The Hunting Ground<\/em> about rape on campus,\u201d Schaefer said. \u201cAnd there were several of us counselors there in case any one of the people who were in attendance became upset.\u201d<\/p>\nCounseling Center interns are able to get outreach credit because WAVE is headed by Debra Darmata, a mental health counselor with a master’s in clinical psychology. Supervision by a licensed psychologist, such as Counseling Center counselors, or someone with adequate training, such as Darmata, is required to complete the internship.<\/p>\n
The Student Health Center has no licensed psychologists on staff.<\/p>\n
If WAVE becomes \u201can arm\u201d of health education as a result of a merger between the Counseling and Student Health centers, Schaefer said she fears the focus will shift to health education, rather than counseling, and will no longer prove an effective outreach program for Counseling Center interns.<\/p>\n
The offices that are part of C&SD are not solely focused on counseling, Schaefer said, but also on outreach, supervision and consultation of staff, interns and clients. A merger, Schaefer said, could shift the focus solely to therapy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe concern then becomes will staff stay?\u201d Schaefer said. \u201cBecause they come here for the variety of things we offer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schaefer said salaries at the Counseling Center are low, but staffers are drawn to NMSU\u2019s Counseling Center because it\u2019s not solely focused on therapy. If a merger were to happen, \u201cWe could wind up losing some experienced staff\u201d who came to NMSU to help students in a variety of capacities, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if the staff leave, then there are no supervisors for the interns,\u201d Schaefer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the internship ends,\u201d Vas said.<\/p>\n
Accreditation, internship program may be at risk<\/h3>\n
Because the philosophies of the Counseling Center and the Student Health Center are inherently different, Vas said, there would be a high chance of friction between the center\u2019s merged staffs, as is often reported nationally by universities that have merged their counseling and health centers. Vas said somewhere between 26 and\u00a027 percent of universities nationwide have merged their counseling center and health center services, and that it\u2019s a growing trend.<\/p>\n
However, a merger between the two centers does not have to entail an integration of services, Vas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are different models for merging,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
One entails having both entities inhabit a single building\u00a0but on different floors.<\/p>\n
Schaefer likened this potential setup to how Memorial Medical Center and the Sexual Assault Nurse Practitioner (SANE) program are arranged.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe SANE program is less institutionalized, has a warmer and caring atmosphere, is in a building connected to MMC but not within the hospital itself,\u201d Schaefer said. \u201cThat is similar to the nature of our work \u2014 so much of what we do is work with folks dealing with trauma and it helps to have an atmosphere that is conducive to talking about difficult experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Without significant and costly renovations, this model would not work at NMSU.<\/p>\n
On the other extreme of merger possibilities would be the sharing of medical records, Schaefer said. While there may be advantages to counselors and physicians sharing records, as Bose pointed out, there are also drawbacks.<\/p>\n
One of the most significant Schaefer pointed out is the potential loss of one of the Counseling Center\u2019s two accreditations, this one from the International Association of Counseling Services (IACS).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guidelines that they have do not permit us to share front-desk staff (such as with the Student Health Center),\u201d Schaefer said. \u201cThere also has to be a separate entrance. Records need to be maintained separately. We can\u2019t have student employees interacting with clients.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Counseling Center is already in danger of losing its IACS accreditation because it does not have a sufficient ratio of counselors to enrolled students, Vas said. Per IACS guidelines, Vas said, there needs to be one counselor for every 1,500 students. Currently the NMSU Counseling Center has six counselors — about one for\u00a0every 2,600 students, according to a 2015 demographic of enrolled students at NMSU\u2019s main campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe advantage of having an IACS accreditation is that, every seven years, you\u2019ve got a site visit where quality control is looked at,\u201d Schaefer said. \u201cIt\u2019s the only accrediting body for university counseling centers.\u201d<\/p>\n
While many university counseling centers do not have IACS accreditation, Schaefer said, she likes having it, as it \u201ckeeps us on our toes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a best-practices model,\u201d said Vas.<\/p>\n
In an email to Carruthers, Schaefer said the Counseling Center would be willing to lose its IACS accreditation for \u201ccost-saving purposes,\u201d so long as it remained its own separate entity.<\/p>\n
