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September 3, 2010

ULM offers first online Marriage and Family Therapy Doctoral program

The University of Louisiana at Monroe College of Education and Human Development now offers students the chance to pursue their doctoral studies entirely online.

The new Marriage and Family Therapy Doctorate of Philosophy with a concentration in Creative Systemic Studies, a nonclinical track of the MFT Program, aims to provide leadership for students seeking innovative scholarship and multicultural expression.

Going past traditional academics, the program provides a supportive relational learning community that fosters creativity and co-learning. The new program is inspired by the ideas that fostered the systemic orientations to personal and social change historically associated with the field of brief family therapy and will be supported by the Circulus: Innovations for Creative Transformation & Virtual Pedagogy, according to Dr. Brad Keeney, academic director of the MFT Ph.D. Program.

"I believe that ULM's online Ph.D. program in Marriage and Family Therapy is unquestionably the most creative and exciting nonclinical doctoral program being offered today,” Keeney said. “No other program is as committed to systemic thinking, creative practice, and state of the art innovation. I am thrilled to be a part of this important contribution to advancing the profession."

The nonclinical doctoral program encourages a transdisciplinary study of therapy, counseling, coaching, consultation, teaching, social service learning, and other “people helping” professions. It emphasizes the creative utilization of situational resources in all social domains of performance from the clinic to the classroom, workplace, and public theater. Dr. Jana Sutton is administrative director of the marriage and family therapy graduate programs.

The program fosters the passionate study of exemplar cases embodying creative transformation as well as spanning diverse cultural ways of knowing and practical know-how. This unique doctoral track is designed for the clinician, counselor, coach, clergy, healer, educator, scholar, or artist who is proficient in a practical discipline and who desires an intense study of the contexts that advance the creative practices of the transformative arts.

For information on this and other online degree programs, visit the GOLD Web site at www.ulm.edu/onlinedegrees.

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