A Virtual Coffee Break Series for Counseling CEUs
Cafe Connection
Nicholls Students, Faculty and Staff
Registration for this event is FREE but REQUIRED. Please complete the form below. Registration deadline is Friday, March 20th by 6:00 am.
Counseling professionals please use the registration button to the right.
Counseling Cafe Connection
Title: Building Supportive Relationships with Military and Veteran Students: Culture, Identity, and Clinical Engagement
Location: Virtual – Zoom
Time: 8:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Cost: $35.00 for Counseling Professionals
CEU Info: The Louisiana Counseling Association is approved by the Louisiana Licensed Professional Board of Examiners to offer continuing education clock hours. These presentations have been reviewed and have been approved for 3.0 CEs clock hours in Social and Cultural Foundations.
Presenters:
- Renard Dominique, Ed.D
- Ronell Day, MA
This continuing education (CE) course is designed to enhance clinicians’ cultural competence when working with military (active and reserve) and Veteran students in university counseling, mental health, and community-based settings. The course expands upon foundational military cultural knowledge and focuses on terminology, identity, humor, survivor’s guilt (moral injury), physical and emotional pain management, sacrifice, and transition from Servicemember to Veteran. Emphasis is placed on understanding how military culture shapes worldviews, communication, definitions of success and failure, and help seeking behaviors to support clinicians and community-based interventionist build stronger relationships with the Veteran students they serve.
Through a humanistic and culturally informed lens, participants will gain practical strategies to improve engagement, assessment, and therapeutic alliance with Military and Veteran students, while avoiding misunderstandings, pathologization, or cultural missteps. The course is applicable to clinicians with little to no prior military exposure and those seeking to deepen their work with this population.
Objectives:
- Describe key elements of Military and Veteran culture and how they influence identity, communication style, and help-seeking behaviors.
- Identify commonly used military terminology and explain its clinical relevance in counseling settings.
- Explain the role of military and Veteran humor, peer dynamics, and interbranch perspectives in relationship building and emotional regulation.
- Differentiate military informed definitions of professionalism, success, failure, and responsibility from civilian frameworks.
- Recognize survivors’ guilt, loss, and moral injury as they may present in Military and Veteran students, including noncombat related experiences.
- Apply culturally responsive approaches to supporting Veterans managing physical pain, emotional distress, and post service adjustment.
- Demonstrate strategies for supporting Veterans as they process the personal meaning and sacrifice of military service.
- Implement trust building practices that strengthen counseling center engagement and retention of Veteran students.