Social Work Field Placement
for Masters Students

Field Experience Opportunities

In their placement, the student will provide the following services to students of the college:

Counseling: Counselor’s duties include counseling, assessment and intake, diagnosis, goal setting, planning treatment strategies, and maintaining a case record with appropriate documentation and progress notes. Confidentiality is to be maintained at all times including the proper use of release of information forms.

Education and Referral: Counselors also assist students by providing information and referral for support services available on campus (academic, career development, disability services, clubs and organizations) as well as therapeutic resources in the community if a referral off-campus is appropriate. Counselors refer students experiencing a psychiatric emergency to the Fox Crisis Center for evaluation and intervention services. The Counseling Center collaborates with the University Police Dept to arrange transport to the crisis center.

Collaboration and Consultation: Counselors frequently refer and collaborate with medical staff at the Student Health Center, which is located in the same building. Collaboration occurs around the use of psychotropic medication as well as conditions that require medical evaluation or monitoring.

Outreach programs: There is also the opportunity to design and co-present programs on selected psycho educational topics of interest to students. The type and extent of the programs arranged will depend on the intern’s schedule and interest.

Professional Development: Students would additionally be involved in a weekly case conference with all staff, weekly staff meetings, and a seminar series (assessment, diagnosis, therapy modalities, therapy techniques, professional development etc) in addition to individual supervision with Jeanne Keahon, LMSW, ACSW. Students would begin by working with intakes and then developing a caseload (approximately 2-4), and work in their outreach projects, be responsible for documentation for record keeping (referrals, records, releases of information etc.) Students would also present occasionally at case conference.
 

Supervision and Clinical Model
In addition to weekly individual supervision provided by the field instructor, supervision is available through individual consultation as needed between staff. Counselors also participate in a weekly staff meeting and bi-weekly case conference meeting.

Therapeutic interventions are tailored to the needs of individual students; there is no single therapeutic model used in counseling students. Counselors generally offer an integrative approach, which might include multiple theoretical orientations. Treatment strategies are drawn from family systems, cognitive behavioral, existential, and humanistic models.
 

Setting
The college is a liberal arts college with a professional focus. Student enrollment is at 5700 and is becoming increasingly diverse. The college draws students from downstate urban and suburban settings as well as rural areas.

The counseling center is responsible for providing psychological services to enrolled students. We address a broad range of presenting problems. Many students present with developmental problems such as adjustment to college, academic stress, relationship, peer, and family issues. A number of students also seek therapy to address anxiety and affective disorders, eating disorders, substance abuse disorders and other serious mental health conditions. During the past several years there has been a notable increase, locally and nationally, in the acuity of mental health problems among college students. We would strive to provide a valuable field experience with a diverse caseload appropriate for a developing social worker.

Sessions are usually time limited (about 10 sessions), although they can be extended at times. We also are involved in running psycho-educational programs. We provide outreach programming to the rest of the university community.

The center is staffed by a Director who is a licensed Psychologist, a doctoral psychologist-in-training , two counselors who hold MSW degrees and additional certifications, and a pre-doctoral psychology intern. One of the counselors specializes in alcohol and other drug treatment and has CASAC certification.

For more information contact:
Jeanne Keahon, LMSW, ACSW
Counseling Center
SUNY Oneonta
Oneonta, NY 13820-4015
607-436-3368
KeahonJM@oneonta.edu