That support is needed, said , vice president for student life. “Nationwide, 28 percent of students report higher than normal levels of stress, 19 percent report sleep difficulties, and 19 percent high levels of anxiety. We want the center to be a place that supports students in a variety of proactive ways so they can be successful here at EMU.”

A 2011 mental health survey at EMU, he said, indicated that 17 percent of the student body reported some level of depression or anxiety disorder, 14 percent reported some form of non-suicidal self-injury in the past year, and 43 percent reported body shape and weight among the most important things they think about.

The increased services mean that students in need or looking to receive some sort of support will receive prompt, skilled care. “If students need any support, whether it be for crisis or knowledge of resources, we want to make sure they have those immediately,” said Anderson. “If students need support for two or three sessions, the sooner they can get those sessions, the better. If students have ongoing struggles, it makes all the more sense that they get into counseling as soon as possible.”

The benefits are academic, as well. “Students who access counseling services return to school in subsequent terms — and graduate — at higher rates compared to the general student body,” said Smucker.

The increased services are the result of a new collaboration between the center and the (MAC) program, a vision of previous center director Pam Comer, who retired in June. Anderson, a graduate of the MAC program who has worked in multiple university counseling settings, will now help to carry out the plan.

The partnership expands services to the student body — and provides MAC practicum and internship students with a placement that offers “the opportunity for consistent skill development as a training site in a university context,” said MAC director Teresa Haase. “We are excited to partner with Tempest and see this all come to fruition.”

Four second-year master’s in counseling students who have completed 30 hours of graduate counseling coursework and a 100-hour clinical practicum, and who have been approved for internship by MAC faculty, are each offering 240 direct service hours — and 360 hours of indirect clinical work — this academic year.

“This is high quality, supervised care,” said MAC instructor . Each week, each intern receives one hour of individual face-to-face clinical supervision and two hours of group supervision, and attends counseling center meetings. Their supervisors are Haase, Dr. Nate Koser and Dr. Annmarie Early.

In addition to one-on-one sessions, the counseling center offers:

• Group counseling
• Depression and anxiety screenings
• Classroom presentations about topics such as suicide prevention or sexual assault awareness.
• 30-minute one-on-one mentoring sessions for any student through the , which is geared toward helping undergraduate students adjust to life away from home.

The award will be formally presented on Friday, Oct. 7, during the SACES annual conference in New Orleans. The southern region includes 14 states from Maryland to Texas.

Teresa Haase, program director and associate professor, and Cheree Hammond, assistant professor, will present at the conference along with student Katie Long. The trio will accept the award.

Haase says she thinks several aspects of the program helped EMU to stand out.

“We made a strong case regarding faculty involvement in mentoring, community service, our own clinical practice, training and presenting, and in furthering our students’ interest in the profession above and beyond the standards,” Haase says. “We also demonstrated that we have exceptional students who are making a difference in the community and receiving recognition for their clinical work and scholarship.”

In addition, she pointed to innovative, ongoing professional development that “demonstrates an intentional commitment to meaningful and cutting-edge training” as a factor.

The SACES Awards Committee says that the award “recognizes programs that demonstrate outstanding pre-service and in-service training in areas such as: professional identity, ethics, assessment, group work, counseling relationships and process, career development, counseling supervision, practicum and internship, evaluation and training methods, human growth and development and counseling socially and culturally diverse populations.”

MA in Counseling student Ryan Nolley says he believes the award is well deserved.

“Our program makes a concerted effort to teach from many different perspectives, interweaving humor and delight, while also furthering students’ ways of knowing and experiencing,” Nolley says. “I think of this award as an affirmation of walking the road less traveled. It’s an affirmation of a place where humility and excellence can co-exist.”

EMU Provost also lauded the recognition. “This is yet another indicator of the strength of our counseling program and the excellence of our faculty,” Kniss said. “It’s great to get this external validation for something we already believed about the quality of our program.”

