07-28-2024 EDU - Flipbook - Page 7
Emma Shipley, a student in Towson's autism Ph.D. program, leads an improv class.
Advances in health care education
New programs aim to improve outcomes
By Linda L. Esterson, Contributing Writer
T
he COVID-19 pandemic was responsible
for fueling our nation’s mental health crisis. More people than ever are in need of
mental health services, and the demand
for professionals to provide service is at an all-time
high. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
employment of substance abuse, behavioral disorder and mental health counselors will grow by
18% from 2022-2032, much faster than the average
for all occupations. In response, the University of
Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) is launching
a new Master of Science degree in clinical professional counseling (MSCPC) this fall.
“The cumulative drivers for the program are
anchored by the keystone, the human need for
mental health and wellbeing,” notes Phyllis Medina,
Ph.D., professor and program director of the new
master’s program, via email. “The United States is
experiencing an opioid epidemic and mental health
crisis. Behavioral health needs have increased, the
number of individuals receiving behavioral health
services has not.”
The program spawned from a variety of conversations, according to Medina. Local Maryland
clinical professional counselors shared wait lists
and wait times for services for patients. The national average wait time for behavioral health services
is 48 days, Medina notes. In addition, current bachelor’s program students and alumni have expressed
interest in helping professions and have specifically requested a master’s level clinical professional
counseling program.
“The MSCPC will help with meeting student,
workforce and community needs during a time in
which market projections indicate there is a nationwide shortage of clinical professional counselors
that has been exacerbated by increased demands
for mental health and substance abuse intervention
services triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic,”
Medina wrote.
The MSCPC focuses on the holistic development of the counselor-in-training, with the cultivation of skills for both individual and group counseling. Students will receive extensive training in
foundational counseling theories and techniques,
complemented by onsite clinical supervision during practicum and internship experiences. In addition, they will choose from elective courses in
specific areas of interest, including Substance Use,
Dependency, and Addictions; Marriage and Family
Counseling; Child and Adolescent Counseling;
Military Culture and Family Dynamics;
Gerontological Counseling; and Sex Therapy.
“The program maintains a current and relevant academic learning environment that fosters
a strong professional identity, promotes the standards of the counseling profession, and creates
clinical competence across the lifespan,” Medina
wrote. “Students will engage in experiences that
create personal and professional awareness, insight,
and growth, thus enhancing students’ abilities to
deliver client-centered, culturally responsive, and
ethically competent counseling services.”
The MSCPC is designed for students seeking
employment as licensed practitioners in community and business settings, including mental health
centers, drug and alcohol treatment programs,
correctional institutions, health care institutions,
social service agencies, private practice and business and industry.
Support for people with autism is another
area of focus. A new Towson University program
is preparing students for careers in higher education, research and policy and advocacy related to
autism. Last fall, TU welcomed the first cohort of
the Doctor of Philosophy in autism studies program. Housed in the college of health professions,
it is a unique program focused solely on autism
and developed with an interdisciplinary approach
across several university colleges and the Hussman
Center for Adults with Autism in TU's Institute for
Well-Being. Additional collaborations have been
formed between the program and the colleges of
education, liberal arts, science and mathematics,
and fine arts and communication.
“It’s focused solely on autism studies and not
housed in one field of study like most Ph.D. programs. It really allows the field to grow by bringing
people from different backgrounds with different
lenses together to think about the many different
issues that could be studied related to autism,” says
Kaitlyn Wilson, Ph.D., program chair of the doctor
of philosophy in autism studies and associate professor and chair of the speech-language pathology
and audiology department at Towson University.
“The field of autism studies in general has grown
and evolved quite a bit over the past few years,
thinking about different models of disability and
needing to study autism in a lot of different ways
that haven't been studied before. Our program
allows students to do that in a focused way.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control,
the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder has
been higher in recent years, related to changes in
its clinical definition as well as better efforts to
diagnose. There’s more awareness individually and
in the media, with more television shows and movies highlighting autism, Wilson adds. “There are
people who have significant needs, and there are
people who work in the field who want to use best
practices. Being able to advance those best practices in an ongoing way is so important.”
The full-time, 60-credit hybrid program
includes core coursework in foundations of autism,
as well as research and research methods, and dissertation study, and in a secondary concentration
like theater, psychology or family studies. Students
complete two mentored teaching experiences,
enabling them to learn about the research process
from experienced researchers.
After a few teaching experiences at the undergraduate level, Emma Shipley, a student in the
autism Ph.D. program, aims to work in higher
education with a courseload specified to autism
studies. Shipley, a speech-language pathologist,
works with post-secondary students in alternate
standards classrooms with high support needs
after four years working at the high school level
with a caseload of students with an 85% autism
diagnosis. Her desired future professorship would
involve teaching speech-language pathologists
about autism and evidence-based interventions
with autism in the realm of communication.
“My caseload is primarily autism, and I love it,”
Shipley says. “It all coincided with the creation of
this Ph.D. program at Towson.”
