Academic Classes
Some of the people who work in UHS’s Counseling and Consultation Services or Prevention Services also connect with students by teaching for-credit classes, such as the ones listed below (in no particular order). Most courses are offered through the School of Education’s Department of Counseling Psychology. Not every class is offered every semester. Check the Timetable for more details.
Health and Positive Psychology
Counseling Psychology 115, 1 cr
Instructor: Bob McGrath, PsyD
Covers areas such as stress management, nutrition, sleep, exercise, authentic happiness, gratitude, and flourishing.
Health and Positive Psychology: Emphasis on Stress Reduction/Relaxation
Counseling Psychology 105, 1 cr
Instructor: Rob Sepich, MA
Didactic and experiential learning to provide basic understanding of anxiety, mind/body relationships, and effective coping strategies. Topics include mindfulness, insomnia, time stress, altruism, and optimal psychological experience. A new relaxation strategy is demonstrated in each class.
Health and Positive Psychology
Counseling Psychology 115, 1 cr
Instructor: Jan Schaefer, MS
This course is taught in an experiential format exploring wellness topics, including
nutrition, yoga, stress, sleep, relationships, sexual health, and financial health.
Finding Your Identity
Counseling Psychology, 1 cr
Instructor: Geoff Bathje, PhD
The course will focus on sociocultural aspects of identity, with a primary focus on race and ethnicity. These topics will be approached from a standpoint of historical context, privilege/oppression, and implications for identity development. We will also discuss intersecting aspects of identity, including the influence of gender, sexual orientation, and class. Topics and activities are designed to be relevant to all students regardless of majority/minority status, and the goal of the course is increased self-awareness related to identity.
Human Resource Development: Career Strategies
Counseling Psychology 270-110, 1 cr
Instructor: Jo Hoese, PhD
The goals of this course are to have you consider and act on career planning opportunities you might not have taken time to do without the structure of a course (e.g.,attend a career fair); to explore aspects of yourself (interests, skills, decision style, values), the world of work (environments, job descriptions, job search) and theoretical models (MBTI, Holland) and to consider how these interact with your own career development process.
Course format:
- Small- and large-group interaction based on structured exercises during class.
- Guest presentations.
- Individualized projects and a final presentation in class.
Exploring the Transition to College: Focus on Disabilities and Learning Challenges
Counseling Psychology, 1 cr
Instructor: Lisa Webne-Behrman, PhD
The course is taught in a seminar style format within a supportive environment and explores several topics, including understanding the college transition process, developing awareness of optimal learning styles, assessing personal strengths and challenges, promoting skills of self-advocacy, maintaining personal health and wellness and managing issues of executive function including attention, focus, and planning.
Health, Community and Action: Emphasis on Food, Identity and Culture
Counseling Psychology 105, 1 cr
Instructor: Margaret J. Nellis, PhD
This course explores the relationship between health and community with a focus this semester on food, identity, and culture. Students use a variety of ethnographic strategies to document and analyze their own foodways in the context of campus culture. Students interview elders in their families and identify patterns that have shaped their current foodways. Students also learn about foodways in the historic Greenbush neighborhood, participate in an annual Greenbush Day celebration, and interview former residents about their memories and stories of foodways of the past. Students will attend a food event and visit a food outlet or grocery store.
The Learning Goals for this Module Include:
- Developing skills in observing, listening, interpreting and analyzing one’s own behavior and recognizing patterns shared with others;
- Attaining greater awareness of one's physical, social and cultural environment and its relationship to health;
- Identifying examples of how one’s current behavior has been shaped by the past as well as new adaptive strategies adopted;
- Promoting agency in making changes in one's behavior to promote health and learning;
- Adopting a posture or attitude of curiosity and respect for the commonalities and differences within one's own sphere and the spheres of others
Introduction to Sports Psychology for Athletes
Instructor: Jeff Anders, MD
The goal of the course is to introduce students to several key sports psychology concepts, such as goal setting, focus/flow, anxiety management, visualization, cognitive skills, overtraining/recovery, resilience to adversity, and recognition of psychiatric disorders in athletes. The class will involve a mix of lecture, discussion, and direct experiential exercises to clarify and illustrate important ideas. We will also highlight how all of these concepts can be applied directly to non-athletic areas of life as well.
Student SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity): A Social Justice Course
Instructor: Rodney Horikawa
Student SEED is a nontraditional social justice course that uses "the textbooks of students' lives" as the main teaching tool. Students explore and share their own experiences with race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ability in order to learn about and understand the larger systems of privilege and oppression.
Student SEED seminars are taught in a number of schools, including the College of Letters and Science, the School of Business, the College of Engineering, and the School of Medicine and Public Health.
