The program is designed to meet the multicultural counseling competency requirements of the American Psychological Association (APA): counselor awareness of his or her own cultural values and biases, counselor awareness of the client’s worldview and culturally appropriate intervention strategies. Students will critically examine roles of ethnocentric bias, attribution error, asymmetric perception, social projection, implicit learning, inappropriate generalizations in research, governmental and institutional policies, and developing inter- and intra-personal communications. Each quarter, students are required to complete reflective and transformative learning activities, participate in somatic psychology through mindfulness movement, record weekly conscious raising activities, participate in videotaped counseling skill building, semiweekly intensive journal writing and weekly collaborative work. Fall quarter emphasis is awareness of students’ own values and biases through writing their own personality development according to conventional personality theories. Winter quarter emphasis is awareness of the client’s worldview through increasing critical reasoning skills, learning to integrate scientific inquiry with clinical inquiry by learning to examine primary research journal articles and their utility in counseling, in addition to learning multicultural counseling skills. Spring quarter emphasis is culturally appropriate assessment, diagnosis and treatment through learning the APA's ethics code. In both winter and spring quarters, students will be required to complete internships of 10 hours per week at social and human service organizations which provide opportunities to apply their classroom learning in a practical setting.

The program will emphasize consciousness studies, psychological research interpretation, studies in internalized oppression/privilege and systemic oppression/privilege, multicultural counseling theories and practice, and social justice and equity.