PhD Concentration in Couple and Family Therapy

Our COAMFTE-accredited Couple and Family Therapy Ph.D. program was first established in 1985. We have a long history of preparing leaders in couple and family therapy education, research, and practice. Our training focuses on relational processes, empirically supported interventions, and clinical research methodology. Our work is guided by a commitment to inclusion, diversity, and social justice. Our faculty are prominent scholars in parenting, family dynamics, intimate relationships, mental health disparities, immigrant and refugee families, trauma, and clinical research; we also have expertise in numerous empirically-supported couple and family interventions. We view doctoral education as a time of apprenticeship in which students receive intensive mentorship in research, practice, and education. Students are guided through the program by their adviser and doctoral committee. The Couple and Family Therapy Ph.D. program is accredited by the Commission on Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE) through May 1, 2028.

While program information is summarized below, for a deep dive, download the CFT Program Manual (Word document). 

Tuition and Fees

We fund all of our Ph.D. students with assistantships. An assistantship funds nine credit hours of tuition in each Fall and Spring semester, provides health insurance, and pays a monetary stipend. Students typically receive four years of funding. Please visit the following site to learn more about graduate assistantships at Michigan State University: https://grad.msu.edu/funding/assistantships.

Admission

Students are admitted to the doctoral program in Couple and Family Therapy in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies. Students who enter with a master’s degree from a COAMFTE-accredited program, or its equivalent, will enter the doctoral program directly. Applicants who currently have a master’s degree from a non-COAMFTE-accredited program will be considered, however they will be required to complete additional courses to meet the COAMFTE master’s degree equivalency prior to graduation. These courses will be determined after a review of previous coursework by the CFT program director. Generally, it is possible to accept many clinical experiences and courses from the student’s master’s degree as part of the equivalency. Students in such cases should anticipate that their education will take more time to complete than those entering with a master’s degree from a COAMFTE-accredited program. Please note there is no master's degree offered.

Degree Completion Requirements and Time Frame 

The Couple and Family Therapy Ph.D. requirements consist of coursework, a practical immersion experience, 1,000 direct client contact hours (doctoral and pre-doctoral combined), comprehensive exams, and dissertation. 

Students entering the Ph.D. program with a master’s degree in MFT usually complete their Ph.D. in four years. Depending on prior coursework and appropriate clinical experiences, students entering with a master’s in another area may require 1-2 additional years to complete the PhD. A total of 1,000 hours of direct client contact is required for the doctoral degree in CFT; up to 800 hours can be counted from prior clinical experiences as long as they meet COAMFTE criteria. An immersion experience is also required that may include clinical, teaching, administrative, and research experiences. For a detailed summary of our graduation rates, download our Graduate Achievement Data Disclosure (Word document).

Clinical Training

Clinical training occurs in the Couple and Family Therapy Clinic. The Clinic is located in the MSU Clinical Center, and functions as a nonprofit community-based agency. Clients come from the greater Lansing area (population, 480,000), as well as from the MSU community (50,000 students, 13,000 faculty and staff). Services are provided on a sliding fee scale and supervision is provided by CFT faculty. Senior doctoral students provide additional mentoring for junior students. Each session is recorded for review and supervision. All students engage in clinical training in the MSU Couple and Family Therapy clinic. Our clinic offers state-of-the-art facilities including electronic medical records, video-recording equipment, and software to provide supervisory feedback on video-recorded sessions. All students are trained in clinic procedures, which are described in our clinic manual. 

Research Training

The CFT doctoral program is committed to providing research experiences for each student that lead to expertise in the conduct of research and results in publications and conference presentations. We encourage students to go beyond the required courses to identify courses in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS), Psychology, Social Work, and Sociology, for example, that will strengthen their research and content expertise. We want each student to combine classroom learning with continuous hands-on experience in research and publication. The Department provides computers, statistical programs, coding programs, and a video-coding laboratory for student-faculty research, as well as dedicated research space. The Clinic provides opportunities for observation, data collection, coding, and more. The University provides a research design and data analysis consultation service open to students and faculty. There is an increasing need for doctoral graduates who are committed to and can carry out sophisticated programs of research, regardless of their setting—academic, medical, agency, advocacy, or private practice. Our goal is to provide the kinds of experience that will set the stage for such efforts.

Professional Licensure and Certification

Federal regulations require MSU to publicly disclose, for each educational program designed to meet the educational requirements for a specific professional license or certification required for employment in an occupation (or advertised as meeting those requirements), information about whether program completion would meet those requirements in a state. These public disclosure requirements apply to all programs, regardless of their modality (i.e., on-ground, online, and hybrid programs). MSU discloses the required information for its Couple and Family Therapy Program on page 88 of the table of the Educational Requirements for Professional Licensure and Certification document (PDF).

All current and prospective students are encouraged to contact the applicable professional licensure/certification boards in their respective states for additional information regarding professional licensure/certification requirements, including, without limitation, information regarding any non-educational requirements (such as post-doctoral supervision, licensing examination).

The information in the table should not be construed as guaranteeing that any particular professional licensure/certification authority will approve a student’s application; nor should the information in the table be read to imply that other requirements for professional licensure/certification do not exist or that other requirements for professional licensure/certification have been determined to have been met by MSU’s program/course, or that any necessary approvals for clinical or other experiential learning placements are secured by virtue of a student’s enrollment at MSU.

State professional licensure/certification requirements are subject to change at any time.

Couple and Family Therapy Program Mission

We are committed to advancing systemic interventions that support the well-being of individuals and families through excellence in clinically relevant research, empirically informed clinical practice, and education/outreach. Our activities are guided by our values of inclusion and diversity.