It is the second major award for the program in a year’s time. Last November, program co-founder and professor David Glanzer received the from the Virginia Counselors Association. Glanzer retired at the end of the 2015-2016 academic year.

Other team members who were part of the SACES honor include professor Annmarie Early, assistant professor Nate Koser and administrative assistant Amanda Williams, as well as Kristy Koser, who served as the department’s professional development coordinator until June.

“You just start and learn it as you go,” Glanzer says. “I have dabbled in a lot of things, but I wouldn’t call myself an expert in any of them.”

Fortunately for EMU, Glanzer brought quite a bit of expertise as he built something else: a fully accredited and well-respected MA in Counseling program. Glanzer and EMU professor emerita Helen Benoit Anderson co-founded the innovative program more than two decades ago. It has added new dimensions over the years, such as a unique psychotherapy program and the Institute for Experiential Therapies.

Glanzer’s peers have been among those taking notice. In November, Glanzer received the prestigious William H. Van Hoose Career Service Award from the Virginia Counselors Association (VCA). The award was established in 1964 “to give recognition to those members whose contributions to the professional aims of the organization have been substantial.”

The award comes at the right time: Glanzer recently announced his retirement at the end of this academic year.

Annmarie Early, one of Glanzer’s colleagues at EMU, wrote one of the letters nominating Glanzer for the honor.

“Dr. Glanzer created a structure and vision that offers a unique perspective in providing mental health services to our community,” Early wrote. “Coming forth from the heritage of service in an Anabaptist context—one that values community service and outreach—he heeded his inner call to develop this now thriving program. His form of leadership for our profession is quiet, but powerful, as his faithful steps have made a way forward.”

A 1971 graduate of EMU, Glanzer did his doctoral program in psychology at the University of Utah, focusing on psycholinguistics on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, before returning to Eastern Mennonite in 1977 to teach in the psychology department. He and Benoit Anderson began talking in the 1980s about the possibility of a graduate program in counseling, and in 1993 it became a reality.

More than 225 students have graduated from the program since then, about a quarter of them beginning as EMU undergraduates.

“I feel most pleased that we have been able to graduate so many highly qualified counselors who come out of here with a mission to really serve people in the field,” says Glanzer, who has both taught in the program and twice served as director. “T��� quality of the program, the tight cohort that develops between students, the relationships between students and faculty—it’s just been a wonderful place to do counselor education.”

Many of the graduates, who represent a wide diversity of backgrounds, have gone on to receive their doctorates and become researchers and faculty members in other schools. The VCA award, Glanzer says, represents the breadth of that network.

“You don’t just win an award like this by yourself,” he says. “Everyone has to pull together and work together. It’s a personal honor, but it’s also an honor to the program as a whole. For the honor to be given at a state convention just helps put us on the map a little bit more, so that feels really good.”

Produced by: Innerloupe Productions

Within ��ݮ����’s (EMU) professional counseling program, we strive to achieve the highest standards of excellence in providing psychologically and spiritually grounded training for counselors. We seek to create a community atmosphere within the program, a community bold with creative ideas and open with honesty, partnering in the inner work counselor training requires.

Find out more at: www.emu.edu/graduate-counseling/

Produced by: Innerloupe Productions
Audio: “Mending Wall” – Slow Dance

Since 1995 when the inaugural cohort of ten future counselors and therapists completed their rigorous two years of professional studies, a total of 227 graduates have earned masters degrees here. Only 62 of that number were EMU undergraduate students. The vast majority were attracted by the program’s reputation for nationally-accredited excellence, a creative community whose goal is to train the whole person (mind, body and spirit) for the challenging work of counseling.

“Being part of a small Christian university is actually a strength of our program,” said , PhD, and a founding faculty member. “T��� sense of community, the shared values of service, and the interdisciplinary opportunities to collaborate with EMU’s other graduate programs, all help to create our program’s distinctive flavor.”

