HUMAN SERVICES (HUS)

This course is an introduction to the theory, practice, and systems of health and human services. The information covered in this course is geared toward students in all majors so that they may become more socially, politically, culturally, and humanly aware of the issues that people with disabilities, chronic illnesses, and challenging life circumstances experience. This course utilizes social justice frameworks to consider the barriers and inequities faced by individuals typically marginalized, disenfranchised, and limited from full participation in society. The history, legislation, and mission of health, human, and rehabilitation services will be examined along with the major models and theories of helping and providing services in community-based health and human service agencies. Current issues and trends in health and human services provision are covered.

This course will cover the basic principles of developmental theories in addition to the major theories of human growth and development. Piaget, Erikson, Bronfenbrenner, Maslow, and Kohlberg are some of the theorists studied in this course. Demographic shifts across history are identified with the intent of demonstrating the increased population of individuals living and living longer with chronic illness and disability. Typical development across the lifespan is studied with each stage of life covered from pregnancy and infancy to older adulthood. Disabilities and chronic illnesses common to each stage of life will be studied with discussion of the ways in which the disability and illness experience affects passage through life stages.

This course will cover the history, principles, philosophies, and ethics of occupational and physical therapy. The physical and occupational therapists’ relationship to other health care providers will also be covered. This introductory course will provide a foundation for understanding the role of the physical and occupational therapist within a variety of professional treatment sites. Theories, models of practice, and the OT and PT processes will be covered. This course will also provide an overview of professional issues and current trends and will highlight the legal and ethical responsibilities related to health care service.

This course will provide an overview of addictions and addictive behavior. Topics such as the historical, psychological, social, societal, physiological, family, and relationship aspects of addictions will be covered. The pharmacology, treatment, prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation related to substance abuse, alcohol dependence, eating disorders, gambling addictions, steroid use, etc. will also be explored. This course will introduce students to the different theories of addiction (e.g., biological, psycho-dynamic, social-learning, and socio-cultural) and the implications for successful intervention. Ethical issues related to addictions and addiction counseling will also be discussed.

The goal of this course is to assist students in acquiring an understanding of chronic illness, disability, and health impairments. The course provides information about the medical aspects and characteristics of chronic illnesses and disabling conditions along with treatments and interventions aimed at ameliorating the resulting functional limitations. Students will study chronic diseases and disabling conditions that are commonly encountered in health care and rehabilitation service settings. In addition to emphasizing the medical aspects and characteristics, treatment and intervention strategies will be covered. Basic medical terminology will be studied. This course will focus on disease, chronic illness, and physical impairments.

This course will examine the problem of Gender Based Violence (GBV) from a theoretical, historical, sociopolitical, sociological, and psychological framework. We will delve into intimate partner violence, sexual assault and rape, stalking and other forms of gender-based violence. We will consider how social identities and experiences of intersectionality and discrimination impact GBV. We will consider whether and how survivors access support infrastructure and how social institutions may present barriers in help seeking.

This course explores the full range of rehabilitation strategies and interventions that occur across the lifespan of individuals with disabilities. Educational and rehabilitation strategies aimed at maximizing independence for people with disabilities will be covered. Early intervention, inclusion, and transition services will be examined as critical educational strategies aimed at minimizing the impact of disability and enhancing independence. The course will provide critical knowledge and skills related to employment and independent living options for people with disabilities, including related legislation. Supportive strategies for assisting and maintaining individuals with disabilities in educational and employment settings will be addressed. Rehabilitation and assistive technology options will also be covered.

This course explores chronic illness and disability in light of its psychological and social impact. Historical and current perspectives on chronic illness and disability are studied. Disability models are presented. The major determinants associated with the psychological adaptation to chronic illness and disability are examined in this course. The impact that chronic illness and disability has on personality and development, sexual functioning, family functioning, social functioning, and other significant areas of function are covered. The role of gender on psychological adaptation to chronic illness and disability are covered. The role of gender on psychological adaptation to chronic illness and disability is addressed. The course will also study stigma and the attitudes of others toward people with disabilities and sever and chronic health conditions.

The Institute of Medicine frames healthcare quality as being patient-centered, timely, efficient, effective, safe, and equitable. Patient advocacy is a central organizing vehicle for negotiating patient navigation and systemic improvements in healthcare organizations and across health care systems. This course will advance the place and role of patient advocacy in the United States health care system with an emphasis on specific tasks, skills and actions. The advocacy focus for/with consumers will attend to protecting the ethical rights of patients, improving patient quality of life, developing cultural competence in health care, promotion of disease prevention and health literacy, assistance with financing health care, integrating behavioral health services with primary care, and improving access to community-based care. Policy advocacy in healthcare, community and government settings will also be introduced.

