Archive for November, 2009

Licensed Professional Counselors Careers

Licensed Professional Counselors

Get a degree work as part of a great team

As a Counselor you will be assisting people with personal, family, educational, mental health, and career problems. Your duties vary greatly depending on your occupational specialty, which is determined by the setting in which you work and the population counselor’s serve.

Educational, vocational, and school counselors provide individuals and groups with career and educational counseling. School counselors assist students of all levels from elementary school to post secondary education.

Rehabilitation counselors help people deal with the personal, social, and vocational effects of disabilities. You counsel people with disabilities resulting from birth defects, illness or disease, accidents, or other causes. They evaluate the strengths and limitations of individuals, provide personal and vocational counseling, and arrange for medical care, vocational training, and job placement, You can also work towards increasing the client’s capacity to live independently.
Mental health counselors work with individuals, families, and groups to address and treat mental and emotional disorders and to promote mental health.

You are trained in a variety of therapeutic techniques used to address issues, including depression, addiction and substance abuse, suicidal impulses, stress, problems with self-esteem, and grief. Helping them with job and career concerns, educational decisions, issues related to mental and emotional health, and family, parenting, marital, or other relationship problems. Mental health counselors often work closely with other mental health specialists, such as psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers, psychiatric nurses, and school counselors.

Substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselors help people who have problems with alcohol, drugs, gambling, and eating disorders. Counseling can be done on an individual basis, but is frequently done in a group setting.

Marriage and family therapists apply family systems theory, principals and techniques to individuals, families, and couples to resolve emotional conflicts. In doing so, You modify people’s perceptions and behaviors, enhance communication and understanding among family members, and help to prevent family and individual crises. Other counseling specialties include gerontological, multicultural, and genetic counseling.

Salary
Get a degree work for more money, currently Counselors earn an average of $35,000 per year

Job Outlook
Get a degree work in a high demand occupation, demand is expected to grow 21% year over year through 2016, so this is an excellent career with strong demand.  To learn more about counseling degree careers click here.

Education
Get a degree work smarter, 5% all people working in this profession holds a Bachelor’s degree, 88% holds a Masters degree. Make sure that the school has an accredited program.

To find an accredited school near you or online click here.

Diagnostic Medical Sonographer As A Career

Career Outlook — Diagnostic Medical Sonographer

Get a degree work as part of a great team
Diagnostic imaging embraces several procedures that aid in diagnosing ailments. As a Diagnostic Medical Sonographer you will be using sound waves to generate an image for the assessment and diagnosis of various medical conditions. Sonography commonly is associated with obstetrics and the use of ultrasound imaging during pregnancy, but this technology has many other applications in the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions throughout the body.

Diagnostic medical sonographers use special equipment to direct nonionizing, high frequency sound waves into areas of the patient’s body. You will operate sophisticated equipment, which collects reflected echoes and forms an image that may be videotaped, transmitted, or photographed for interpretation and diagnosis by a physician.

You will also explain the procedure to the patients and record any medical history that might be relevant to the condition being viewed. Select appropriate equipment settings and direct the patient to move into positions that will provide the best view. To perform the exam, sonographers use a transducer, which transmits sound waves in a cone- or rectangle-shaped beam. Although techniques vary with the area being examined, sonographers usually spread a special gel on the skin to aid the transmission of sound waves.

Salary
Get a degree work for more money, currently Medical Diagnostic Sonographers earn an average of $67,000.

Job Outlook
Get a degree work in a high demand occupation
Demand for sonographers are expected to grow 18% year over year through 2016, so this is an excellent career with strong demand. Job outlook looks very promising. Career track is solid with the ability to specialize, earn additional designations and increase income.

Education
Get a degree work smarter, 70% of all people working in this profession hold an associates degree, 30% hold a bachelors degree. Accreditation is required by most hiring managers. Make sure your school has an accredited program through The Commission on Accreditation for Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP).
To find an accredited school near you or online click here.