These attributes and more were on full display during the hugely successful that filled EMU’s Yoder arena with more than 1200 attendees. “It took a village the size of EMU and a cooperative spirit among various academic disciplines to pull together that groundbreaking conference,” noted , PhD, professor in the counseling program and one of the conference organizers.

A community of deep conversation is built into the cohort model of counselor training. A group of 12 to 20 students moves together through the two-year course of full-time study, which expands to three or four years for part-time students. Classes meet two consecutive days a week to fit the schedule of busy working adults.

“T��� professors were extremely knowledgeable, professional, and amazing at their work, but they also were very approachable and made time for each individual student,” reported 2004 graduate Kristene Wellings. “I wasn’t just a student. I ‘belonged’ there. This personal and emotional connection also allowed me to have the courage to develop my counselor identity. If I could sum up the experience in one word it would be ‘grace.’ Faculty members are so gracious with students. Here I learned that counseling is not just a career, it’s building relationships with real people that deserve genuine care.”

The transition from “student” to “colleague” often happens during their 600-hour internship, a major component of their second year of training. They work at a wide variety of community mental health sites. “Motivated. Hard working. Compassion for suffering. High ethical standards. Respect for clients. Ability to handle depth work with difficult cases. Solid foundation with eagerness to learn.” These are among the many positive attributes supervisors note on intern evaluations.

The ups and downs of the program’s early years are in the rear view mirror. “We’ve crossed the threshold of internal growth to sustain the program. We’ve achieved national accreditation in Community Mental Health Counseling from CACREP, seen as the gold-standard. Now we can focus more intentionally on refining our training curriculum, our practitioner-focused pedagogy,” said Early.

“Head knowledge alone is not the key to lasting change. Rather, real change comes through an immersive experience of the whole person – body, mind and spirit – in both verbal and non-verbal ways,” she explained. Exploring new ways of integrating the power of the healing and expressive arts places the counseling program at the leading edge of a burgeoning field.

As the program enters its third decade, the recently launched augments core curriculum with innovative workshops and nationally-known cutting-edge speakers. The institute’s goal is to broaden the learning horizons of its student and serve the wider network of practitioners. “I can see the institute growing into a place of retreat for professional development as we expand our regional reputation,” Haase said.

This year’s expert speaker is , an internationally-recognized poet, author and expert in organizational development. “I have heard him several times at national conferences before audiences of several thousand. He speaks about the human condition in new ways and with great insight,” Glanzer said. “To have him on our campus for a one-day seminar in our more intimate setting will be an exciting opportunity for personal reflection and professional growth.”

Inviting a poet to speak to counselors may seem an odd choice. However, Whyte breaks the stereotypic image of poet as navel-gazer. He is as likely to quote Dante as his own lines when exploring the deeper levels of meaning embedded in life’s work, always asking the relevant questions that spark insight and change. His Yorkshire accent and global life experiences add to the power of his presentations.

Whyte will lead a seminar Feb. 22, 2014, in EMU’s Martin Chapel from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. His creative workshop is on the topic of “Solace: the art of asking the beautiful question.”Attendance is limited to 300. Fees are $50 for current students and $150 for the general public. More information and registration is.

The topic of his evening talk is “T��� foundation of conversational leadership.” That event will be begin 7 p.m. in EMU’s Lehman auditorium. It is free to EMU faculty, staff and students, and $20 for the general public.

Conversing about his 20-year journey and looking ahead, Glanzer sees the innovative reputation of EMU’s counseling program continuing to grow. “Each of our strong faculty have a unique vision. Invitations from the broader world to share our scholarship, pedagogy and experiential insights will open exciting doors in the years ahead.”

, the conference featured renowned researchers and practitioners – including Sue Johnson, the developer of Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy and author of Hold Me Tight; neuroscientist James Coan of the University of Virginia; and psychiatry professor Daniel J. Siegel of the University of California-Los Angeles.