This course is an introduction to human communication across the lifespan with emphasis on the linguistic rule systems of pragmatics, semantics, syntax, morphology, and phonology. An overview of normal and disordered speech, language, cognitive-linguistic, and hearing skills is provided. This overview includes etiologies, characteristics, assessment, and treatment using case studies, video, DVD, and audio-taped examples as well as hands-on materials.

This course is designed to provide students with a thorough understanding of the interview process. A strong emphasis will be placed on developing skills in applying and utilizing specific interviewing skills and techniques in human and rehabilitation service settings. Students will understand the impact of diversity, culture, and individual lifestyles on the helping process. The course will assist students to apply effective interpersonal skills in interviewing and communicating with persons with disabilities, their families, related professionals, and the general public. Client choice and consumer self-direction will be emphasized in interviewing and counseling situations. Students will be taught to incorporate cultural sensitivity into daily practice and interactions with clients. Ethical principles and decision making will be discussed and practiced.

This course provides an in-depth coverage of normal speech and language development, including theories of acquisition, development of the linguistic areas of content, form and function, cognitive-linguistic development, the development of literacy skills, and basic analysis techniques for measuring the speech and language development of a child. Learning is achieved through lecture, reading, and video/audio taped examples.

This course will provide students an overview of professional settings that employ counselors and youth workers to work with children and adolescents. Settings such as public, private, and alternative schools, early intervention programs, afterschool programs, and youth facilities will be covered. The role of professionals working in these settings will also be explored. The course will provide an overview of a variety of issues associated with early childhood and adolescence. Basic guidelines for working with children will be covered in addition to an overview of specific prevention and intervention models for counseling children and adolescents. The course will focus on the practical application of developmental theory within the context of a social justice and multicultural counseling framework. The course will also address effective intervention techniques to work with all youth within our socio-political contexts of schools and communities. Effective and collaborative family intervention models will also be covered.

This course is designed to prepare students with the knowledge, theory-driven skills, and understanding of community resources to support survivors of violence in community settings. Topics covered in class reflect credentialing standards for victim advocates. This course prepares students to work with survivors of violence by providing an understanding of the phenomenon of violence more broadly, as well as providing students with a knowledge base that is essential in working with survivors in future careers in fields such as the criminal justice system, human services, health care, education and more. This course will cover the sociopolitical context of violence, the complex and layered impact of victimization and violence on a survivor, the family and community, the role and responsibilities of victim advocates, understanding and applying ethical principles to victim advocacy work, understanding interventions and community services, community utilization processes as well as understanding and demonstrating referral processes, as well as victims’ rights, victims services and compensation and navigating the criminal justice system—all required content knowledge by the National Advocate Credentialing Program (NACP).

This course is intended to provide the student anticipating a professional role in the human and rehabilitation services with an opportunity to develop awareness, understanding, and skills related to the use of assessments and evaluation tools. Clients utilizing human and rehabilitation services are in need of professionals with skills in utilizing assessment results in order to plan and provide appropriate interventions. This course will utilize a lifespan approach to provide an overview of common assessment and evaluation tools used in a variety of human service and applied settings such as schools, early intervention programs, and rehabilitation agencies.

As an introduction to psychiatric rehabilitation, this course emphasizes understanding of lifespan development with appreciation for the complex interaction of biological, social, and psychological variables that influence human behavior. From this bio-psycho-social framework, the course will review major psychiatric and developmental disorders with attention to diagnostic and intervention strategies. This course will also address the co-occurrence of psychiatric disorders and substance use disorders in individuals. The challenging nature of treatment and rehabilitation for individuals with co-occurring disorders will be identified and covered. Educational and vocational factors will also be covered. Students will gain an understanding and appreciation of the personal experience of psychiatric disability and recovery, including an understanding of the core principles and motives of psychiatric rehabilitation.

Social Skills Training is a psycho-educational approach to scaffolding pro-social behaviors of youth and adolescents with behavioral challenges. Social skill development as an approach supports youth to be successful in social interactions. Specifically, social skill development as an approach provides youth with strategies for building resilience and for dealing with teasing and bullying, starting conversations, asking for help, dealing with peer pressure, practicing effective problem solving, etc. The course will provide students with the theoretical, evidentiary, and practical background to engage with youth in social skill development and interventions. Students will be introduced to assessment strategies to determine the social skills needs of youth and adolescents. The course will also introduce interventions for specific behavioral challenges of students with disabilities (ADHD, learning disabilities, and autism spectrum disorders, for example). Students will also be introduced to other relevant evidence-based interventions for working with youth.

