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Marriage & Family Therapy Program
Overview
”Between the wonderful people and the challenging, supportive, and empowering atmosphere, I
couldn't be happier with my experience in the masters program. UConn has an amazing
collection of good people. And in this challenging, supportive, and empowering atmosphere,
I'm confident I will become the kind of therapist I had hoped to be.” - Alex Petri
MFT Mission Statement
Engaging students and faculty in collaborative clinical, research, and educational activities, the marriage and family therapy (MFT) program’s mission is to provide highly qualified professionals at the Master’s and Doctoral level, who possess the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to improve the quality of well-being, for individuals, families, and wider social systems. Building on the School of Family Studies mission, the MFT program works with local, state, national, and international partners to advance the knowledge base and strengthen the conditions that enhance family functioning. Faculty and student research is aimed at creating intercultural environments that accept diversity, promote equity, value social justice, address power and oppression to advance family functioning, clinical acumen, theory building, and resilient communities. Clinical training and outreach gives balanced attention to the range of physical/organic, interpersonal, relational, and cultural/contextual factors that can cause or exacerbate the issues presented for treatment and to providing multiple points of intervention designed to have an ameliorating effect within the client’s life space and to interrupt constraining interactions that may exist in their wider sociocultural/sociopolitical context.
The scientist-practitioner model informs program offerings in the areas of multiculturalism,
research design and methodology, curriculum development, clinical practice, and training and
supervision aimed at preparing competent MFT professionals. Further, the program emphasizes
the differential impact of historical forces and social, political, and current cultural contexts on the human and family development, life tasks, worldviews, manifestations of distress and disorder and help-seeking behaviors of varying cultural groups and client populations. Finally, the program promotes an interdisciplinary perspective and actively seeks alliances with professionals and programs in other academic and clinical disciplines investigating the cultural exchange that occurs across individuals, families, communities, and cultures.
Program Philosophy
The MFT graduate program at the University of Connecticut is committed to excellence in training and distinction as a learning and research community. As a program, we:
- Draw from a wide range of family therapy and counseling theories to encourage therapists in training to develop their own therapeutic approaches;
- Encourage growth of student therapists through personal and contextual self awareness;
- Support beginning professionals as knowledge producers through independent and collaborative research opportunities
- Advocate for cultural democracy by infusing the curriculum with multiculturalism and highlighting issues of social justice; and
- Create a rich learning, research, and practice environment through community, national, and global linkages.
Program Accreditation
The Commission on Accreditation of Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE) is a national body that accredits training programs in Marriage and Family Therapy, including the programs taught at Storrs by the Department of Human Development & Family Studies. The COAMFTE has defined a Standard Curriculum with requirements that, if fulfilled, provide acceptable entry-level training for the field of Marriage and Family Therapy. Accredited training programs may vary in the ways that they fulfill the requirements set forth by the COAMFTE, and may require more than what is found necessary by the COAMFTE. The "Standard Curriculum" described in this website is the particular variation that has been adopted by the MFT programs at Storrs, of the Department of Human Development & Family Studies.
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