Counseling students get experience helping virtually

A virtual program is connecting Central Michigan University counseling students with people who are about to age out of the foster system. The goal is for the students to help those people develop critical adult skills.

Bobby Mowry, who started the three-year graduate-level program in the fall of 2024, is one of the five. A session that’s stood out to him involved anger management.

“They took a lot from that meeting,” he said. “They took new skills and emotional control.”

The students help participants in the virtual group conversations develop skills around topics like what constitutes a healthy relationship and how to make hard decisions.

The program, part of the Michigan Youth Opportunities Initiative, is overseen by Stephanie Smith, director of the counseling clinic in the Counseling, Educational Leadership and Higher Education department. It virtually connects counseling students with people in Montcalm, Ionia and Berrien counties in group sessions.

Students lead the conversations. It helps satisfy a program requirement that they conduct at least 10 hours of group therapy. Opportunities to lead group therapy are dwindling, Smith said.

Mowry, who also provides supervised individual care, said that leading a group comes with its own opportunities to develop counseling skills.

“The challenge to group (therapy) is giving everyone an opportunity to talk,” he said. The word “opportunity” is key. Sometimes members of the group don’t want to speak, but it’s important to give them the chance to share.

Participants range in age from 14 to 24, Smith said. They are at different places in life, including some who are college students. They are also aware that individual situations have added an additional uphill grade to their walks through life.

Mowry said he draws inspiration from that.

“I think they’re an underserved population and they deserve as much out of life as they can get,” he said.

He opted to enter counseling after an experience with a therapist as a child.

“I loved and admired the care and respect of the therapist for other people,” he said. It left him feeling that helping other people is cool.

Smith started offering virtual counseling services through her private practice in 2017. She used that experience and contacts within the foster care system to create the program.

There are nine virtual sessions plus one that takes place in person, she said. Participants can also attend field trips, like one to CMU’s campus and one to the Grand Rapids ballet.

For Mowry, the rewards of CMU’s program extend past those he gets in helping people. He is moving through the counseling program as part of a cohort, making lifelong friends with his classmates. One of them will serve as the best man in his wedding, he said.

He gets to share in their successes.

“I not only get to see my own growth, but the growth of my friends,” he said.