New master’s program establishes free mental health counseling clinic

By Chuck Gordon

The benefits of Wingate University's Community Training Clinic, which kicks off this month, are twofold: It will provide members of the community access to free mental health counseling while giving students in Wingate's clinical mental health counseling master's program a head start on their practical training.

Students will conduct the sessions but will be monitored by faculty members, who will provide the students with notes and prompts during the sessions from a separate room via digital tablet.

Dr. Jennifer Jordan

According to Dr. Jennifer Jordan, director of the program, students who participate in such guided sessions get more out of their required practicum and internship opportunities. To receive their degrees, students must complete 100 practicum hours and 600 internship hours, with the practicums (shorter, highly supervised internships) beginning in their first summer session, nine months into the program.

"It really gets the students ready so that when they go to their practicums at a site, they can hit the ground running," Jordan says. "They won't have to sit in on sessions and be babied. They'll know what they're doing."

The clinic, which begins Jan. 22, will be held year round, starting with a three-day-a-week schedule during the spring semester: Mondays 12-4 p.m., Tuesdays 4-8 p.m., and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sessions are 50 minutes in length.

Initially, students will work with clients ages 12 and up. The first cohort in Wingate's clinical mental health counseling master's program began in August, so they've gone through only about a fourth of the two-year program's curriculum so far. Once they've taken marriage-and-family and children-and-adolescents courses, students will be able to serve a wider range of clients.

Jordan either worked in or established free University-run clinics at her previous academic stops, including at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., where she started the clinic from scratch. She says the clinic was sorely needed in the community.

"We served hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands, of people," she says. "We had waitlists."

Wingate's clinical mental health counseling master's program operates from a "trauma-informed" perspective and trains students in Acceptance Commitment Therapy, an evidence-based behavioral therapy that focuses on committed action based on the client's values.

In helping clients work through their issues, students will be guided remotely by faculty members, who will provide notes in real time, such as "use more empathy" or "the client just said something you need to go back and explore a little bit more," Jordan says.

The experience is invaluable, especially for more serious cases, such as when a client expresses suicidal thoughts. "That's a big thing for the student," Jordan says, "having somebody walk you through that and to be there with you through that, and for the student to see how that works."

To sign up for clinic sessions, call 704-233-6652 or email [email protected].

Learn more about Wingate's clinical mental health counseling program.

Jan. 9, 2026