By Heather Fabritze
News Editor
Students will now be able to declare in school counseling and coaching minor programs after the Education Department proposed them to Washington College’s Curriculum Committee last semester.
The working groups for each proposal consisted of various faculty members from the department, including Education Department Chair Dr. Sara Clarke-De Reza. Part of their reasoning is that there is a growing number of students who hope to work with adolescents or in a school environment but do not want to specifically study to be educators.
“We’ve developed these two minors to help support people who are interested in the high-demand careers of coaching and school counseling with skills that will make them competitive job or grad school candidates and that will help them better understand the fields,” Dr. Clarke De-Reza said.
Vice President of Student Affairs Dr. Sarah Feyerherm assisted the Education Department in developing the coaching minor in partnership with the Wellness and Personal Development Program. Many students have a fast-developing interest in athletic training, prompting the creation of a track that would specifically focus on preparation for relevant career paths.
Faculty in the Education Department purposefully crafted the minor to have the ability to pair with any major. However, they also acknowledge that student athletes in particular would receive a boost from the program.
“Given the percentage of student athletes we have at Washington College, we decided that a minor in coaching could be a good recruitment tool and a way that our students can continue their interest in sports and wellness beyond college,” Coordinator of Secondary Education Erin Counihan said.
Coaching minors will be required to pass three core courses, including EDU 252 Educational Psychology, BUS 336 Sports Leadership, and a revised version of the Methods of Coaching class. An additional three credits will come from skill-based Wellness and Personal Development courses.
These classes, such as WPD 102 Bodyweight and Core Conditioning and WPD 113 Sailing, will “broaden” students’ athletic abilities while “taking on the role of learner in a new subject area that they may ultimately be required to teach,” according to the proposal the working group sent to the Curriculum Committee.
Students in the coaching minor will also participate in a one-credit field internship with one of WC’s coaches and a two-credit internship with a local athletics team.
Another working group, consisting of Dr. Clarke-De Reza, Counihan, and Dr. Carol C. Culp Professor of Psychology Dr. Lauren Littlefield, proposed a second minor focusing on school counseling.
The program will appeal to students who are interested in K-12 guidance and school counseling, school-based social work, and school psychology. According to Dr. Littlefield, there has been a consistent flow of students in the past two decades who major in psychology with the intention of working in a school environment post-graduation.
“Although some graduate programs require only a major in a general area of the social sciences, some programs and employers look for a greater depth of content preparation and field experiences, and that is what this minor is designed to provide,” Dr. Littlefield said.
Three of the program’s foundational courses will fall under the education department: EDU 251 Principles of Education, EDU 252 Educational Psychology, and EDU 307 Literacy in the Content Area. The Department of Psychology will teach the remaining three, which includes PSY 112 General Psychology, PSY 305 Theories and Processes of Counseling, and PSY 490, a two-credit internship in a local school.
According to Counihan and the working group, most graduate schools prefer their incoming counseling students to have degrees in education or psychology, hence the minor revolving around those courses.
Working with both the WPD program and the psychology department demonstrates WC and the Department of Education’s wider commitment to diversity of thought.
“Interdisciplinary minors can bring students with different academic backgrounds and career goals into one classroom, which creates a more diverse learning space and more robust conversations,” Counihan said. “They can also help prospective [WC] students see a clear pathway to a career, but one that is not so regimented that they can’t also study their love of math or music, for example. It can show that a liberal arts college can prepare you for a career, too.”