Course Listing For Human Services Courses

This course emphasizes the skills and knowledge needed to successfully work with mentally challenged, emotionally disturbed, or psychiatric patients. The concepts of informed consent, basic patient’s rights, confidentiality, documentation, professional communication, and best practices are explored. Course Prerequisites: None

This course examines the characteristics of patients with psychiatric disorders. Students will learn about effective communication and ethical behavior with patients and their families as well as service agency staff. Prerequisites: HS 110

This course introduces students to crisis intervention, therapeutic communication, reporting potentially dangerous behavior, and implementing recommendations from interdisciplinary teams working with patients and their families. Prerequisites: HS 110 and HS 111

This course focuses on the daily administration of providing patient care. Students will learn about assisting with rehabilitative activities, developing communication and human relations skills, fulfilling environmental and legal responsibilities, understanding advanced care directives, and discharge planning. Prerequisites: HS 110, HS 111, HS 220

This course prepares students for success in their academic and professional careers in behavioral science. The foundation for learning is established for professional skill development through practical experience. Learner strengths are assessed and analytical, relational, and resilience skills are developed.

This course focuses on the possible biological risk factors and their connection to violent behavior. Influences, including behavioral disorders during youth, lead poisoning, and neurological abnormalities are addressed. The nature vs. nurture debate is explored in detail.

This course examines a wide variety of serial killers and mass murderers, including sexual predators, psychotic killers, and eccentric killers. It also examines their motives including thrill, rage, glory, control and other motives.

This course examines the following questions: What causes criminal behavior? Why would anyone kill for the thrill? Why would someone who appears so normal do such an evil act? In addition to the psychology of the criminal mind, the study of profiling and predicting criminal behavior is explored.

Some people have a long-lasting reaction to traumatic events that move to enduring mental health issues and prolonged consequences. This course will identify the symptoms, causes and treatments for people who experience severe prolonged reactions to traumatic events.

This course will focus on how trauma can affect people of every race, age, ethnicity, gender, psychosocial background, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and region. Trauma can overwhelm a community’s resources to cope. A discussion of community resources is included.

This course will focus on natural and human-caused traumas. Natural disasters may affect only one or a small number of people or an entire region. These are sometimes referred to as “acts of God.” Human-caused disasters are those traumas that are caused by human failure. An example would be accidents or war.

Each of the many professions involved in human services approaches client and community needs from its own specialized perspectives and uses tools for assessment and treatment that vary from uses of media to prescription medications. Professional skills development in the interaction with social workers, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and other professionals will be explored.

This course will explore evidence-based conceptualizations of both normal and disordered mental states, together with an examination of the etiology, development, manifestation, and potential treatment of mental disorders in infants, children, adolescents, and adults.

All human service professionals must be able to find and accurately utilize information published in journals and scholarly books. This course puts emphasis on learning to recognize and analyze research types relevant to human services to extract key information. This course also will facilitate learning of basic descriptive statistics and standardized scores in measurement. The evaluation of ethical research will also be discussed.

Counseling theories are useful guides for human service professionals because they identify key factors in assessment and treatment. This course introduces “traditional” theories such as psychodynamic, humanistic, and cognitive-behavioral. Other more specialized counseling theories and techniques are helpful for ethnic identity issues, family problems, and recovery from substance abuse. Many of the theories also identify specific counseling techniques such as problem solving, goal setting, Motivational Interviewing, empathy, and exploring cognition and behavior.

This course addresses the physiological, psychological, and sociological impact of alcohol/drug use, abuse, and dependence, including signs, symptoms, and behavior patterns. The basic classification and pharmacological action of drugs on human body systems is covered, as well as the etiological, behavioral, cultural, and demographic aspects and belief systems associated with alcohol and drug use. Special attention is focused on opioid use and abuse.

This course introduces students to the process addiction, also known as behavioral addictions. The process addictions covered include the signs, symptoms, and assessment of the following: gambling, food, work, sex, exercise, shopping, and Internet use.

This course focuses on evidence-based best practices in the treatment of addictions. Valid diagnostic criteria is discussed in conjunction with a person being placed in the appropriate level of treatment intervention, including the American Society of Addiction Medicine Patient Placement Criteria (ASAMPPC). Accurate diagnosis, in conjunction with treatment options, is explained. The special challenges of detoxification of certain psychoactive drugs are explored.

Addresses cultural, social, religious, and economic factors applicable to cultural, ethnic, and minority populations; both from the perspective of the culturally diverse client and the counselor. Experimental methods of learning are emphasized, including the development of self- awareness in the helper. Traditional counseling theories, as well as more recent approaches to counseling diverse groups are analyzed for ethical and practical implications. The helper’s role in addressing advocacy and justice are explored.

This course provides opportunities to practice a basic set of interviewing and helping skills commonly used in individual and group counseling. An integrative approach will be used which allows students to learn, understand, and use skills taken from major counseling approaches, and to integrate these into a sequential process that maximizes the possibility of facilitating change in clients.

This course will merge the complex and comprehensive understanding of the nature and needs of persons at all the developmental levels and in multicultural contexts. Individual and family developmental theories and transitions, as well as theories of learning and personality development including knowledge about neurobiological behavior and resiliency are emphasized. Knowledge about human behavior as it relates to developmental crisis, trauma-causing events, addictions, psychopathology, disability, and other factors that influence normal and abnormal behavior will be presented.

Human Services professionals will be most effective if the strategies they use are validated by clinical research. A range of validated methods are analyzed in areas such as clinical assessment, empathy, parenting, depression, anxiety, phobias, and pain management. Additionally, instruction includes application designed to strengthen the ethical reasoning skills of the professional as related to substance abuse.

Consists of field placement in an agency, business, or industry environment related to the academic major. The placement should provide firsthand experience which allows students to apply, develop or strengthen classroom theories and skills. Work expectations for each intern are contracted with the faculty sponsor and placement supervisor. See Student Internship Program Guidelines for further details. Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing (60 credit hours completed) and 2.5 GPA in the major; Permission of Director of Internships required.

The Behavioral Science Capstone reflects on professional identity and development in the human service field.