power and freedom to change, live, and love as healthy people.
2. The authority of the Bible for guiding people
   The Bible, God’s written Word, is the only reliable and sufficient source of knowledge for providing an authoritative and comprehensive framework for fully understanding the complex nature of human beings, their problems, and the ways they change. The Bible provides counselors with the conceptual and ethical foundation essential for choosing and implementing counseling interventions. Whether one counsels in a formal therapeutic setting or in an informal discipleship or ministry context, the same biblical guidelines remain relevant and applicable.
3. The importance of relationships in human growth and healing
   Created in the image of God, people need relationships to grow and stay healthy. The relational environments in which people exist play an important role in either contributing to their difficulties or promoting their health and growth. Helping people find or build honest and loving communities of relationships is an essential part of counseling people and promoting their well-being.
4. The indispensable role of suffering in people’s lives
   Although suffering is an inescapable part of human existence, it is not the source of people’s psychological problems. The key is how people choose to respond to suffering. The primary focus of Christian counseling is not to help people escape suffering, but rather to help them understand, respond to, and use their suffering in ways that enable them to discover and enjoy otherwise untapped spiritual truths and resources.
5. The significance of character development in effective counseling and discipleship
   For counseling to be effective, its ultimate goal should not be to just solve people’s problems or relieve their emotional pain, but also to help them acquire and display the character of Jesus Christ in the midst of whatever problems or pain they are experiencing. Modeling the character of Jesus Christ in what is said and done to those who are counseled is the first and foremost responsibility that Christian counselors have. Effective character-directed counseling requires the spiritual resources of faith, prayer, and worship.
6. The necessity of multicultural competence
   Christian counselors are first and foremost committed to viewing persons as image bearers who uniquely reflect the Creator God in a specific cultural context. Effective counselors value diversity and demonstrate cultural awareness, sensitivity, and competence in practice.

Master of Science in Counseling

The Master of Science in Counseling degree at Cairn University is designed to provide academic and professional training to persons pursuing a career or ministry in counseling. The counseling curriculum is organized around the premise that Christian counselors must be knowledgeable and competent in all areas of professional practice and in their ability to integrate a biblical worldview into their understanding of people, their problems, and models of helping. Students who complete the program are academically prepared to complete the requirements for professional licensure.

Cairn’s structure of core lecture courses paired with cohort lab experiences gives students the opportunity to develop counseling skills while building deep relationships in a biblical community and undergoing the personal transformation and growth as a whole person essential to effective professional practice as a counselor. Students in the MSC program receive various modalities of instruction including: face-to-face instruction, group discussion, online instruction and forums, student presentations, case studies and role plays. Cairn University’s Oasis Counseling Center also provides students with opportunities to engage in professional practice under the supervision of the counseling faculty.

Students in the MSC degree program take 60 credit hours over the course of 3 years in core areas that focus on basic counseling theory, a biblical-theological view of persons and their problems, fundamental skills in counseling and psychological assessment, as well as training in marriage and family counseling and group counseling. All students participate in intensive training groups (labs) that provide a guided learning environment designed to develop essential skills and the personal and professional character needed to counsel effectively. After two years and 48 credits of coursework, this intensive training culminates into active engagement in the field of counseling through participation in a practicum and internship under regular supervision by a licensed professional.

Mission of the Program

The curriculum and training of the MSC degree program is designed to flow logically and strategically from the mission statement of the University. The University mission statement is: Cairn University exists to educate students to serve Christ in the church, society, and the world as biblically minded, well-educated, and professionally competent men and women of character. The program objectives of the MSC embody these themes. The mission statement of the graduate counseling program is to equip women and men to be biblically minded, professionally competent persons of character as professional counselors. Cairn’s MSC degree program provides an emphasis in clinical mental health counseling as it pursues this mission.

Program Objectives

The mission statement of the graduate counseling program is to equip women and men to be biblically-minded, professionally competent persons of character as professional counselors. These three goals are summarized as the pursuit of knowledge, skills and mature character.  Each individual course in the counseling curriculum is designed to develop one or more of these qualities in Cairn’s counseling graduate students. 

Knowledge

Counselors must acquire a broad understanding of persons and the context in which they live. This goal is achieved by first considering knowledge about persons and their problems from a distinctively Christian worldview.  Second, while these categories are summarized in general terms of knowledge, skills, and maturity; the content of counseling courses mirrors the eight common core curriculum areas identified by CACREP as the essential foundation of counselor education.  