Their presenters summarized and interpreted decades of research, with paradigm-shifting implications, as the editors of Integrating the New Science of Love and a Spirituality of Peace observe in the book’s introduction and conclusion.

“The confirmation of attachment theory puts us in a position to say that we are fundamentally relational and emotional beings, not rational and calculating individuals as modern Enlightenment theorists thought,” write co-editors and in the opening pages of the 151-page book.

“Now we can begin to understand with theoretical specificity the devastating consequences of disconnection: its influence not only in the makeup of a human being, but also on the large scale of the social tragedies and traumas that plague our world today.” Both editors are professors at EMU – Annmarie of counseling and Christian of philosophy and theology – and both were key players in organizing the 2011 conference.

In his foreword, of points out that understanding humans to be “fundamentally relational and emotional“– embedded in a web of relationships comprised of love and support, if we’re to be healthy – has large implications for his own field of . It confirms that harmful acts usually emerge from (and contribute to) brokenness that needs to be addressed in community-based relationships.

The book underscores that “the brain expects, and is fundamentally shaped by, relationships,” writes Zehr. “We are not expected to grow and develop alone, and we are not designed to solve problems by ourselves.”

The seven book chapters, based on presentations by the five keynote speakers at the conference – with an additional commentary by Janel Curry, professor of environmental science at Calvin College – basically argue that a critical task for humans is to learn how to form healthy attachments, with each other, with the earth, and with God. The other two keynote speakers were John Paul Lederach, professor of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, and Nancey Murphy, professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary.

In the first half of the book, Siegel and Coan set forth the findings of researchers in psychology and neuroscience over the last 60 years, which strongly suggest that the human brain functions optimally when a person has supportive relationships with others. Conversely, if a person feels socially rejected, it registers in the same part of the brain (the anterior cingulate cortex) as physical pain does.

In her chapter, Johnson elaborates on this theme in regard to marital relationships, where “love” means having an emotional bond with others with whom we form a safe haven from the storms of life.

“In your spiritual tradition, Anabaptism,” Johnson told her audience (and repeats in her chapter), “you talk about the need for community and connection. This resonates with attachment theory in psychology.

“As a developmental theory, the new attachment science tells us the essence of a human being is not aggression, inquisitiveness, or sexuality. The essence of man is his need to connect with others; this heart connection is essential to survival and to growth, to being fully and optimally alive to the soul.”

In Integrating the New Science of Love and a Spirituality of Peace, the contributors highlight what it really means to be human, and how understanding this will propel us toward a better tomorrow. They also make the point that insecure, controlling, judgmental and otherwise unhealthy relationships will have the opposite effect.

In his five end-of-chapter commentaries and concluding book chapter (co-authored with Annmarie), Christian Early links the new science of love to the kingdom of God as preached by Jesus of Nazareth. “[A]t its deepest, truest, and most basic, the human story is a love story. Attachment theory is really a theory of love; the gospel is really a story of love,” say the editors in their conclusion.

, EMU associate professor of chemistry and former chair of the , provided the preface where she explains that SASS received funding from the Metanexus Institute and John Templeton Foundation “to begin a transdisciplinary exploration of attachment theory using an Anabaptist lens,” which led to several speakers in 2009-10 and early 2011, culminating in the 2011 attachment conference.

The book can be ordered for $16.40 in print ($9.99 on Kindle) through or other online booksellers. Links to podcasts, blogs and downloads of power point presentations from the conference are .

And, for most parents, that can be difficult. Just ask Kristina Catterton, a mother of two, who also has two stepchildren.

“I just think of them as they were babies and in preschool and all the milestones … Now they’re hitting new milestones as they grow and get into middle school,” Catterton says of her four children. “It’s different, but it’s good.”

Catterton tries to let her children be independent.

But that’s not always easy. One thing she’s learned is that, as they get older, she has less control over who their friends are. When they were younger, her kids’ friends were all children of her own friends, Catterton said.

