PhD in Couple & Family Therapy

Program Length - 86 to 89 Credits

By the conclusion of the advanced practical experience requirements, the student must have spent one year, typically the first year (3 semesters), engaged in supervised clinical practice and one year (year 2 - 3 semesters) engaged in additional practical experience (teaching, consultation, leadership, and/or supervision). Students must have a clinical master's degree in a mental health field to be eligible for admission to the PhD program in CFT. Students without a background in CFT will be required to take additional prerequisite coursework. Note: Advanced practical experience placements may require criminal background checks as well as verification of up-to-date vaccinations. Additional degree requirements:

• Satisfactory completion of a doctoral dissertation that demonstrates doctoral-level scholarship.
• Satisfactory performance on the Qualifying Examinations at the end of the second academic year.
• Students must attend six residencies across the first two years of the program. Residencies are held near the beginning of each semester (Fall, Spring, and Summer).
• Full-time students have a maximum of six years from initial enrollment to complete all course requirements, practical experience requirements, and dissertation.

Details of coursework sequence and course descriptions can be found in the Academic Catalog.

Graduates of the PhD program in Couple and Family Therapy work in a variety of clinical and academic settings. We have graduates teaching in MFT and HDFS programs, while others are engaged in private practice or organizational leadership roles. The PhD opens doors for those interested in research, teaching and supervision, leadership, and advanced clinical work.

The mission of the Antioch University New England PhD program in Couple and Family Therapy is to develop highly competent advanced clinicians in CFT and to develop students who are competent in teaching CFT, in providing clinical supervision in CFT, and in conducting CFT-related research utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. CFT doctoral students will also develop a focus on social justice and human diversity issues across all areas of the curriculum. The competency areas and learning outcomes addressed in the CFT program are designed to meet the requirement of COAMFTE accreditation standards, version 12, advanced curriculum areas. Students in the CFT program are also expected to foster a professional identity as couple and family therapists (including joining AAMFT, the professional organization for couple, marriage, and family therapists).

As a Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE) accredited doctoral program, we are required to report a number of student achievement criteria on our website.

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Social justice informs our thinking about training in the PhD program. We see social justice in Marriage and Family Therapy education as involving the following key concepts:

• Social justice clinical practice is focused on helping diverse families and contributes to the positive development of these families and their communities.
• Social justice implies an explicit action orientation.
• Social justice involves understanding the diversity of people and families:
  • Diversity includes ability, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, and country of origin, age, social class, religion, and gender (that is, systems that affect individual and family access to power and resources). Particular focus is on underserved and high-risk families.
  • Diversity also includes diverse family structures, including extended kinship networks, gay and lesbian families, step-families, etc.

• Social justice has policy implications-therapists working from a social justice perspective work to effect supportive family policy that recognizes diversity and improves resiliency, and have a responsibility to participate in social and political systems affecting families.
  • Social justice involves recognizing that social and legal systems affect the people we work with
  • Social justice researchers have a responsibility to do socially informed research, which is sensitive to diversity.

Diversity is defined in terms of differences between groups of people with respect to structural disadvantage and systemic marginalization. These differences are related to such factors as gender, sexual identity, social class, ethnicity, race, religion, spirituality, age, health/ability, immigrant status, etc.

"To foster socially proficient couples and family therapists, we integrate all courses and clinical work with themes of social justice and diversity. One of our program’s top priorities is training diverse therapists here, who will become agents of change within their own communities."

Dr. Lucille Byno, Director, MFT Program Diversity at Antioch University

Antioch University as a system is committed to issues of social justice and diversity. To this end, we work to support diversity in as many ways as we can within the program. However, Antioch University New England is located in an area with very little racial diversity (New Hampshire is 94% White, and Keene is nearly 95% White). As a result, our faculty, supervisors, and students largely represent the area demographics in terms of racial diversity. However, because our clinical sites are located all over New England, many of our students work with families from a wide range of socio-economic statuses and religious backgrounds, and in some of the urban areas, with immigrant groups. Our department faculty includes White women and men who are heterosexual, lesbian, disabled, and multi-generational. Our adjunct faculty and field supervisors are fairly evenly split in terms of gender and are mostly White, with one or two Latino and African American supervisors, depending upon the yearly distribution of clinical sites. Our student body in the master’s program is predominantly female (about 85%) and mostly White at this time, but again, it reflects a diversity of socio-economic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, and sexual orientations. One aspect of diversity in our student population is age diversity, which has ranged from 22 to 68 years old. Our doctoral program student body tends to be very diverse and includes African American, Vietnamese American, Iranian American, Korean, and Turkish students.