But if a merger\u00a0were to happen and, as she fears, the offices within C&SD were\u00a0\u201cfarmed out\u201d to various other parts of Campus Health, the Counseling Center\u2019s second accreditation and internship program through the American Psychological Association (APA) could also be in danger. The Counseling Center currently has four clinical interns. In addition, a fifth is due in 2017 as part of an $890,000 grant obtained by Eve Adams, a professor in the Clinical & Educational Psychology Department. This fifth intern will work 80\/20 at the Counseling Center and at La Clinica de Familia.<\/p>\n
These interns help ease the workloads of counselors in the NMSU Counseling Center, which in turn benefits students, Schaefer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIntern pay is less than I would like it to be,\u201d Schaefer said, but paying four doctoral-level counseling interns is more cost-effective than paying three master\u2019s-level counseling students, as the doctoral interns are able to perform more services.<\/p>\n
Without the intern program, master’s level-counselors would have to fill the void, Schaefer said.\u00a0 And while the master’s-level counselors are trained to see clients, there are services currently offered to NMSU students, such as ADHD or disability assessments, that they are not trained to offer.\u00a0 Consequently, there would be an increase to the already-full workloads of the staff psychologists, Schaefer said.<\/p>\n
Further, the doctoral interns at the Counseling Center supervise doctoral practicum students. These practicum students see five to seven patients a week at no cost to the Counseling Center (they are compensated with course credit).<\/p>\n
Without the internship program, it would be more difficult for practicum students to gain clinical experience at the Counseling Center because they would have to be supervised by licensed psychologists, and the Counseling Center is already understaffed, Schaefer said. Master\u2019s students could not supervise the practicum students because master\u2019s students are not licensed.<\/p>\n
Losing the APA accreditation would additionally prevent NMSU from recruiting doctoral interns, who come from other APA-accredited programs throughout the country,. That\u00a0would in turn harm the Counseling Center\u2019s ability to help students, Vas said.<\/p>\n
Schaefer said she has a meeting on Aug. 4 with Provost Dan Howard to discuss the effects a merger would have on the Counseling Center\u2019s internship program.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next?<\/h3>\n
If merger talks continue, Schaefer said she hopes she will be brought in to give her perspective.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really hope the chancellor is receptive to our being part of that discussion about the proposals,\u201d Schaefer said.<\/p>\n
Andrea Joseph, an associate professor in NMSU\u2019s Department of Criminal Justice, has already shared her concerns about a merger in an email to Carruthers. Joseph took a student to the Counseling Center for reasons she did not disclose in that email. In the waiting room, \u201cpeaceful and private\u2026with a TV with beach scenes and the rolling sound of gentle waves,\u201d Joseph waited with her student until a counselor came.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was in this quiet space that (the student) felt comfortable disclosing the fact she was raped,\u201d Joseph said. \u201cI do not believe such progress would have occurred in the hustle and bustle of the health center.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI strongly encourage you not to merge the Counseling Center with the health center,\u201d states Joseph\u2019s email, which Schaefer provided to NMPolitics.net.<\/p>\n
Carruthers and Lori McKee, director of the Student Health Center, declined NMPolitics.net’s interview requests.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo direction has been decided on yet. It\u2019s too premature to say one way or another,\u201d NMSU spokesman Justin Bannister said.<\/p>\n
Bose, meanwhile, said NMSU \u201cis currently transforming to be the best university we can be.\u201d He participated in talks about health services and was instrumental in preventing the outsourcing of the Student Health Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlong with that came a decision to analyze the services that the health center offered and evaluate any potential changes that could be made to better serve our students,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
NMSU plans to soon send out a request for proposals \u201cto evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our health center,\u201d Bose said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe anticipate being able to evaluate that proposal in the very near term,\u201d Carruthers\u2019 July 22 memo states.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd at that point,\u201d Bose said, \u201cwe will make changes to better accommodate our students’ needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
A prior version of this article incorrectly stated that Darmata is\u00a0a licensed psychologist. It has been corrected. The article has also been updated to clarify what the Counseling Center’s clinical interns do.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The student body president favors a merger, while staff at the Counseling Center do not. \u201cA medical operation and a counseling operation are fundamentally different things,\u201d said Corey Vas, the Counseling Center\u2019s associate director.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2959,"featured_media":142880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[196,125,117,133],"class_list":["post-172472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-budget","tag-education","tag-health-care","tag-nmsu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2959"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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