“As they get older, they become more independent – they have their own circle of friends that are separate from you, especially as they go to middle school,” she said. “It is a little difficult because I don’t necessarily know all these people, so there’s a level of trust that you have to have there.”

Catterton’s goal is to raise autonomous adults.

“So, part of parenting is slowly letting go of that control … and trusting in them that they will make good decisions, and that I have done my job as a parent,” she said.

Letting Go

According to , an associate professor of at ��ݮ����, back-to-school time provides an opportunity to build trust between parent and child. As an attachment therapist, she speaks to the parents of incoming students about letting go.

“I think the key question for all of us [to ask those we trust] as we make transitions is `Will you be there for me when I really need you?’ ” Early said.

That means, as parents, being aware of your emotional shortcomings.

“Those transitions tend to go better when we are tending to those dimensions, and that means, as parents, we are focusing on our anxieties and dealing with them and not putting them on our children.”

When your child is going through a transitional period, the best thing to do is to allow him or her room to grow, according to Early. Even as parents take a step back, they should still be available to answer questions and provide emotional support, she said.

Doing that, she said, helps to create a resilient person who can not only “withstand, but benefit from stressful situations.”

“What we want to do is build resilient children; not just protect them from the world, but help them to have the skills they need to help them recover,” she said. “These transitions for children, we would want them to be opportunities for growth.”

Provide your children with room to go out and make mistakes, but also be there to comfort and console when things go wrong, said Early. Doing so will create a good balance, making children feel secure.

“When we feel safe, we can go out and explore and be successful,” she said. “And if we’re feeling scared or feeling a sense of danger – I call them alarm bells – we want to make sure that we calm that down and address those needs that revolve around, `Will you be there for me when I really need you?’ ”

Two Types Of Parent

Toward that end, Early says parents fall into two groups. The first is the “secure” parent who provides his or her children with the right balance of freedom and protection.

The second is the anxious parent who either over-regulates or under-regulates his or her children.

“One is the parent who feels anxious about letting go and steps in too soon and the other is the parent who provides too much distance and needs to step in sooner,” she said.

In any case, there are important messages parents should convey, she said. Kids thrive on words of encouragement such as “I believe in you; You are listened to; You are cared for; You are very important to me” and “I know you can handle [growing up].”

Whichever type of parent you might be, though, Early said, don’t always expect to be the perfect role model.

“It’s not always in getting it right – it’s going back and repairing the mistakes where security is built and where healing happens,” she said. “Transitions are oftentimes where parents can recreate or build something that’s never been there. So, transitions are wonderful times where parents can build new bonds with their children and repair things from the past.”

Courtesy Daily News Record, July 28, 2012

“T��� at ��ݮ���� is designed for working men and women,” said, PhD, director of the program. “The includes study in the areas of professional identity, counseling theories and group counseling.”

Two tracks

• a 60-credit track approved by the (CACREP). It  prepares students for clinical practice and meets educational requirements for Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of Virginia.
• a dual degree program that helps students earn both the master of divinity and an MA in Counseling at less cost and in less time than if the degrees were pursued separately.

Admission

Students are admitted on the basis of their qualities and abilities in scholastic achievement, work experience, and suitability of their character and personality to work in the counseling field.

Applicants must be a graduate of a regionally accredited college or university. They are required to submit official transcripts of credit from all colleges and universities attended and three references, two of which must be academic. Potential candidates will be invited for an interview.

A complete application file is due by  Feb. 15. After this deadline, the admissions committee will continue to review applications if space remains available.

More information

For more information about the master of counseling program, or to apply, contact Brenda Fairweather at 540-432-4243 or email counseling@emu.edu.

The course; “Narrative as Healing through Dreams, Myths and Stories,” will be offered during the fall and spring semesters.  The class is scheduled to meet every Tuesday each semester from 11:15-12:45 p.m.

