MASTER’S AND PHD IN COUNSELING ONLINE OPTIONS

Would you like to help people overcome their most personal challenges?

This is your chance to make a difference

With a master’s degree in counseling, you can use your talents to improve the world:

• Help children adapt to their surroundings and perform
  better in school and life.
• Counsel spouses on how to improve their relationships.
• Work through emotional issues or mental disorders with families.

At the University of Holy Cross, you can earn your master’s online in three years.

Choose your degree path

In addition to traditional on-campus courses, the following online Master’s and PhD options in counseling are now available:

Master’s

• Clinical Mental Health Counseling
• Marriage, Couple and Family Counseling
• School Counseling

Early Entry: Our 3+3 program enables undergraduates to finish two degrees in six years, accelerating your path to a master’s degree. 

PhD

• Counselor Education and Supervision

Why UHC?

Complete coursework at your own pace

You’ll have two to three weekly online classes, with assignments to tackle at your own convenience — early morning, late at night, over lunch.

An example semester course load:

• Spring: 3 courses (9 credit hours)
• Fall: 3 courses (9 credit hours)
• Summer: 2 courses (6 credit hours)

Get in-person training

As part of your Techniques in Counseling courses, you’ll spend two four-day residencies — one during your first semester and another halfway through the program. You’ll get live feedback on your client role playing sessions and learn techniques for improving your delivery. (This year’s residency coincides with Mardi Gras and the highly anticipated annual Law and Ethics in Counseling Conference in New Orleans.)

Earn 700+ hours of clinical experience

You’ll complete a practicum and two internships at a site of your choosing and earn 280 direct client hours and 420 indirect client hours. We’ll work with you to find placements that fit your interests. Students have completed internships at community agencies, schools, psychiatric hospitals, addiction clinics, and more.

Gain expertise from our industry specialists

Our professors’ clinical experience covers the lifespan of clients who present with a wide range of issues.

Present your research at national conferences

At the annual Law and Ethics in Counseling Conference in New Orleans, our master’s and doctoral students showcase their own research and present alongside faculty in roundtables. The conference brings together 200+ counselors and counselor educators from all over the world. Past student research topics presented at national conferences include:

• Social media addiction among college students
• The effects of colorism in African Americans
• Body surveillance and body shame
• Counseling students’ attitude toward assisted suicide
• Test anxiety in first-year students
• Call to action ethical concerns between counselors and child welfare systems

Master’s course highlights

Introduction to Techniques of Professional Counseling

Learn the fundamentals of being a counselor. A four-day residency launches you into role playing with mock clients and practicing your person-centered skills. It gives you the tools to continue role playing in mock client sessions via Zoom, where your professor will critique your verbal and nonverbal behavior and professionalism.

Practicum in Counseling

Now that you have the counseling fundamentals under your belt, you’ll begin your clinical experience with 100 hours of supervised counseling. You’ll start defining the theory that will guide your solutions to client problems and form your professional identity.

Internship in Counseling

Complete 600 hours of intensive supervised clinical work experience in a school, community, couple, family or child-centered agency. You’ll hone your person-centered skills and put your theory into practice.
 

See more courses >

Ready to teach other counselors?
Get your PhD

At UHC, you’ll have opportunities to become a teaching assistant or adjunct professor, boosting your vitae with actual teaching experience. Your first two years of PhD coursework won’t be busy work leading up to your dissertation. Your advisor will help you focus on a topic that you’re passionate about, and you’ll draft outlines and full chapters of your dissertation before you enter your final year.

Past dissertation topics include:

• The reunification between adopted individuals and their biological parents
• How children with anxiety experience participating in yoga classes
• The dissidence in the learned values and practiced behaviors of adult males
• Social anxiety of mental health professionals and collaborating with healthcare professionals
• The reunification process of families after first-generation Hispanic children enter the United States without their parents

Our doctoral graduates go on to teach in colleges across the country, serve as site visitors for accreditation and officers in local and national professional organizations, own large successful private practices and hold administrative positions in mental health agencies.

Alumni research in print

See where our master’s and doctoral graduates publish their research.

• American Journal of Family Therapy: The phenomenological experience of parents who live with a boomerang child
• Journal of Religion and Health: How organ donors are different from non-donors: Responsibility, barriers, and religious involvement
• Journal of School Counseling: Factors associated with programmatic orientation and supervision in schools
• Death Studies: Events surrounding stillbirth and their effect on symptoms of depression among mothers
• NASSP Bulletin: Principal-counselor collaboration and school climate
• Nursing Ethics: Moral distress among nursing and non-nursing students