In order to achieve our program mission, we have established the following program goals and student learning outcomes.

Program Goals and Student Learning Outcomes

1. Clinically Relevant Research. Students will conduct research that is relevant to systemic interventions.
   1. Students will develop expertise in synthesizing literature and understanding theoretical frameworks relevant to their research area.
   2. Students will develop expertise in designing a research study using the best-suited methodological approach to address their research question.
   3. Students will publish clinically relevant scholarship (e.g., scientific journal article or book chapter).
   4. Students will prepare a grant proposal that is relevant to their research interests.
2. Empirically Informed Clinical Practice. Students will inform their clinical practice by empirical evidence.
   1. Students will demonstrate knowledge in at least one empirically supported systemic intervention.
   2. Students will practice skilled clinical work in the following: Admission to treatment, clinical assessment and diagnosis, treatment planning and case management, use of supervision to achieve clinical effectiveness, and legal issues, ethics, and standards.
3. Education/Outreach. Students will share knowledge with students, practitioners, scholars, and/or community members.
   1. Students will graduate with skills that will allow them to be effective instructors in higher education.
   2. Students will be prepared to provide effective couple and family therapy supervision.
   3. Students will conduct professional presentations at community, regional, national, or international events.
4. Inclusion and Diversity. Students will demonstrate a commitment to scholarly and clinical work that recognizes social locations, acknowledges power imbalances, and seeks to reduce disparities.
   1. Students will learn to attend to issues of inclusion and diversity in their scholarship.
   2. Clinically, students will demonstrate sensitivity to the social locations of their clients.

Program Diversity 

The Couple and Family Therapy Program at Michigan State University prides itself in attracting diverse students to the program, both from the United States and internationally. For information about the diversity composition of our current student body, download our CFT Student Diversity Composition Table (Word document).

The CFT program includes eight core faculty. Seven faculty members are female and one is male. The racial composition of the program faculty is 75% White, 12.5% Asian, and 12.5% Black, African, or African American. The diversity composition of program clinical supervisors (n=7) is 86% female (14% male); 71% White, 14% Asian, and 14% Black, African, or African American.

Ph.D in HDFS, Concentration in Couple and Family Therapy

Core Department Requirements (48 credit hours)

• HDFS 901 Contemporary Scholarship in Human Development and Family Studies (3)
• HDFS 999 Doctoral Dissertation Credits (24)
• Methodology and Statistics: 7 courses (21)
  • HDFS 982 Qualitative Research Methods (3)
  • HDFS 983 Advanced Methods in Intervention Research (3)
  • HDFS 892 Grant Writing in Human Development and Family Studies (3)
  • HDFS 880 Research Design and Measurement (3)
  • HDFS 881 Quantitative Methods in Human Development and Family Studies (3)
  • HDFS 960 Applied Multivariate Data Analysis (3)
  • Elective in research design or statistics course approved by committee (3)

Core Couple and Family Therapy (CFT) Requirements (18 credit hours)

• HDFS 888 Diverse Families and Communities: Intervention Strategies (3)
• HDFS 910 Contemporary CFT Theories (3)
• HDFS 911 Outcome Research: What works in CFT Theories (3)
• HDFS 994 Advanced Evidence-Based Couple Therapy (3)
• HDFS 903 Evidence-Based CFT Intervention Programs (3)
• HDFS 995 CFT Supervision (3)

Clinical Requirements (3-13 credit hours)

• HDFS 993 Internship in Marriage and Family Therapy (3-13)
• Doctoral students are required to complete a total of 1,000 hours of direct client contact before graduating (pre-doctoral and doctoral hours combined)

Minimum credits in the doctoral program: 69 required credit hours, including 24 dissertation credit hours and at least 3 credit hours of internship.

NOTE: Students entering the doctoral program in Couple and Family Therapy will be required to meet the equivalent of the master’s Standard Curriculum of the Commission on Accreditation of Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE).

Couple and Family Therapy faculty and students are actively involved in research both inside the University and in community-based programs.

Dr. Adrian Blow, Professor, conducts research on issues related to families and trauma. His most recent work is focused on military families, change processes in family therapy, and couple resiliency processes.

Dr. Ahnalee Brincks, Associate Professor, is a public health scientist whose research is situated at the intersection of prevention science and advanced statistical methods. She focuses on optimizing interventions by uncovering how, and for whom, interventions are most effective. She is an expert in adaptive interventions and the study designs used to develop them.

Dr. Lekie Dwanyen, Assistant Professor, studies the relational effects of traumatic stress and mass trauma exposure. She is interested in the development of family-level traumatic stress interventions for communities internally or externally displaced from war and political violence.

Dr. Kendal Holtrop, Associate Professor and Couple and Family Therapy Ph.D. Program Director, maintains a program of research focused on parenting and parenting interventions. Her research activities include adapting and implementing evidence-based interventions in community settings as well as examining parenting practices and family processes to inform intervention work.

Dr. Chi-Fang Tseng, Assistant Professor, studies mental health outcomes among marginalized populations. Her research focuses on culturally adapted evidence-based couple interventions, with particular attention to couples with marginalized identities. Her goal is to provide tailored and effective interventions to reduce mental health disparities.

Dr. Andrea Wittenborn, HDFS Chair and Professor, studies the process and outcomes of interventions for depression, including methods for personalizing treatment. Her research targets interpersonal mechanisms of depression with the goal of decreasing depressive symptoms and enhancing close relationships.