Cairn’s goal as counselor educators is to assist students in achieving the following knowledge goals:

1. Knowledge of Christian psychology.
2. Knowledge of the counseling profession.
3. Knowledge of counseling theory.
4. Knowledge of the standards of ethical and professional practice.
5. Knowledge of empirical research and theory in counseling and academic psychology including life span development and developmental psychopathology, personality theory, theories of learning, neuropsychology and psychopharmacology.
6. Knowledge of models of psychopathology and treatment models of psychological disorders.
7. Knowledge of marriage and family processes and the practice of couple and family counseling.
8. Knowledge of group processes and the practice and procedures of various forms of support and treatment groups.
9. Knowledge of counseling in a diverse, pluralistic, multi-cultural society.
10. Knowledge of practices and methodology in empirical research applied to the practice of counseling.
11. Knowledge of career assessment and counseling.

Knowledge of Christian Psychology. Christian psychology as a principal knowledge goal refers to a theoretical orientation for examining models of counseling. Beginning with the assumption that knowledge or the means of knowing things consists of competing and incommensurable worldviews or epistemologies, Christian psychology evaluates all knowledge, but particularly knowledge about persons and their problems from a biblical-theological perspective. Students in the program acquire an understanding of Christian worldview thinking, and an ability to think critically about the role of presuppositions in developing counseling models and conducting empirical research.

Cairn also views Christian psychology as a separate type of counseling model.  The goal of a Christian counseling model is to create a robust view of human functioning that is framed by a distinctively biblical starting point.  Beginning with the idea that knowledge is something that humans create, not simply find; the goal of a Christian counseling model is the creation of a coherent view of human functioning that is grounded in the belief that God has much to say about what people are like, why they behave in certain ways; how their inner and outer world can go awry and how change within and without takes place.

In other words, Cairn’s goal is not only to teach students how to critically sift through and apply many of the theoretical constructs, methods and findings of counseling and psychology, but to create theoretical models of human behavior grounded in a robust view of persons from biblical-theological vantage point.

Other knowledge goals correspond with the knowledge goals articulated in the CACREP standards. Some of these goals are met mainly in courses associated with specific topics.  Other goals are met in numerous courses throughout the curriculum, over the course of the three years it takes to complete the program.

Skills

Effective performance as a professional counselor requires acquiring a certain degree of mastery or competence of a wide array of methodologies counselors use in professional practice. The second major objective of the program is to equip counselors-in-training with these essential skills.  Cairn focuses on the development of the following skills:

1. Interpersonal relationship counseling skills
2. Self-assessment skills
3. Case conceptualization skills
4. Academic research and writing skills
5. Psychological assessment skills
6. Professional practice skills
7. Group counseling skills

Skills are developed in a variety of ways in a variety of venues or contexts. The counseling program is committed to a hands-on, practiced based competency model of training. Much of this training occurs in year-long small group cohorts that we refer to as training labs.  Students participate in weekly three-hour training labs for the first two years of the program.  Students must demonstrate mastery of the skills associated with the corresponding lecture before they can proceed to the next lecture-lab training module. This small group instructional environment is designed to provide students with a safe context in which to develop their skills - first counseling their peers, then role players, and finally persons in the community who are committed to assisting students in skill development.  

Maturity

The presence of certain professional and personal dispositions or the role of professional character and personal maturity are essential for successful professional practice. In fact, Cairn views the development of these attributes as so necessary that students who do not demonstrate satisfactory progress in professional character are required to repeat their last lab until they demonstrate sufficient development in all areas of personal and professional maturity evaluated by the MSC faculty.  

Training and mentoring in professional disposition are incorporated into the counseling curriculum as a whole and is a primary focus of each lab training experience.

Professional and personal maturity are measured at the end of each lab, reviewed by MSC faculty in an ongoing fashion during the semester, and at a formal review at the end of each semester.  Students who fall short in the assessment rubric meet with the MSC faculty and collaborate in the development of a remediation plan that guides their continued participation in the counseling program.

Students are evaluated for:

Ethical Conduct and Decision Making
Professional Conduct
Multicultural Awareness and Sensitivity
Emotional Stability and Self-control
Commitment to Professional and Personal Growth
Flexibility and Adaptability
Emotional Intelligence
Boundaries and Self-care
Interpersonal Self-awareness
Relational Maturity
Capacity for Effective Collaborative
Spiritual Maturity

Related Program Information

Profile of the Master of Science in Counseling Student Body

One of the most enriching elements of the Master of Science in Counseling degree program is the diversity of the student body. Such diversity provides opportunities to learn and grow from multiple perspectives.

Age and Career Diversity:
A large percentage of students enter the program in mid-life, already having a wealth of life experiences. Most are employed full-time in professions ranging from education, church, or parachurch ministries to medicine, law, social work, corrections, human resources, or business.

Gender and Cultural Diversity:
The student body in the program is 75% female and 25% male. Fifty-nine percent of the students are white, 23% are Black or African-American, 9% are Hispanic, 4% are Asian, and 4% are of more than one ethnicity.

Church Diversity:
Students in the program come from a variety of church backgrounds. They are evangelical in their doctrine and committed to integrating their faith into their professions.

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