Human Services Leadership and Administration BHS

This course introduces students to scientific and applied psychology, and suggests its application to everyday life. The course familiarizes students with concepts, principles, research methods and theories of psychology.

Full course description for General Psychology

This course is an introduction to the sociological perspective. Students examine the social processes that shape societies and the course of their histories. The social nature of biographies is explored through the study of the family and socialization, education and work, bureaucracy and the economy, gender, social class, and race and ethnicity.

Full course description for Introduction to Sociology

This non-credit workshop is for students who declare a major in Human Services or Alcohol and Drug Counseling. It facilitates the process of completing a background check through the Minnesota Department of Human Services. All students in these majors must complete a background check by their second semester as a declared HSER BS, BHS, or ADC major. These majors require a practicum and practicum sites have set standards for background check results. Payment for the background check to the Minnesota Department of Human Services is the responsibility of the student. Results of the background check are sent to the student and to the background check administrator at Metropolitan State University's academic Department of Human Services. Results can be used to guide the student's course of study.

Full course description for Background Check Workshop

This course covers the historical and progressive development of the human services field, as well as the present trends and professional issues, including theoretical approaches to human services work, practical skills, human services delivery systems, human services work in a pluralistic society, and using research in human services work.

Full course description for Introduction to Human Services: History and Trends

This course introduces students to basic counseling skills to be used with clients dealing with a variety of issues including family challenges and substance use disorders. As such, it is designed to help students develop essential helping skills needed for client engagement, follow-through, completion and overall therapeutic effectiveness. It includes examination and practice Person-Centered Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Motivational Interviewing, techniques central to helping others across a range of issues including substance use disorders. Specific skills covered include developing rapport, building empathy and active listening, encouraging trust, self-disclosure, immediacy, questioning & evoking, addressing discrepancies, etc. This course is highly experiential in its format. Students will participate in classroom exercises, role plays, and video-taping and self-assessment of counseling skills.

Full course description for Counseling and Interviewing Skills

This course familiarizes students with social casework practices. It focuses on the process of engagement (intake) assessment and contracting with diverse systems in an urban environment. Emphasis is on the beginning skills in interviewing, assessment and treatment planning, including advocacy and referral.

Full course description for Human Services Case Planning and Methods

This course emphasizes the experience of race and racism and how both intersect with various forms of human diversity in the helping arena. It will provide students an understanding of how power and privilege are operant in the human services. Students will examine assumptions, myths, beliefs, and biases that block effective relationships between groups of people and that hamper helper-helpee dynamics. Course activities involve self-assessment and opportunities for application of learning in a human service environment. COMPETENCE STATEMENT: Knows conceptual frameworks dealing with racial-ethnic identity, racial-cultural world views, oppression and power well enough to explore, develop, and evaluate personal responses and professional strategies to eliminate the myths, beliefs, biases, actions and efforts, that sustain social oppression in the helping professions.

Full course description for Intersection of Race and Diversity in Human Services

This course comes at the end of the student's senior course work in human services. Students complete a human services portfolio assignment demonstrating what they have learned in human services over the period of time while studying in this program. This assignment helps students to reflect on their academic course of study (both theoretical and practical) and how it applies to the professional practice of human services. The written portfolio provides evidence of competence and is a way for students to demonstrate readiness for graduation and work as Human Services professionals. In order to complete the portfolio assignment students must complete at least ten (10) hours of community service in a Human Services Agency with a Human Services professional. The course culminates with students giving presentations on the agency studied and written about in their portfolio.

Full course description for Human Services Capstone Seminar

This course, designed for those planning careers in human services administration, provides insight into some of the common problems and concerns of management in a human services agency. Students use actual case studies to focus on examples of organizational planning, community relations, the decision-making process and personnel management. Overlap: HSA 360 Health Care Management and Supervision I and HSA 362T Human Service Administration Theory Seminar.

Full course description for Human Services Administration

This course aims to introduce common, and sometimes complex, processes used to fund nonprofit organizations and government entities. Students will understand the rationale behind third-party funding, through readings, demonstrations, and guests in the classroom. Working in teams and individually, students will produce a program plan, budget, and proposal. Whether the student is a professional or advocate, funding is essential to human services, health, education and many other sectors. The course will equip students from all disciplines with the necessary skills to sustain their programs.

Full course description for Program Planning, Budgeting, Proposal Writing and Funding

This course focuses on the knowledge and skills needed to appropriately identify, collect, analyze and report evaluative information to be used in making decisions about, and changes in, programs. Topics include approaches to program evaluation, the process of planning and conducting an evaluation, basic principles and practices of designing evaluation instruments, and methods for interpreting and presenting data with an emphasis on providing relevant information to decision makers. This course is appropriate for anyone in business, public, nonprofit or human services administration who is responsible for making decisions about service programs or for conducting evaluations.

Full course description for Program Evaluation

This course focuses on supervision principles, concepts and theories, including how to be a facilitating supervisor and assist others in their professional growth. Emphasis is on understanding how supervisors can teach counseling theories and techniques to those they supervise, as an integral part of the supervisory process.

Full course description for Supervision in Human Services

Students confront complex ethical and moral issues in their professional and personal lives. In this course, students study and apply the cultural, social, legal, economic, theological and philosophical bases for making such decisions. Each student learns to articulate coherent arguments involving at least two divergent views of many current ethical issues confronted in human services today. Students select, research and present an individual project on a major ethical issue relevant to their professional interests in human services.

Full course description for Ethical Issues in Human Services

This course provides an overview of organization development principles necessary for any type of organization to effectively cope and react to inevitable change that will impact organizational effectiveness and survival. Addresses the theory and practice or organizational development including: initial diagnosis, entry, contracting, data collection, data analysis, action planning, approaches to implementing planned change, and evaluation of planned change effectiveness. Today, every manager, at any level, must be capable of dealing with certain change in a proactive manner.

Full course description for Organizational Development and Change

This course examines causes and underlying factors of interpersonal conflict in human interactions. The course covers principles and techniques to diagnose conflict, develops an understanding of issues causing conflict, differentiates between various types of conflict, explores the variety of forces and factors which push conflict in a productive or dysfunctional direction, and develops personal skills to influence outcomes to the inevitable conflict situations one encounters in one's personal and professional lives.

Full course description for Conflict Resolution

This course is for students who want to learn how to design training and teach adults in an organizational setting. Students develop an understanding of the role and impact of training in helping organizations reach objectives. Topics include adult learning theory, needs assessment, instructional design, media selection and how to present training content to different audiences.

Full course description for Organizational Training and Staff Development

This course is designed to help students evaluate their readiness, prepare for and then select an internship site for Human Services. Examples of course topics include: examination of personal readiness, internship or career goals, review an array of possible internships and making an appropriate selection for practicum.

Full course description for Human Services Pre-Practicum Group Seminar

This seminar is designed to provide an opportunity for student interns and faculty to meet and discuss progress being made during internship, provide support and address problems and concerns. The seminar includes: lecture, discussion, and group work topics pertinent to the students' internship.

Full course description for Human Services Group Practicum and Seminar