PYI 5520 – Career and Lifestyle Counseling
Explore the relationship between personal contentment and fulfilling work.
Format: Online
Duration: 16 weeks (Spring)
Credits: 3
Prerequisites: Must be admitted to the Antioch Online Clinical Mental Health Counseling graduate program
Your role as a career counselor blends a focus of work life with lifestyle considerations to help guide clients toward discovering their potential and realizing their career dreams. The capacity to engage in solid career planning can make the difference between a sense of being adrift, and the knowing security of fully participating in a life of “good work.” As Freud noted, “love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” As you assist clients in career planning, know that you are also helping benefit their personal lives to a in a positive way. Career choice affects child care decisions, family and social life, and expendable time. It also influences available pathways, economic opportunities, and standards of living. Setting clients on a positive career path can help them build a cornerstone of happiness and security in both the personal and professional aspects of life.
Course Description
This course provides the theoretical foundation and practical experience necessary to understand and foster career and life development in diverse individual and group counseling settings. You’ll notice the processes of career counseling are more outcome focused in nature.. While counseling may focus on increasing awareness, insight and “intervention,” career counseling also emphasizes goal setting and discovering potential while considering the trends of the workforce. Consideration is given to factors such as an aging workforce, more diverse working population, rapid developments in technology innovations, and increasing costs of higher education in order to better meet the needs of clients.
What Kind of Work Will I Complete?
Your ability to successfully assess the personal needs and abilities of your clients is a cornerstone of positive guidance in their careers. Course projects, discussions, and writings focus heavily on developing this aptitude.
Sample Project: Career Program Assessment Assignment
As a counselor, you need to have larger systemic efforts in place to successfully assist clients through a structured path of decision. Using the case study of a particular student as your reference, you’ll complete this project as though you work in a college counseling center focusing on the career concerns of students. Part of your role is to develop the planning, organization, implementation, administration, and evaluation of career development program efforts for the setting.
You’ll reference the student in your case study example and identify how you would organize and implement a career program specifically for a student with these attributes. You’ll explain how to assess your student in terms of interests and abilities as well as how to evaluate the effectiveness of career planning services.
Sample Course Topics
Throughout the course, studies will focus on a core set of topics that coincide with the course’s learning objectives. Sample topics are listed below:
- Foundational Perspectives
- Cultural Considerations
- Assessment & Ethical Considerations
- Holland & Theory of Work Adjustment
- Developmental and Contemporary Theories
- Career Counseling Skills and the Career Counseling Intake
- Career Information Resources
- Working With Specific Populations
What You’ll Learn
Providing career guidance is a valuable skill mental health care professionals can use with clients at any stage of life, from the college-bound, high school graduate to a seasoned professional considering a career change. Completing this course helps prepare students to provide focused guidance when you demonstrate understanding of how to:
- Relate to the principle theories of career development and decision-making
- Find sources of occupational and educational information to assist in the career decision process
- Identify the role of ethics in career counseling
- Integrate career development theory and concepts with career counseling interventions
- Discuss client concerns related to the career transition process
- Identify and apply theoretical models, assessment tools, and career exploration interventions
- Assess personal family history, interests, beliefs, and values to gain better understanding of the role of personal self-appraisal and awareness in career planning and decision making
Career Self Study
This assignment is designed to demonstrate your ability to analyze and apply course concepts to your own developmental progress toward becoming a counselor. You will articulate your family history as it relates to career messaging, appraise your current skills and interests and their level of importance to your chosen career, and identify the value you place on your career. Part of the process will examine your chosen career path, what skills or attitudes may need attention and development to proceed successfully, and who is supportive of your decisions.
For more information about this course, or other courses in the Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Antioch Online, please call (855) 792-1049 or request more information.