“T��� effort between therapist and client is a collaborative one, deconstructing old, outworn stories and creating space for new stories and meaning to evolve about who one is and who one wants to be,” Annmarie Early, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Arts in Couseling said.  “This course will emphasize a way to do this work with clients by first doing it with ourselves through an exploration of our dreams, myths and personal stories.”

Educational hours for practicing professionals are available.  The course is also open to interested individuals who have some experience in a related field.

“A variety of expressive techniques, including an ongoing dream group, psychodrama and writing techniques will be employed to deepen and amplify our work,” added Early.

An interview with Helen Benoit, Ph.D., or Richard Anderson, Ph.D., is required for enrollment to the course.

For more information contact Dr. Early, 540-432-4213; aearly@mac.com.

“We are designed to live in community and in close relationships,” Johnson explained in an interview with a reporter at a coffee break. “Love is not an intoxicating mixture of sex and infatuation.”

Instead love is having an emotional bond with others with whom we form “a safe haven from the storms of life,” she said. Johnson and several other internationally recognized speakers at the conference stressed that this type of love actually enables us to live longer, with less pain and sickness.

“Contact with a loving partner literally acts as a buffer against shock, stress, and pain,” Johnson said in Hold Me Tight. Conversely, “emotional isolation is a more dangerous health risk than smoking or high blood pressure,” she wrote, citing sociologist James House at the University of Michigan.

Of the five keynote speakers, Johnson and two others cited the results of several decades of research to support their assertions that caring relationships are as necessary to human life as air, food and water. The others referencing this research were neuroscientist James Coan, PhD, of the University of Virginia, and Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California-Los Angeles.

“T��� brain is a social organ, and our relationships with one another are not a luxury but an essential nutrient for our survival,” wrote Siegel in his latest book, Mindsight – The New Science of Personal Transformation, to which he referred frequently in his presentation. Siegel also described how our minds work in synchronicity with those around us.

Throughout the conference, which began the evening of March 31 and ended at noon on April 2, 2011, EMU philosophy professor , offered brief, heartfelt responses following the major speeches, often tying modern scientific insights into love with the 2,000-year-old teachings of Jesus. “It is good for us to live in community,” said Early. “It is exhausting for us to live in isolation from each other.”

Early added, however, “Community can also be harmful.” Strangers cannot betray us – it is those closest to us who can betray us, he noted. As a result, we must cultivate “habits of repair,” in order to heal harms that have been done, in addition to learning how to love healthily.

Cult of Individual Questioned

The conference served to challenge the mythic image in the United States of strength being embodied in a lone individual making his or her way self-sufficiently through life, pretending not to need long-term, committed relationships.

“We are seeing a paradigm shift away from the cult of the individual and back to nurturing relationships,” said , a professor in EMU’s counseling department. “This will be world-changing.”

Conference organizers expected about 700 participants, mostly from EMU, but attendees from the community inflated the total to 1,200. Filling much of the University Commons arena, the audience included retirees, church personnel and health-care providers from the community (Rockingham Memorial Hospital was a co-sponsor).

As the developer of Emotion Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), Johnson led a day-long, pre-conference training on EFT for 300 people in the mental health field.

“Forget about learning how to argue better, analyzing your early childhood, making grand romantic gestures, or experimenting with new sexual positions,” Johnson said in her book and paraphrased in her speech. “Instead, recognize and admit that you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection.”

In the conference, Johnson, Coan and Siegel all made reference to the parent-child attachment studies begun after World War II by British psychologist John Bowlby. His Canadian assistant, Mary Ainsworth, continued this research through the 1990s, becoming a renowned psychologist in her own right. This research has now has been replicated and expanded by hundreds of other researchers; it demonstrates a child’s critical need for resonating with at least one caring adult in order to develop healthily.