Choosing Which School to Get Your Degree

If you are like I was then you have been thinking about getting your degree for a long time. Things like money and time have been keeping you from taking the next step and doing what you know will help you take it to the next level professionally and personally.

So if you are reading then I am assuming that you are trying to decide can you earn your college degree with the financial and time constraints that you have in your life? The answer is yes.

College degrees have long been available by correspondence to help individuals get their degree work, time, and money considered. With the growth of the internet, students can now pursue college degrees online.

There are hundreds of schools offering online programs for everything from Masters Degrees in Business Administration to advanced degrees in the fine arts. Because of the large number of schools offering online programs, it can be difficult to know what to look for in a quality program.

There are two basic types of institutions offering online degrees: Colleges and universities with physical campuses and online-only institutions. Online-only institutions do offer single courses, but tend to focus on degree programs. Colleges and universities with physical campuses offer both complete degree programs and single courses, which are often taken by on-campus students as well as online-only students.

Many of the same questions students ask when investigating regular colleges also apply to online degree programs. For example, a prospective student might ask how many courses are taught by graduate assistants rather than professors. In assessing an online degree, it is equally as important to determine how many of the courses are taught by full professors and how much experience those professors have with teaching online courses. Are there internship degree work related programs?

However, there are questions that are specific to online degree programs. One of the most important, particularly for graduate-level degrees, is how much contact you will have with other students and of course the professor. There are two basic types of online degree programs, those where you work at your own pace and those where you are admitted with a cohort, or group of peers, and proceed through the degree program with them. One is not necessarily better than the other. The learning style of the individual student will determine which type of program fits their needs best.

Accreditation is also an important thing to look for. All colleges and universities are required to be accredited by a regional governing body in order for the degrees they issue to be considered valid. If an online degree program doesn’t give accreditation information, prospective students should move on to the next program. Also some degree mills offering unrealistic get your degree work accredited 100% in 7 days type of degree even if they claim accreditation, move on….

After determining the credentials and structure of an online degree program, prospective students should research the details. How can books be purchased? What equipment, software and hardware are required to access the courses? How much time should a student expect to spend per course? Is financial aid available? Typically these questions are addressed on the degree program’s website. So here are your homework assignments class, research 3 schools using our college degree finder tool. Find out the following things from these schools:

• Is this an online or campus program?
• What are the tuition costs?
• What are the lengths of the program?
• Is there an internship required if so do they provide placement assistance?
• What about financial aid?
• Will they accept military, corporate, previous training and certifications toward your degree work included.
• How are they accredited?

Can You Earn Your Degree With Work Experience?

I attended college for 4 years but did not finish I was 28 credits short. That was 18 years ago. I have always wanted to finish it but it always seemed either to expensive or that it would simply take too much of my time. A few years ago I decided that I needed to finish it. I had a few questions, could I get credit for all my work as a professional over the last 15 years. Would my old college credits apply to my new degree? How long was this going to take and how much would it cost? I want to share with you what I have learned.

There are several ways to gain credits toward your degree work, government and military experience included.

Prior experience, licenses and certifications

You can gain college credits through licenses, certificates and corporate training.
ACE www.acenet.org also publishes guides for credit recommendation for licenses, certificates and corporate training. Most colleges and universities, including online colleges, will accept ACE recommendations of credits. Some licenses and certificates have recommended college credits, including: Dale Carnegie, Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals, American Management Association and Learning Tree, among many others. Training classes from American Bankers Association, Berlitz International, FAA, College of Financial Planning and many others are included in the guidebook or the website. The first step is finding out where you want to go to school, what you want to study and knowing what career to pursue then you can use this resource to see if you will qualify for credits upfront to help you get your degree work experience taken into account.