The results of a survey published in 2021 in
Health Affairs, a journal published by health services research firm AcademyHealth, indicates that
physician perceptions of people with disabilities
affects their delivery of health care services. The
survey reported that 82.4% of U.S. physicians feel
that people with significant disability have worse
quality of life than nondisabled people, and only
40.7% of physicians were confident about their
ability to provide the same quality of care to
patients with disability. In addition, only 56.5%
strongly agreed they welcome disabled patients
to their practices, and more than 18% acknowledged that the health care system often treats these
patients unfairly.
In response to the lacking provision of health
care services to this patient population, the
University of Maryland, School of Nursing intro-
duced a course to prepare health care providers to
better serve patients with disabilities.
“One in four to five people have a disability, and
if our health care workers aren’t properly trained
to care for them, then they’re going to not get the
best of health care, which is what the University of
Maryland strives to have our students give,” says
Rebecca N. Weston, Ed.D, M.S.N., R.N., C.N.E.,
assistant professor at the University of Maryland
School of Nursing at The Universities at Shady
Grove.
Weston, whose son is autistic and husband is
disabled following military service, created the
“Exploring Disability in Health Care” course to
provide comprehensive nursing education on caring for people with disabilities across the lifespan
and transitions. The course is based on competencies recommended by Standards of Professional
Nursing Practice, the Core Competencies on
Disability for Health Care Education and The
Americans with Disabilities Act, and focuses on
students gaining a better understanding of the
physical, cultural, spiritual and emotional needs of
patients with cognitive, physical, visual and hearing
disabilities.
Currently considered an elective, the course
was first offered last fall. Plans are underway to
expand access by spring 2025 to students attending other professional schools within the university, including the medical school, school of social
work, school of dentistry and school of pharmacy.
Weston also hopes it will become a required course
for the school of nursing in the future.
A grant from the university has enabled
a unique culmination to the course. In April,
the clinical schools’ simulation department, the
University of Maryland schools of medicine and
nursing standardized patient programs, partnered
with the Maryland Special Olympics to provide a
day of specialized training for nursing, social work
and medical students. Four Special Olympics athletes with intellectual and developmental disabilities trained as patients, enabling interprofessional
collaboration amongst the students.
“To see these health care students learn what
kind of questions to ask, understand that it's appropriate to ask questions and it's appropriate to direct
questions directly to the person who they're speaking to was just amazing,” Weston says.
The pilot program will be offered to students
semi-annually, near the conclusion of the course
each semester.
with the Inclusive NOAA Fisheries Internship
(IN FISH) program. “Through UMES STEM
STARS, I have gained valuable experiences that
have supported my career goals,” Britton says.
Salisbury University (SU) has strengthened
its experiential learning offerings through a
Space Act Agreement with NASA’s Goddard
Space Flight Center. The partnership enhances
and builds upon ongoing aerospace education
and workforce development efforts by both SU
and NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, which is
managed by Goddard.
Situated on the northeast coast of Virginia,
Wallops conducts upwards of 50 operation-
al science and technology missions annually
and is increasing launch operations with commercial partners like Rocket Lab. For several
years, SU students and faculty have engaged in
impactful projects with Wallops staff, including
designing and building a ThinSat in 2021 that
Wallops launched to the International Space
Station to study thunderstorm impacts on the
lower thermosphere’s magnetic field.
Michael Scott, Ph.D., dean of SU’s Richard
A. Henson School of Science and Technology,
says the agreement will create more internships and opportunities for students and faculty to participate in even more experiential,
hands-on research and engineering projects. It
also enables NASA and WFF staff to increase
involvement on campus, through guest lectures
and job fairs.
“In practical terms, this means a greatly
expanded workforce development effort where
we recruit high school students to SU specifically for the opportunities to eventually work
in the aerospace industry at Wallops,” Scott
says. “The talent pool for the larger aerospace
industry is not nearly deep nor wide enough
to meet the mind-bending opportunities of the
21st century. Undergraduate STEM education is
certainly one of Salisbury University’s strengths
and we’re committed to leveraging that for the
broader industry but Wallops Flight Facility in
particular.”
These programs at UMBC, UMES and SU
exemplify the innovative approaches Maryland
universities are taking to prepare students for
successful STEM careers. Through hands-on
learning, financial support and strong industry
partnerships, these institutions are meeting the
growing demand for STEM talent and ensuring
graduates are ready to tackle the challenges of
the future.
Labs to launchpads, from page 1
Vamshi Krishna Ginna, a UMBC graduate and intern at Ardent Privacy, works with colleagues.
“Historically, people of color have been
underrepresented in STEM disciplines,” she
explains. “Increasing the number of people of
color with PhDs and MD-PhDs in the STEM
fields will lead to more representation and
diversity. When future students can see role
models who look like them being successful in
the STEM fields, they are more likely to view
STEM careers as accessible to all.”
This past year, the inaugural cohort of
UMES STEM STARS scholars engaged in a
number of educational programs, including a
two-week research project studying the hydrologic cycle, as well as seminars, field trips
and professional development workshops. In
addition, the students were each paired with
faculty fellows and began research projects in
their respective fields.
“The first year with the inaugural cohort
went extremely well,” Cornelius says, adding
that the STEM STARS scholars achieved major
success, from being selected to present at an
aerospace conference in Milan, Italy, to completing requirements for becoming a professional pilot.
Alleyah Britton, an environmental science
major, interned with the UMES Geoscience
Bridge program and is currently interning