Using MRI imaging of the brain, Coan and other researchers have found that interpersonal relationships, particularly secure ones, have a measurable impact on brain activity. If someone feels threatened – resulting in a fight-flight-freeze response – this can be monitored via the “signal change” in his or her right amygdala, said Coan in his keynote speech. This signal increases to a high level when the threatened person is alone. The signal is attenuated by having a stranger present. It registers lowest – meaning,  fewest signs of stress – when a partner is present.

This new research by Coan and others is revolutionizing the field of psychology. It  strongly suggests that humans are intended to live in relationship with others (that is, in families and communities), not as isolated individuals – in short, our brains function optimally when we have supportive relationships with others.

Conversely, if someone feels socially rejected, it registers in the same part of the brain (the anterior cingulate cortex) as physical pain does, according to research cited in Siegel’s book.

Underlying Spiritual Message

As he was wrapping up his presentation, Coan said with a smile, “I’ve never been invited to speak about spirituality at any conference, or about God.” In that respect, the EMU conference was “uncharted territory,” he added.

Johnson told a reporter than when she was growing up in England, “my sense of spirituality got stuck in rules, dogma and dictums.” After Johnson included the words to a classic hymn “Abide with Me” in her presentation – noting that the words spoke of the need for attachment – EMU’s veteran choral conductor, , surprised Johnson by leading the audience in singing “Abide with Me.” She later said the singing touched her deeply, bringing tears to her eyes.

In Mindsight, Siegel spoke of the importance of social “integration” by describing a choir in which “each member of the choir has his or her unique voice, while at the same time they are linked together in a complex and harmonious whole. One is never quite certain where the choir will take the song, but the surprises simply highlight the pleasure of a familiar, shared melody.”

Illustrating Siegel’s words, Nafziger and his student choral group, the Chamber Singers, performed a series of songs, with audience participation, including one that the entire audience of many hundreds was coached to create out of a spoken poem. The music seemed to transcend the boundaries between secular scientists, international students, devout Christians, and equally devout skeptics. Siegel publically summed up a feeling no doubt shared by many: “It’s incredible to be here.”

The two other keynote speakers – John Paul Lederach, PhD, professor of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, and Nancey Murphy, PhD, professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary in California – offered insights into building relationships to emerge from conflict situations (Lederach) and into the links between Christian theology and the findings explored at the conference (Murphy).

The proceedings of the conference are to be edited for publication in the coming year. In the meantime, interested people can download PDFs of presenters’ PowerPoints at the .

and , a married couple with three young boys, conceived of the conference topic more than two years ago. They were two of the four EMU professors and one staff member who spearheaded the conference. The others were biology professor , whose grant-writing yielded major funding from the John Templeton Foundation, and chemistry professor , who collaborated with Suter Science Center office coordinator Cheryl Doss in organizing the conference and ensuring that it ran smoothly.

“This is not a lecture-based program,” Annmarie Early, director of the MA in counseling program. “We believe that change happens from the bottom up, not from the top down. It is experiential.”

The Institute for Experiential Therapies is an umbrella program to allow for more flexibility and creativity in the continuing education training EMU is already doing, Dr. Early noted.

“We want to provide good cutting edge training to local practitioners,” Early said. “Continuing education is a lifelong journey that is both inward and outward.”

The Institute will offer four areas of continuing education training.

The will bring in an authority every year or two in an area of particular interest to the community. The first speaker is Dr. Sue Johnson, the creator of Emotionally Focused Therapy. She will give a day-long training Mar. 31, 2011 titled

The is a training program with graduate credit for post-masters counselors/therapists and selected non-clinicians. This year, Dr. Helen Beniot, a clinical psychologist with a specialty in depth therapies, is teaching an 18-month course titled, “The Journey: Studies in Depth Psychology.”

The provides a variety of training that explores the arts as a means of healing.

training is also available. EFT is an effective counseling method for couples in distressed relationships.  The training teaches counselors to map patterns in the relationship and helps couples work toward creating appropriate bonds.

To learn more about the institute, visit or contact the masters in counseling program at 540-432-4243.