Previous Military Experience

Obtain college credits through military classes and training can count toward your degree work experience included. If you have served in the military and have a DD 214 or DD 295, you might receive some college credits for that military experience. Even basic training might earn credits toward health or Physical Education at some online colleges. If you have taken classes, training or served as an officer, your military transcript will reflect these training courses. The American Council on Education (ACE) reviews the training classes and recommends college credit for classes, training and your Military Occupation Specialty (MOS). You may already have a transcript of the ACE military credit recommendation in your SMART or AARTS report, if you have been in the military recently. Keep in mind that every credit toward your degree work related is one less class you have to pay for when beginning your journey toward a college degree and a new career.

Gain college credits through corporate courses.

Some online colleges will review your corporate classes (those courses not in the ACE Guide) and grant credit toward your degree work and training taken into account. Usually the rule is “one credit for each 40 hours in the corporate classroom”, but can vary depending on the school. So, a corporate class that was 2 full weeks (80 hours) might be worth 2 college credits.

A combination of military credits, certificates, licenses, corporate classes and other prior learning will shorten the time to complete a college degree. Make sure you ask the online college representative if any of your prior learning could be evaluated to see if it could be converted to college credits. Most reputable online colleges will require that at least 60 credit hours be earned at their school to obtain your degree. When you come across ad for schools says get your degree work experience counts 100%, degree available in 7 days don’t pay the fee, run. My recommendation for you is to research several schools get their information, will they take these things into account? How much is their tuition? Then calculate the cost and the time involved between multiple programs and make an informed decision.

These are all excellent ways to use your previous life and work experience towards your degree but actually getting a degree solely on past experience is really worthless as discuss in the following article life experience degree which covers the legitimacy of diploma mills claiming to offer accredited degrees without any additional studies or course work.

Online Degrees VS. Campus Degrees

Many students see the advantage of online education as the freedom of study at their own pace. In addition those who hate to go to school tend to love the ability of online education that enables them to study from home. But, you should not make your decision to study online just because of these advantages. There are other important factors that you should consider when choosing whether to get your degree online, college campus or a hybrid program.

There are many good reasons to get a degree work can become more rewarding financially.  A degree work well to open up new job opportunities that did not exist before.  Once you have made the decision to improve your educational status then what?

Obviously you need to research colleges to find out which program will be the best for you.  How should you make your decision whether to go for online education or to earn a traditional campus degree? Try to ask yourself some of the following questions and the answer them honestly, this should help point you in the right direction.

Do you prefer learning by reading instead of listening?
When I was in college in my 20’s I found that the lower level courses tended to be large lecture style courses assignments were given and we showed up and listened to very boring professor lectures.  So even though I was physically there I was not really listening.  There were upper division courses that had synergistic and collaborative elements to them.  But guess what?  When I was in school the first time web conferencing, webinars and other tools like that did not exist.  online college classes are and excellent solution for many working adults.  Hence if getting your degree online is your preference these things should not be an issue for you.

Will you be able to work on your own with someone motivating you?
Nobody will stand over you to ensure you to complete assignments on time and progress through the whole degree program in online education. You have to motivate yourself to complete the courses, projects and assignments in order earn your online degree.  If you need somebody to motivate or remind you to complete a given task, then traditional campus degree program might be a better option for you as there are teachers and tutors to make sure you progress through your study and earn a degree successfully.  In order to get the degree work is required to be completed during a reasonable time line.  Also are you interested in a degree which requires labs that simply can not be done online?  You may need to look at hybrid programs where you can proceed through your course take tests and quizzes online but show up on campus for labs.

Is the social element of college important to you?
When I was 19 the only reason I was in school was to avoid work and to enjoy all the social activities colleges can offer.  However I did not finish school and when I went back three years ago I was a man on a mission.  So if you need social interaction with classmates to get through school then you may want to choose a campus option. For some people that social interaction provides enough incentive to get to class and finish their degree.  For others like working professionals and parents flexibility with regards to the demands on their time is a key factor, obviously working from home would outweigh any social benefits.

Home work Assignment
•    Read my posts on financial aid and earning your degree work experience accredited
•    Research 3 schools using our degree finder tool to find out their program lengths, tuition costs and whether they will accept any of your previous training, military service towards the degree work included.