MA in Arts in Art Therapy and Counseling at Drexel University
This program prepares students with beginning skills and knowledge to apply theoretical and relevant art therapy practices. Classroom didactic learning and individual to small group supervisions dynamically support the students’ applications of informal to formal assessment and treatment planning, health care and related documentation, and contemporary ethical practices.
The Art Therapy and Counseling program's 90-quarter-credit curriculum is designed to meet the Pennsylvania Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) educational requirements for state licensure and the Accreditation Council for Art Therapy Educational standards for professional Art Therapy Credentials Board national certification (ATR-BC). While art therapy educational standards are a part of national accreditation, state licensure requirements for professional therapists and counselors vary widely from state to state and may change at any time. Our Art Therapy and Counseling program is licensure-eligible in the state of Pennsylvania and not automatically portable state to state.
Through a multifaceted learning process, students of the Art Therapy and Counseling program learn the significant impacts that creativity, cultural humility and self-awareness, and empathy play in helping relationships and interpersonal development. The students learn to engage and strengthen their trauma-informed facilitation and group skills that include active listening, creative media use, and effective verbal, written, and meta verbal communication as well as self-regulation and compassion.
The Art Therapy and Counseling curriculum is a synthesis of multiple interactive educational components including theory, applied practice via field education, small group and individual supervision, and creative-based scholarship. Experienced together, these interactive learning components mirror the complex interplay that can occur between participants, creative processes and therapeutic spaces, and the metaphysical materiality of media in art therapy. The contemporary practices that our art therapy and counseling curriculum align with are prevention and social support, lifestyle and community connection, wellness and resilience, rehabilitation, therapeutic assessment, and social action and advocacy.