Department of Psychology

Issues Related to Licensure

Students are often curious about their options after graduating from our program. As a Clinical Psychology program, our aim is to give you a broad education that will help you be maximally prepared for the variety of career paths you might take upon graduation or later in life. Most students choose to pursue a doctoral degree (e.g., Ph.D. or Psy.D. programs) or enter the mental health profession. Some who enter the mental health profession are interested in becoming licensed; for that reason, we provide the information below.

For those interested in pursuing licensure, it's important to recognize that master's-level licensure is licensure as a counselor--typically a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) or Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC), and that requirements for this license vary by state. Some graduates of our program have obtained such licensure in the past. If you think master's-level licensure is something you might pursue, it's important to educate yourself about what is required of you by state licensing boards. Each state typically has a Division of Professional Regulation (or some similarly titled agency) that provides licensing information, reviews license applications, and makes determinations on license applications. As each state has different criteria, it's important that you find out what each particular state requires for licensure. In  order to meet the requirements for licensure in a particular state, you may need to take additional courses beyond our program's requirements prior to graduation. Our program may not fulfill certain state requirements.

Given that our program is located in Illinois, we've put together some general guidelines regarding Illinois state licensure requirements based on the experiences of some of our graduates in the past. However, given that state requirements can change it's important for you to learn what specifically is required of you for licensure in any given state at any given time. The responsibility for meeting licensure requirements falls on the student. Completion of our graduate program does not guarantee licensure eligibility in any state.

General issues regarding Illinois State Licensure Requirements that our graduates have experienced in the past:

• Illinois guidelines (as existing in the fall of 2007) require students to accumulate 48 hours of course work PRIOR to graduation with their master's degree.
• In addition to the specific courses required by our program, students have often been required to take elective courses in other areas, such as Ethics, Substance Abuse, Multicultural Issues, Career Counseling, or other areas. Such elective courses are often offered at SIUE, but our program cannot guarantee that a particular elective course will always be offered at the time a given student seeks to take it. Additionally, our program cannot guarantee that a particular course will meet a particular educational requirement per state licensure requirements.
• In most states, licensure requires a period of supervised clinical work (often one to two years) after completion of the master's degree. See specific state regulations for more details.
• For more information on licensure in Illinois, please see the Illinois State Licensure website at http://www.idfpr.com/DPR/
• For those interested in licensure in Missouri, please see the website http://pr.mo.gov/