UPDATED July 1, 2025: CACREP granted full initial accreditation for our MA CMHC program at The Chicago School – Dallas, Campus. This accreditation was granted with a retroactive date of August 2022, which accommodates all our graduates.
Students at The Chicago School learn by doing—their education goes beyond the classroom. That’s why the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at the Dallas Campus requires practicums in order for students to graduate.
Leigh Holman, Ph.D., an associate professor and department chair of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at the Dallas Campus, answers key questions about practicum opportunities for students. She covers the importance of these experiences, as well as key details about then.
What are the practicum requirements for students in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program?
Students in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at The Chicago School’s Dallas Campus complete a practicum and two internships during their final year. This is crucial because it is a time during which they apply the counseling skills they have learned throughout their classes with real clients in actual counseling settings.
During this time, faculty and a licensed professional at the site supervise and evaluate the student’s attitudes, professionalism, knowledge, and skills in a number of domains to ensure they are fit to practice and the school feels comfortable endorsing the student for licensure when the student graduates. This is a gatekeeping function that all licensed mental health professionals are ethically and legally expected to engage in, in order to make certain that people don’t enter the counseling field who aren’t suitable for the profession. Counselors often work with people at their most vulnerable. It is crucial that our faculty ensure that students are fit for the work so that they are able to help and avoid harming vulnerable clients.
Is there a difference between a practicum and an internship?
Practicum and internships are developmental in nature. Basically, for an analogy, in a practicum a student must crawl before they are ready to walk in the first internship and then run in the second internship. The practicum requires the student to complete only 100 hours because it is the initial semester that they will be exposed to clients. This allows students to become acclimated to the setting, learn the administrative side of the business of counseling, shadow more experienced counselors, and begin getting their feet wet with real clients of their own. All practicum and internship hours are supervised by a licensed mental health provider at the independent practice level. The limit of 100 hours for practicum is a standard set by the Council on Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) to protect beginning students from being overwhelmed with too many clients too fast.
Students then have two semesters of internship where they complete a total of 600 hours (about 20 hours per week) at a counseling agency, hospital, or other facility practicing their counseling skills with real clients. This prepares students to be hired once they graduate. After graduation, they still have several years of supervised practice before the state will license them at the independent practice level where they can start a private practice, if they wish. The exact number of postgraduate supervision hours differs from state to state.
What is important for students and prospective students to know about practicums?
I would emphasize a few things for students thinking about becoming a professional counselor. First, it is a developmental process. It’s normal for an emerging counselor to be really nervous about seeing clients for the first time or being evaluated by a supervisor. But really, the supervisor is there for the student to provide support and guidance. We aren’t going to let a student fly by themselves until they are ready, and we are always there to reach out to for guidance if you are a practicum or internship student. We want the student to succeed. We wouldn’t accept a student into the program or allow a student to get to the practicum stage unless we knew they were prepared. And we do prepare students with a solid base of knowledge, skills practice with their classmates, and feedback from faculty before they step onto a practicum site.
Second, it’s important for students to think about practicum and internship as an extended job interview. They need to take it seriously and set enough time aside to do a good job. That may take planning ahead to prepare to be at a site for 20 hours a week for two full semesters for internships, in particular. It may involve preparing a spouse or kids for the juggling act a student must do during the practicum and internship time. But it is crucial that students realize that counselors are professionals and act accordingly in terms of the commitment to the job site, to the profession of counseling, and most importantly, to the clients who are relying on the counseling student to provide quality services.
Third, counseling students need to think about and practice self-care throughout the program so that they are able to have good boundaries around the work, to take care of themselves, and to have some balance when they are going through the practicum and internship experiences. The supervisor and faculty are there to support the students in doing this, but it really is a crucial part of being a counselor to model the self-care that they would want for their own clients.
What should students look for in a practicum site?
One of the great things about The Chicago School is that we will vet all sites for the students. They will have the peace of mind knowing that a site will not be on the list if it hasn’t met the criteria necessary in terms of quality, providing the support and supervision the student needs, and providing an environment where the student will be able to practice a variety of counseling skills.
However, each site is different in terms of the clients they serve. Some sites may only serve kids, others only adults, and yet others will provide opportunities to work with both. Students may work with only addictions or trauma as the primary presenting issue or with a variety of presenting problems. A student may work only with individuals, or they may work with families, couples, or groups as well. These are all things a student would evaluate as they choose and interview to see if it is a good fit for their professional goals. During this time, the faculty and training director will provide guidance and mentorship to help the student find a the right site for their needs.
What kind of settings will students experience? What kind of work will they do?
Some of the common settings are community agencies that work with marginalized populations who have mental health diagnoses and often comorbid addiction challenges; child advocacy centers that work with children in an integrated trauma-informed care setting to facilitate a child or adolescent’s healing after experiencing abuse or neglect; forensic settings such as jails or prisons or programs in the community that work with individuals upon reentry after leaving prison; eating disorders clinics; addiction or trauma centers that may be residential treatment centers, hospitals, or outpatient settings, or the full continuum of care; agencies that treat domestic violence or sexual abuse and assault survivors or perpetrators.
One important factor for students to know is that we will work with them to find a site that is a good fit. That includes trying to set up sites that a student may find on their own and wish to intern at that may not be on our list. The training director will work with the student and the site to attempt to get all the documentation needed so that the site can be a placement for our students.
Any differentiators the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program in Dallas is looking to implement?
Our campus is unique from other campuses at The Chicago School in that we share the campus with a nursing school and several other health-related professions. One area that we plan to integrate throughout our curriculum is training on how to work on interdisciplinary treatment teams with other professionals to treat the whole client. This is a trend in health care toward integrated care, which has also been articulated by The Chicago School President Michele Nealon, Psy.D., as one of our strategic goals.
Due to the diversity of Dallas and the large underserved populations and mental health workforce shortages, we plan to prioritize training agreements with sites that are representative of these challenges. This is part of the social justice mission of the university and the profession of counseling. We also will integrate cultural humility and multiculturalism throughout our curriculum, along with trauma-informed care, including an understanding of the trauma of oppression. These are necessary attitudes for professional counselors to embody if they are to work in diverse areas with clients who may have very different life experiences than their own.
Finally, with the help of our fellow Clinical Mental Health Counseling online program, we are developing a unique blended curriculum to provide students with both face-to-face and online training in both didactic and skills classes. As the pandemic has revealed, there is a need for all health care professionals to be comfortable with technology and to be aware of the unique challenges, rewards, ethical and legal considerations, and accessibility issues connected with tele-behavioral health. We want our students to be well-prepared for the next iteration of the profession and hopefully part of the solution for providing mental health care to medically underserved communities that have a shortage of mental health care workers.
Why is it important for universities like The Chicago School to establish relationships with practicum sites?
Counseling is really a small community, and relationships are the cornerstones of our profession. Establishing and nurturing relationships with our community partner agencies and facilities is no different. In order to develop sites to provide the best possible training experiences for our students and to ensure that our students are prepared to meet the needs of the agencies and their clients, it is crucial that we have an ongoing dialog about what works and what doesn’t and work together to continuously improve our service to both clients and student interns training in these agencies or facilities.
Learn more about the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at the Dallas Campus.
The Chicago School has long been renowned for innovations in remote learning, with more than 20 different psychology degrees offered online. The Chicago School offers a master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at four locations—Dallas, Washington D.C., Chicago, and online. Request more information by completing the form below.
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