The University of Iowa College of Education is seeing great interest in its new counseling and behavioral health services undergraduate degree program. The major was approved by the Board of Regents in April and began course offerings this fall.

Noel Estrada-Hernández, UI professor of rehabilitation counseling and co-founder of the program, and Martin Kivlighan, counseling psychology professor and program director, said the initiative for the new major began last year due to inquiries from the provost office about a specific counseling degree.

“There was a little bit more of an interest in people getting a degree that will lead to helping skills in general,” Estrada-Hernández said.

Kivlighan said the major differs from other mental health-related majors on campus, such as sociology or psychology, as it puts applicable skills that students need at the forefront of the major. Other programs focus more on what is happening in the brain and larger systems as a whole.

“We’re more focused in terms of developing those communication skills that are leading to helping,” Kivlighan said. “They’ll learn active listening skills. They’ll learn how to ask questions and sound like a helper.”

The degree is not intended to be licensable and instead serves as an entry-level degree for graduate school or direct employment in helping fields. Examples include jobs in corrections, school mental health, and substance abuse management.

The exact number of students who have declared the major is not available yet, Kivlighan said, but initial courses have over 100 students enrolled, and the new major is gaining interest and availability among students.

“Not everybody wants to be a teacher. Not everybody wants to be a licensed counselor,” Estrada-Hernández said. “So, having something that is kind of in the middle — that allows you to do something in an area that you have an interest in — that is something that has been very positive.”

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Second-year Frances Shaw declared an English and creative writing major her freshman year, but she decided to double major in counseling and behavioral health services following a conversation with her advisor, as it aligns with her aspirations to become a child therapist. Before deciding on this path, she was considering double majoring in sociology.

“I want to learn a lot more about counseling than I think I would if I had done my sociology major,” she said. “The classes are more focused on specifically counseling, which means I’ll be able to go to grad school with more information.”

The U.S. is home to very few undergraduate counseling programs, Kivlighan said, and many of them are solely online. Arizona State University is one of the most robust in-person programs and served as inspiration while the UI was constructing its program.

“We brought in their department chair to come and talk with faculty, and she gave just a really wonderful overview of how this can work,” he said. “A lot of the informal concentration areas were kind of informed by that, and then our course offerings were informed by that, too.”

The program serves to help solve the ongoing mental health crisis in the state of Iowa. Housing the program in the College of Education is beneficial due to the school’s high proportion of faculty with mental health expertise, Kivlighan said.

He said 88 counties or 90 percent of Iowa’s 99 counties are designated as mental health shortage areas.

“There really is a huge shortage of mental health providers, so the state is in need of it, and we need to position ourselves at the university to help meet that state need,” Kivlighan said.