This course is the study of sounds of the American English Language. Using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), students will learn to analyze and transcribe the physical properties of American English, including the production of sounds, acoustics, and perception of speech.

The field of applied behavior analysis (ABA) grew out of the scientific study of the principles of learning and behavior and is now an evidence-based method for changing people’s behavior, including the behavior of children and adults with a variety of developmental, cognitive, and behavioral disabilities. This course first introduces students to the core concepts, terminology, and methods of ABA. Students then learn how to use behavioral principles to address the behavioral needs of a variety of individuals being served in diverse community settings. Students will learn functional assessment methods and methods to assess reinforcer preference and adaptive, social, and communication skills. Students will learn how to assimilate information derived from these methods to develop a hypothesis regarding the function of behavior and how to select and implement an intervention method based on the assessment results while using evidence-based practices. Students will complete exercises and practical application-based projects so that they can develop basic behavior-analytic skills prior to implementing these skills in real-world settings. Interventions that are geared toward reducing problem behaviors and generalizing and promoting positive behaviors that enhance the development, abilities, and choices of children and adults with developmental and behavioral disabilities will be covered.

This course is an in-depth study of the muscular, skeletal, and nervous systems as they pertain to speech, hearing ,and swallowing. This course covers the normal anatomy and physiology of the speech and hearing mechanisms with emphasis on respiration, phonation, resonance, articulation, hearing, swallowing, and audition.

This course is designed to assist students in developing the necessary case management skills that are essential to the human and rehabilitation services fields. It will provide students with the knowledge and skills needed to facilitate client movement from initiation of services to case service termination. Students will be exposed to case management practices across human service agencies. Efficient case documenting, case recording, and time management approaches will be developed along with case planning skills that recognize individual client needs. Community resource utilization, goal development, action planning, advocating, service coordination, and utilization of assessment information will also be covered. This is a skills-based course that aims to teach organizational principles, practices, and processes to students, thus enabling them to be effective in human and rehabilitation service delivery systems.

The course will explore occupation, context and activities that have meaning and purpose in an individual’s life across their lifespan. Students will compare, analyze and practice using Occupational Therapy assessment tools and intervention strategies. The course addresses standards for testing, types and levels of assessment and a brief introduction to report writing for various practice settings. This course explores the occupational therapy theoretical literature, which includes the Model of Human Occupation, the occupation based models of Occupational Adaption, the Ecology of Human Performance model and the Person-Environment-Occupation Model. These theories will be studied with an emphasis on their usefulness in addressing issues in both the disability and able-bodied populations. Students will also examine the Third Edition of the Occupational Therapy Framework (OTPF-3) which guides OT best practice. Students will utilize this framework to examine environmental factors that facilitate physical access, improve psychological awareness and empowerment, and utilize advocacy for positive change across the lifespan.

This advanced course is designed to provide students with applied knowledge relative to humans’ physiologic responses to acute and chronic exercise stress. Students’ basic knowledge of neuromuscular physiology, energy metabolism, and cardiovascular and respiratory physiology will be honed to focus on human exercise response with the focus of the course being on applications to exercise training and programming, sport, nutrition, youth, aging, and disease. Laboratory exercises will enable practical skills to be gained in measuring and testing for physiological markers of human readiness and response to exercise.

This course is a supervised 100-hour field placement experience in an approved human or rehabilitation service agency. The field placement will provide students with an opportunity to become oriented to the human and rehabilitation services by observing and participating in the provision of services to client groups. As students develop they will have the opportunity to use their skills and knowledge to provide services within a highly supervised setting. This field placement enables students to work with staff representing a variety of human service fields. Students will also participate in a weekly seminar that provides group supervision, instruction, and discussion of the field placement experience.

This course is intended to offer students an introduction to the theoretical and practical aspects of the field of Audiology. This course will introduce methods of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of both audiological and vestibular disorders. This course will cover a variety of important topics for the beginning diagnostic audiologist, including air and bone conduction audiometry, speech audiometry, otoscopy, tympanometry, hearing aids, cochlear implants, and an introduction to electrophysiologic measurements and vestibular disorders/assessments.

This course will provide students with the fundamental principles of hearing science. This course is designed to review auditory anatomy and introduce students to physical acoustics (sound and its measurement), physiological acoustics (physiology of the auditory and balance systems), and psychoacoustics (the perception of sound).

