CEHD faculty members Dennis Gilbride and Franco Dispenza will continue preparing cohorts of clinical rehabilitation counselors for positions in the Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation Agency, vocational rehabilitation agencies in other states and other affiliated programs.
Over the next five years, they will recruit, prepare and support 40-43 students in the college’s clinical rehabilitation counseling master’s program, which focuses on helping people with cognitive, physical, sensory, psychiatric and other disabilities.
Master’s students will receive scholarships to cover their tuition and other expenses and will complete internships with the Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation Agency. In return, they are required to work at a vocational rehabilitation state agency or contractor following graduation.
Gilbride and Dispenza each received five-year U.S. Department of Education grants that will support these students – some of whom will specialize in working with individuals with mental illnesses and all of whom will be prepared to support people with disabilities in Georgia and beyond.
“Vocational rehabilitation consumers living with mental illness deserve and need the expertise that can best be provided by master’s level clinical rehabilitation counselors,” Dispenza said.
For more information on the clinical rehabilitation counseling master’s program, visit https://education.gsu.edu/program/ms-clinical-rehabilitation-counseling.