The Counseling Center at the University of Central Missouri currently has two vacant clinician positions.
“We had two retirements the year before; Clinician Dr. Charles Dahlstrom retired in May 2017 and Director Dr. Paul Polychronis in August 2017,” said Jeanne Woon, assistant director of the counseling center.
Woon said Dr. Dahlstrom’s position was filled by Alex Barajas who was with the counseling center for a year. He left to take another position at the University of Kansas as a temporary licensed psychologist. Woon said she is not worried and the staff are staying realistic with the service they can offer.
“When you have three or four counselors instead of six counselors, obviously there’s not as much capacity, but we are working to make sure people get an initial assessment,” said Amy Kiger, director of Campus Community Health.
Woon said the counseling center has been operating on the same model they have had for the past few years, which is an initial consultation to assess the individual and brief services. Brief services differ for each person and typically last one to a few sessions while focusing on the need of the student.
She said by offering brief services, students have been able to make an appointment and typically see a clinician within a fews days with no waiting lists. Whereas if they were to offer open-ended services like long term counseling, they would likely see fewer students and not be able to get everyone an initial appointment, which could lead to the possibility of wait lists.
Not only can students go directly to the center for services, the staff have been working together to provide an outside resource for students, which are the mental fitness workshops.
“I was training community advisors in housing and explaining to them that given the challenges of having less staff, we really need community advisors to take advantage of the mental fitness sessions that are being offered if they want to engage the counseling center through outreach,” Kiger said.
Students can attend mental fitness classes Monday and Tuesday (same content on both days) 3:30-4:45 p.m. in the Student Recreation and Wellness Center classroom. These workshops range in topics from managing relationships, coping with stress and motivating oneself.
“We are really trying to promote those because those topics are the ones that most students are actually seeking help for,” Kiger said. “The more we can get folks to attend the mental fitness sessions, it helps spread the work of our staff a little further.”
Woon said the counseling center has not begun looking for hires to fill those vacant positions. They are in the process of doing the paperwork to begin the search.
“We are hoping to be able to start reviewing applications as early as a couple of weeks from now,” Kiger said. “There’s a lot of factors that go into whether or not we’ll be able to have someone start right away, but I’m happy we are moving forward on those hires.”
The services provided at the counseling center are important, and the staff are aware of that.
“We know that the counseling center is a critical service to our students and so we want to try to take care of it as soon as possible,” Kiger said.
The counseling center is located in Humphreys 131. To make an appointment, call 660-543-4060.