New Counseling Director Leads a Global Program
Webster’s Counseling program keeps growing, meeting needs around the world

Stacy Henning

Stacy Henning has crossed the U.S. consulting chief executives in healthcare. She’s started two companies and she’s launched her own private counseling practice after an intense stint with corporate America.

In short, Henning has the type of background and drive needed to lead Webster University’s worldwide graduate M.A. in Counseling program, with its 2,000 students at some 30 Webster campuses.

After 10 years as a corporate development consultant in marketing and analysis, Henning gave up the air-bound life for a newfound passion in counseling.

She hasn’t looked back.

“I had thought about law school,” Henning says, “But a weekend counseling course opened my eyes to a different line of work. I was in search consulting at the time, so I was very involved in making personalities work together,” she explains. “So I initially came into counseling with that same perspective: ‘Okay, what’s the problem? Let’s fix it.’ But you quickly realize that in counseling, you can only ‘fix’ things by working and collaborating with the client. You learn to trust the client and the process.”

The rest is history: Henning earned an M.Ed. in Counseling and a Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision. She became a Licensed Professional Counselor, started her own practice and became a clinical professor at University of Missouri – St. Louis, where she developed and directed the School and Family Counseling Center, a training center matching graduate counseling students with community counseling needs. She is also an Approved Clinical Supervisor and a professional site team evaluator for CACREP, the counseling profession’s accrediting body.

A Varied Background for a Complex Job

Henning sees this varied background as vital to her role as worldwide director of Webster’s Counseling program, a role she took over in summer 2008. The job entails not only refining curriculum and training experiences for 2,000 students – but about coordinating program standards, infrastructure, and the needs of faculty who are educating counselors from St. Louis to the southern U.S., all the way to Europe .

“My continuing research and counseling practice helps me bridge practice with academia,” Henning says. “I combine the administrative, clinical, and faculty sides of the field. Putting all three of those together seems to work well and keeps it exciting for me.”

While Webster is one university, the nature of counselor education and supervision requires synchronizing efforts to meet professional standards and licensing regulations that vary by state and country. Coordinating such efforts with the program’s counseling coordinators is a major part of Henning’s role.

'With a program like this, offered in so many countries, we have to be
culturally aware of how counseling is viewed and practiced in different
parts of the world.'

“We’re working on many diverse, and exciting projects in Webster’s Counseling program,” she says. “We’re developing plans to align it with professional standards, both nationally and internationally. The organization that accredits U.S. counseling education programs doesn’t accredit internationally, but they’ve developed a new branch, and that will be an opportunity to accredit Webster’s sites outside the U.S. We’re getting more involved with counseling related human rights activities on a national and global level.”

Counseling Practice Varies from Country to Country

“With a program like this, offered in so many countries, we have to be culturally aware of how counseling is viewed and practiced in different parts of the world,” Henning says. “At the global level, we are positioning ourselves with professional counseling organizations to be leaders in disaster-relief counseling and counseling related human rights. But we are cautious when discussing with our European extended campuses not to project westernized counseling practice but instead to work within the community to provide counselor education and supervision that is culturally appropriate.”

The latter feature is one of the challenges that attracted Henning to Webster.

“It’s intriguing, the idea of participating in the development of counseling at the worldwide level,” she says. “That’s unique. For example, at this time, clinical counseling tends to be school-based in Asia, so your family accesses mental health services through the school counselor (who is typically referred to as a teacher, only with a counseling degree, in order to minimize the stigma for the family). In Europe, counseling is heavily psychodynamic in focus. In the Middle East, counseling is surprisingly developing along the Western model, particularly in Iran.

“So with Webster, we are working to insure that those involved are careful not to push the Western approach, but to develop counselor education in a way that fits the local culture.”

Online: A New Frontier

Henning has developed the first subcommittee of counselor educators in Missouri to propose online counseling courses for acceptance by the Missouri professional counselor licensing board. Although some relunctantly so, all counselor educator programs in Missouri are now collaborating in developing standards and courses for acceptance at the state licensure level. This also places Webster’s Counselor educator program as a key player in Missouri. Once this committee gains speed, Henning will work with other counseling program coordinators in the Webster program to do the same in our other states.

Webster Launches Pilot Program for National Guard Chaplains

The latest big news for Webster’s counseling program is the approval of a National Guard pilot program that will use Webster University for counselor education and training for their Chaplains. Pending the program’s success, National Guard Chaplains from around the country will have approval to apply to Webster extended campuses nationwide within the year. The first cohort is anticipated to begin in June 2009 at Webster’s home campus.

“The National Guard believes this program has the potential to send between 50-500 chaplains through Webster over the next several years,” Henning says.

Brett Newcomb, counseling program coordinator at Webster home campus, was critical in developing a strong set of curriculum options that include electives in marriage and family theory, psychotraumatology, and addictions; customized field experiences; and the potential to offer clinical classes that consist only of National Guard Chaplains.

“This development also encouraged the U.S. Army to move forward with completing the third of three Family Life Centers in the nation for active duty Army Chaplains at Webster’s campus in Ft. Bragg, N.C.,” Henning says. “And the National Guard and Army are interested in developing a dual-degree program where Chaplains will receive education and training in theology from Eden Seminary online and the MA in Counseling from Webster University campuses on site.”

That’s not just good news for Webster, whose mission includes tackling unmet needs around the world. It’s also good news for the United States and its armed services, at a time when counseling services for returning troops are extremely limited around the country.

As the late Bill HuddlestonBerry, the program’s developer and longtime director, said when Global Thinking first highlighted the program four years ago: “It really is a global issue. Peoples of the world are constantly confronted with cultural and interpersonal conflict: natural disasters; disease and famine; war and genocide; discrimination and oppression. And the job of the mental health counselor must attend to all of these global phenomena.”

Words that still ring true today.