Education Prof Creates Online Multicultural Counseling Course for American Psychological Association

Members of the American Psychological Association (APA) can now take a new online independent study course in multicultural counseling, thanks to an education professor at Old Dominion University.

Garrett McAuliffe, University Professor of counseling at ODU, recently created the continuing education program, "Key Practices in Culturally Alert Counseling," for psychologists, counselors and psychotherapists. It is available nationally as a learning unit; successful completion of the course earns three continuing education credits.

As noted in the course description, "Strategies for incorporating culture into counseling have been few up until now. However, practitioners cannot ignore the press of ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, social class, and religion in their clients'

lives.

"In this workshop, counselors will learn over 20 specific strategies for infusing culture into their work. The workshop will combine discussion, presentation, and video demonstration. Participants will be able to implement cultural dimensions into practice immediately after the workshop."

The program is available to APA members for $60 and to nonmembers for $75. The course can be purchased athttp://www.apa.org/education/ce/1360220.aspx.

McAuliffe, who has taught at ODU since 1988, produced a comprehensive set of DVDs on working with diverse clients in 2008. "Culturally Alert Counseling: Demonstrations of Key Practices with African American, Asian, Latino/Latina, Conservative Religious, and Lesbian/Gay Clients" is available in a boxed set, and includes resource guides and a book, "Culturally Alert Counseling: A Comprehensive Introduction," for which he served as editor and contributor. The six-DVD set, guides and book are published by Sage Publications.

The course McAuliffe created for the APA, like the DVDs and book, is designed to teach how "to seamlessly infuse culture into counseling sessions," he said. "This is something that's needed today as the counseling field embraces clients from all groups in our society."