As the United States contends with a mental health crisis, schools have been actively working to hire, train and retain school mental health professionals. To support this process, one of NCSSLE’s School Based Mental Health Services (SBMH2020) grantees, the Hawaii State Department of Education (HI DOE), in collaboration with a local university, created an online Education Psychology doctoral program as well as the state’s first ever School Psychology program to increase the pipeline of trained mental health professionals for their state’s schools.
Background Information
Unlike any other state in the country, Hawaii operates as one State Education Agency (SEA) and one Local Education Agency (LEA). This means that when the Hawaii DOE works with the “district”, it is working with the entire state. This has helped to provide cohesion across the diverse state and align all schools under one common message.
Addressing Student Need
Hawaii’s approximately 170,000 students span across what they call “complex areas” that each have their own high school. Within these schools, a network of school counselors and behavioral health specialists is available to support student well-being and mental health needs. However, some students require more specialized care and participate in more intensive settings or residential placements.
To effectively support students facing acute challenges, the Hawaii Department of Education collaborated with Chaminade university to establish an online doctoral program focused on equipping professionals with specialized training in areas of school psychology and mental health, enabling them to provide personalized support to students. The program aims to not only equip candidates with the necessary licensure to provide counseling services but also to foster a deep understanding of how mental health services can be improved at a systemic level to address the needs of students and staff within these intensive learning environments.
Similarly, the department has created the state’s first ever online School Psychology program in light of high vacancy rates of school psychologists across the country. This has allowed them to recruit locally to Hawaii residents who want to support the communities they grew up in.
Moving Forward
The first cohort of Educational Psych PhDs started in 2022 and are expected to graduate in the fall of 2025. Hawaii DOE intends to gather feedback from this first cohort on ways to improve the program for future cohorts, which will be easy since the candidates will continue to work for the state for at least three years after graduating.
To learn more about Hawaii’s home-grown graduate programs, listen to their episode of In Session.