Counseling and CAPS Partnership

The KSOE Counseling Department is excited to announce a new field placement partnership with SMC's very own Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS)! This past spring, Counseling Department faculty and staff in the Marriage & Family Therapy / Professional Clinical Counseling  (MFT/PCC) program. Dr. Kristen Freeman, Dr. Cynthia Martinez, and MFT/PCC Field Placement Coordinator, Diane Sus met with Dr. Dai To, AVP for Wellness and Director of CAPS and Dr. Jennifer Panish,Training Coordinator and Staff Psychologist at CAPS to create a field placement opportunity for our third year graduate counseling students who are specializing in Marriage & Family Therapy and Professional Clinical Counseling (MFT/PCC). 

Our MFT/PCC graduate counseling students are required to spend a minimum of two semesters in field placement during the final year of their graduate program. During field placement our students are providing direct counseling services to clients under the direct supervision of licensed clinicians. We have graduate counseling students serving the wider bay area community through various agency, county and school-based placement sites. 

This new placement with CAPS will enable our graduate MFT/PCC students to earn direct counseling hours on the SMC campus, and will expand the delivery of psychotherapy services to the undergraduate SMC community in the form of individual and group counseling, psycho-educational workshops and crisis intervention. We expect our MFT/PCC field placement students to add to the extraordinary work that CAPS already does serving the undergraduate and graduate student communities on campus.