Faculty & Staff

Welcome to the Rutgers-Newark Counseling Center’s web site pages for Faculty & Staff!   Given your frequent interactions with students you are likely to encounter students who are experiencing various degrees of emotional distress.  You may observe a student’s behavior or read something in a paper that they have written that evokes concern. Alternatively, a student may seek you out for advice or request an extension and reveal significant personal problems they are experiencing. In many cases, such encounters will be manageable and the student will be able to cope with his/her stressors reasonably well.  In other situations however, you may recognize that the student’s concerns are more extensive and may benefit from additional interventions which may include professional counseling. For most of you reading these web pages, professional counseling will be outside of your area of expertise and is not expected of you, nor encouraged. Instead, these web pages are intended to provide you with information to help you facilitate students getting the professional support that they may need. To this end, we have included information about our services, the warning signs of emotional distress and tips on how to approach or respond to a student with these concerns.  

We also invite you to call the Counseling Center staff for a consultation if you have additional concerns about a student   

                 We’re only a phone call away… (973)353-5805

Overview of the Counseling Center

When considering making a referral to the Counseling Center it is important to have accurate information about our services and to understand our policy regarding confidentiality which may help to assuage some students’ concerns about seeking professional counseling.

Staffing
Our staff currently includes psychologists, alcohol and other drug substance abuse counselors and part-time consulting psychiatrists. Together, we provide a variety of services to our undergraduate, graduate and professional student body of roughly 10,000.

Appointments
Most of the students that we see are by pre-arranged appointments. We do see   students who walk in for services or who are walked over to our center when they are highly distressed or in crisis in order to evaluate for safety. We do not accept walk-ins after 4:30 as we no longer have administrative support during that time and clinical personnel is more limited.  Students may come to the Counseling Center and fill out an application for services M-F from 8:30a.m.-4:30 p.m.(Extended evening hours are available by appointment only). Students will be notified of the status of their request for an appointment within 48 hours

Confidentiality
Our services are free and confidential as provided by law. Unless someone is at risk  of harming themselves or others or tells us of a child or elderly person who is being abused, we respect their right to confidentiality and cannot release any information regarding their participation in treatment, course of treatment etc; unless the student either gives us written consent or we have a court order from a judge. Students should be made aware of this when being referred for counseling as many may be afraid that others may access their records or mistakenly believe that it will appear as part of their transcript or other school records when it does not. Students’ clinical records at the Counseling Center are treated the same as any medical document and their confidentiality is protected.

Range of Services Available

Free Individual and Group Psychotherapy including Alcohol and Other Drug Counseling are amongst the services offered. Individual psychotherapy is intended to be short term, but students will be seen for as long as is deemed appropriate.

Psychiatric Services

•  evaluations for diagnosis and treatment planning
•  evaluations for psychotropic medication and medication monitoring
•  evaluations for ADD/ADHD in conjunction with the Learning Resource Center

For more information about our services and other information, please select from the Counseling menu at the top of this page.

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