To apply to the Ph.D. Program in Marriage and Family, contact:
Marie-Suzi Hyacinthe
225 Sandels Building, College of Human Sciences
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-1491
Tel: (850) 644-3217
Fax: (850) 644-3439
In general, applicants should have:
- a clinical master's degree in marriage & family therapy, psychology, social work or a related field that includes at least one year of supervised clinical experience
- a combined Graduate Record Examination (GRE) score of at least 1000 for the verbal and quantitative sections
- 3.5 GPA on a 4.0 scale for the last two years of academic work
- completed separate university and departmental admission forms including a statement of professional ethics and conduct, and a minimum of three letters of recommendation from references who can assess their scholarly and clinical potential
Students are admitted only in the Fall Semester. Fully completed applications must arrive no later than January 5th to be considered for the next fall term. Candidates who qualify for admission will visit the campus and interview and be interviewed by the departmental and clinical faculty with an eye to "fit." Typically this occurs in the month of February. Attendance at these sessions is required for admission.
Departmental research and teaching assistantships, comprised of both tuition waivers and cash stipends, are available to successful applicants. Other forms of financial assistance may also be arranged.
Clinical training is conducted in our on-campus facility, The Center for Marriage & Family Therapy. Students are required to be in clinical training, beginning the first semester, until they complete the required doctoral course work. Before graduating from the doctoral program, all students will have completed 1000 hours of direct client contact. Graduates of COAMFTE-accredited master’s programs will therefore need to acquire 500 additional hours meeting COAMFTE accreditation standards. 200 of these hours will be at the Center for Marriage and Family Therapy and must be completed if the student is to be eligible for his or her Comprehensive Examination(s). In addition to these clinical hours, students who do not have a master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from a COAMFTE-accredited program are responsible for completing all of the COAMFTE master’s program clinical requirements in addition to the doctoral program requirements. These include 500 direct client contact hours, half of which are relational, under the supervision of an AAMFT Approved Supervisor or a designated equivalent. Clinical hours thought to be equivalent to that required in the Standard Curriculum require approval of the MFT faculty. All clinical hours must be accomplished at the Center for Marriage and Family Therapy, under the supervision of the program’s clinical faculty.
Student therapists at the Center work with a variety of clients with a wide range of individual, couple, and family concerns from a broad spectrum of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. The Center, as an active referral source, collaborates with a wide range of state and community agencies to provide counseling services for their clients.
Note: The audio-visual package of the center is state-of-the-art for both clinical supervision and process research. Each treatment room is equipped with two cameras with remote zoom and pan. These feed down into a standard and digital storage bank -- which includes the Landros Play Analyzer System. (We can store, code, and immediately recall for supervision/research 23,000 hours of therapeutic interaction.) In addition there are three computer stations available for the students.
At the completion of most of their course work, all students participate in a nine to twelve-month clinical internship under the supervision of approved supervisors. Internships are completed in community mental health programs serving juveniles, individuals, couples and families, trauma centers, and medical centers, throughout the United States. In this internship the students complete the remainder of their1000 hours of direct client contact, and engage in other professional duties.
The focus of the program is to provide evidence-based training in theory, research and clinical practice while working with individuals, couples, and families. The sequence of courses generally takes two years, including summer semesters. Full time attendance is required. Courses include clinical and theoretical study in systems theory, marital and family therapy, supervision, assessment, legal and ethical issues, family science, human development, qualitative and quantitative research methods, and inferential statistics. Students who do not have a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy must complete additional course work to meet the Standard Curriculum requirements of COAMFTE. (See www.aamft.org, "Commission on Accreditation.")
Students and faculty collaborate on quantitative and qualitative research studies, publishing a wide range of clinical and theoretical research projects and articles. Current funded research programs include premarital education, marital enrichment, parent education with fathers, family and larger systems contributions to early child development, best practices in foster care, and family program development and evaluation. Students will be research assistants in these programs.
MFT doctoral students and faculty frequently present research findings at:
- AAMFT national conferences
- National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) national conferences
- Society for Research in Child Development
- Regional conferences of the Florida Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (FAMFT) and the Tallahassee Association of Marriage and Family Therapy
Specifically for graduate students, FSU provides no-cost access to:
- excellent computer equipment
- extensive software
- laser and color printers and scanners
- internet for e-mail and library resources
- multimedia workshops and training
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