Rehabilitation counseling looks to create viability

 
The Rehabilitation Counseling program looks to be enhanced as part of Southern University’s Retrenchment and Reorganization Plan.
Madan Kundu, chair and professor of the Department of Rehabilitation and Disability Studies (DRDS) said, “The goal of rehabilitation counseling is empowering people with disabilities to make informed choices, build viable careers and live more independently in the community.
The department offers an undergraduate degree in Rehabilitation Services and a master’s degree in Rehabilitation Counseling (on campus and online).
“This is the only program in the state that offers a master’s in rehabilitation counseling completely online,” said Kundu.
The program currently has 150 undergraduate students and 50 graduate students both on campus and online.
“I always wanted to help people and I think that the program has prepared me to become a vocational counselor to help people get jobs,” said graduate student Kayla Fleming from Baton Rouge.
Kundu said the department has been successful with the online master’s degree program, but would require additional faculty in order to get and online undergraduate program.
On campus graduate students receive Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) scholarship that provides tuition and fees, books, monthly stipends, graduate assistantship, and travel to conferences amounting to about $21,000 per year.
Online graduate students receive tuition and fees, books and travel to conferences that total $7,500 per year.
“This program is run more off grants than any other program,” said Robert Miller, Dean of the College of Sciences.
There are four Long Term Training Grants and one Rehabilitation Capacity Building Grant from Rehabilitation Services Administration, and one MIND (Minority Disability) Alliance Project for Students with Disabilities in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) funded by the National Science Foundation.
​​”Money is available from different sources but the university has to invest in providing faculty support,” said Kundu.
The program has successfully graduated sixty-five students in the master’s degree program in the past five years.
“The prevalence of disabilities is higher in culturally diverse and marginalized communities,” said Kundu. “Therefore DRDS is in a unique position to expand its educational curriculum, research infrastructure, and service outreach to diverse communities.”
Kundu said there are no Ph.D. program in Rehabilitation in the state of Louisiana and only two Ph.D. programs in the region of five states consisting of LA, TX, NM, AR, and OK.
The department also wants to develop a research and training center in rehabilitation to complement the Ph.D. program and to establish a Rehabilitation Services Center.
“If the program had more application and hands on activities, it would give students a sense of direction of where they want to go in the field of Rehabilitation,” said Kia Brown, undergraduate from Lafayette.
The center would allow undergraduate and graduate students to obtain practical experience under the provision of DRDs faculty.
The percentage of disabilities are higher in minority communities, so that’s why we need more professionals of minority backgrounds,” said Kundu.
“The only thing that’s keeping the program from expanding as much as it could, is that the university is in a financial strain,” said Miller.​