March 26, 2020
Dear NCCU Counseling Students,
We hope that you are well, doing all that you can to remain healthy and well – and doing your part to keep others healthy and well. Information and understanding about COVID-19 seems to change on a daily basis.
The NCCU Counselor Education faculty met virtually today – and collectively want to wish you well and offer support to you in any way that we can. Please reach out to your adviser, if you wish, to let them know how you are doing. Please let us know if there is anything that you need.
As you are aware, registration for the Summer and Fall is underway. When we first planned the summer and fall schedules, things were different. COVID-19 was only in a distant place. We never anticipated that all of us would be affected in such a way.
In light of current events, we need to alter some of our summer offerings.
- CON 5372: All sections of the Practicum course (CON 5372) will be cancelled this summer. No one will be permitted to start their practicum placement this summer.
- CON 5390: For students currently completing the first half of their Internship, only those students who have been permitted to continue at their sites will be allowed to take the second half of their Internship course this summer. Current internship instructors will provide information to their students if they are approved. This restriction does not apply to those students who may receive an Incomplete (“I”) this Spring and may be trying to complete their Spring internship hours. Current practicum students with plans to start Internship in the summer will need to wait until the Fall to begin their internship.
Because of these changes, the only Memorandums of Agreement that are due on April 10 will be the MOAs from those students mentioned above who are approved to take the 2nd half of their internship. All other MOAs for the Fall semester will be due by July 10, 2020.
Please understand that this decision was not made without careful consideration of the impact that this will create for specific students. As people, we empathize greatly with the affected students and how this will alter their plans of study. This decision was made (a) to keep students as safe as possible, (b) to keep our partnership sites from being in compromising positions (some sites will not be open – or seeing clients), and (c) to acknowledge that our university processes for approving sites may be significantly impacted by current events. If you are impacted by this change, please get in touch with your adviser at some point to revise your plan of study.
Our hope (right now) is that our Fall schedule will remain as it is, and we already anticipate that we will need to make room in some Fall sections of courses to accommodate students misplaced by the Summer changes. However, with that said, please be aware that circumstances are fluid and could yet change again. Unfortunately, we can not guarantee at this time that the Fall schedule will remain unchanged.
Sincerely,
Chadwick Royal, PhD and Peggy Whiting, EdD
Co-Coordinators, Counselor Education Program