Top-notch ratings for LUO

Online counseling programs receive nationwide recognition for their success

The department of counselor education and family studies at Liberty University Online (LUO) was recently ranked as one of the top 10 online counseling schools in the nation for 2016, according to multiple ranking organizations.

The department’s online professional counseling program was ranked third best in the U.S. overall by bestcolleges.org, fifth best in the U.S. overall by superscholar.org, and number one in the U.S. for value by onlineu.org.

In addition, the department’s online marriage and family therapy program was ranked sixth in the nation overall by bestcounselingdegrees.net.

The reputability of the different ranking organizations vary, though all have listed under their respective websites the means by which they rank online counseling programs. Market reputation, accreditation, student satisfaction and tuition were among the common factors in each of the rankings LUO was cited in.

“Our program has really grown with leaps and bounds,” Department Associate Dean Dr. Mark Myers said. “This story is not just that some of these programs are best in the nation but that they are also the best in the nation during this phase of massive growth.”

In the past eight years, both the online professional counseling program and the online marriage and family therapy program have experienced a 46 percent growth in student enrollment with a
total of 6,397 online graduate students between the two of them.

The online department of counselor education and family studies now operates with more than 500 class sections to meet the demand of such a growing student population. The causes for the exponential growth of students, explained by department Residential Chair Member Dr. Elias Moitinho, can be broken down into five factors.

“Academic excellence, flexibility, face-to-face intensive opportunities, the integration of a Christian worldview and the organized team that we have to assist students, I believe, are the main reasons why (students) choose us,” Moitinho said.

To ensure quality educational programs, the department adopted an organized structural system for not only the students, but for faculty also. Instructional mentors, for example, were installed to oversee the progress and efficiency of the department’s 217 faculty members.

“Instructional mentors (are) faculty members who were performing very well, and so each one would be assigned 15-20 faculty members to oversee,” Department Online Chair Member Patti Hinkley said.

“Instructional mentors have a set of procedures to guide them in maintaining high contact with faculty members, especially first-term professors.”

Hinkley, who has worked for Liberty for more than 30 years and has been with the online counseling department since its inception, remarked how greatly the growth has changed the way the school operates. When it was founded in 1985 by Dr. Ron Hawkins, the department would record lectures on VHS tapes and mail them to students studying from afar.

It was not until the beginning of the 21st century that the department moved to CD-ROMs, and the online department of counseling was not officially considered online until 2005. Before then, students would traditionally receive a work text along with their tapes or CDs and take tests with a proctor.

Now, the online school operates identically to the residential counseling department — except through electronic means — and Hinkley said the organizational structure and accountability of professors in the online program exceeds that of the residential program.

One of the few things the department has yet to accomplish, though, is becoming accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), a national agency that reviews counseling schools across the U.S. to see if they meet national standards.

As the residential counseling and family studies program at Liberty has already been CACREP accredited, the online department expects to be shortly. Documents from the department have recently been sent to the agency for review, and the online department is currently waiting to hear results.

“We have been climbing this mountain of trying to get accredited by CACREP for a long time now,” Myers said. “I think that the next level after we get that would be to just (enhance) the ability to utilize our online capabilities to make better counselors.”

Myers said becoming CACREP accredited would most likely boost the online department’s standings in the web rankings, though he said he is more than happy with the results his department has produced so far.

“This story is about a team of faculty, and it’s not about just being top in the nation,” Myers said. “It continues to prove to be an incredible, complex machine that has been built over and over and expanded over the years.”

Young is a feature reporter.