This course uses a family systems approach to cover the life cycle of the family. Students will learn to develop and use a genogram to better understand the family system. The course also takes a specific focus on the complex challenges that families face when a family member has a chronic illness, severe disability, or substance use disorder. The course will examine family risk factors and interventions employed to prevent and mitigate the effects associated with these factors. The course will focus on developing specialized skills and techniques for working with families in an attempt to foster family cohesion to confront challenges. This course attempts to provide students with a context and a philosophy for facilitating families as they move through time. Furthermore, the course aims to teach professionals to assist family members in becoming a positive resource and support for each other as they confront the many challenges associated with disability, chronic illness, or substance use disorders. The course covers a variety of family assessment and intervention models. The course includes an analysis of relevant and critical issues to consider when working with families during the treatment, intervention, and/or rehabilitation processes. Specific attention is given to the family life cycle and the effect of risk factors, such as disability, chronic illness, or substance use disorders on the family.

This course will address the topics of loss, grief, bereavement, aging, and the dying process from a humanistic perspective. The course will examine the role of spirituality, culture, gender, and developmental stage in responding to loss. This course will address the role that helping professionals and fellow human beings can play in facilitating and encouraging the natural, healthy, and healing expression of emotions related to loss. In this course, students will learn that grieving evokes strong emotions and strong emotions can be overwhelming if they are not spoken in the presence of someone who can accept and not judge. Therefore, students in this course will be taught how to be present with someone experiencing strong emotions related to loss and death, how to respond to feelings shared by others experiencing grief and loss, and how to encourage others to accept and cope with strong emotions related to loss and grief.

This advanced course will provide students with the fundamental principles of speech science. This course is designed to introduce students to the objective measurements of human speech and voice production and perception from acoustic and physiological instrumentation. Readings, lectures, course work, and discussions are designed to demonstrate the ways in which this empirical data relates to research in the field of communication science as well as to its clinical applications.

In seminar format, students will work closely with the instructor, and with each other, to integrate and reflect on their previous coursework and experiences in the Working with Children and Adolescents concentration as well as areas of current interest to create a final research project. This course will help students to increase their mastery of theoretical and professional competencies in working with children and adolescents in school, family, or community settings. This course will also help students develop a sense of how this knowledge applies to professional practice and practical issues related to working with children and adolescents in community settings. This course will incorporate concepts such as current trends in working with children and adolescents, promoting well-being and resilience in children and families, risk and protective factors, addressing developmental assets and challenges facing youth, and crisis management, as well as prevention and intervention strategies. (Consult department chair)

This advanced course will focus on the theories, approaches, strategies, and interventions currently utilized for the effective treatment of alcohol and substance use disorders. Specific attention will be paid to change theory and the importance of motivating individuals for change. Evidence-based interventions, such as motivational interviewing and cognitive-behavioral techniques, will be highlighted. Content covered will deepen students’ understanding of substance use disorders and facilitate the development of skills and competencies associated with addiction intervention strategies. A variety of individual and group treatment modalities will be covered with specific attention paid to psycho-educational strategies. This course will also introduce crisis intervention for treating clients with substance use disorders.

This advanced course provides students, anticipating a role in the human and rehabilitation services, with an opportunity to combine knowledge of assessment and rehabilitation with an understanding of the personal and systemic dynamics of crises. Additionally, the course prepares students to respond to the immediate presenting needs of clients and systems experiencing crisis, to access community resources, to make the necessary referrals, and to engage in consultation and collaboration. Students also learn to recognize the effects of stressors and service delivery on human services and rehabilitation professionals, emphasizing the importance of self-care strategies, and burnout prevention skills.

Special topics courses are elective courses designed to address special issues, skills, and knowledge needed in the human and rehabilitation services. These courses are designed for junior and senior level students as independent research and inquiry are required.

This course is a field-based, professional opportunity for students to apply the theories, strategies, interventions, and knowledge learned through the HSRS coursework. Students will be applying their classroom learning in a professional human and/or rehabilitation service setting. The internship is an intensely supervised and supported experience as students are supervised by both faculty and an agency supervisor. There are three phases to the internship experience: orientation, observation, and performance. Students will perform all aspects of the human and/or rehabilitation specialists job, e.g., intake interviewing, assessment, action planning, service planning, case management, and case closure. Students will complete a minimum of 400 hours on site during the fall or spring semester. The internship is a competency driven experience and specific skills related to the direct provision of services will be evaluated.

This course allows students to explore an area of interest along with the guidance of a faculty member. Students will work with their faculty advisor to develop a research or other project that provides immersion into a topic area of interest. Students, along with their faculty advisor, will develop a project proposal to be approved by the department chairperson and the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs.