Loyola Marymount University's Marital and Family Therapy with specialized training in art therapy graduate program provides a full-time two-year Master of Arts degree program that combines rigorous academic course work with two clinical traineeships. Our graduates emerge as highly-qualified licensed marital and family therapists in the State of California. A modified three-year program allows students to fulfill program requirements at a slower pace but still requires daytime class attendance.
The program provides its graduates with comprehensive training in both verbal and nonverbal modalities. The structure of the program begins with the foundational marital and family therapy coursework, teaching sound theoretical understanding as well as a variety of clinical strategies. The program is expansive in the art therapy coursework, providing graduates with training in clinical art therapy and giving them breadth and skill in the nonverbal modality.
Our incoming students tend to come from either studio arts or psychology backgrounds, and we have prerequisite course requirements in both disciplines.
Program Requirements
- The Master of Arts degree is granted upon satisfactory completion of a minimum of 60 semester hours. A total of eleven practicum units are applied towards the required total semester hours of credit.
- The traineeship enables the student to accumulate up to 840 hours with a minimum of 350 accumulated hours providing art therapy services to individuals, groups, and/or families. It includes two hours a week of supervision. This is provided by a licensed psychotherapist and an art therapist approved by Loyola Marymount University.
- Students enrolled in the full-time program will ordinarily complete degree requirements in two years. A part-time program (typically three years) is also available.
- Students are highly recommended to engage in personal psychotherapy during the first two semesters of the program.
- Students are required to maintain a B average in both academic and clinical tracks. The program takes seriously its role in the training of therapists. The personality as well as the intellectual capability of each student is carefully evaluated. In light of this, a student may be disqualified from the program for factors other than grades.
- Provides graduates with academic requirements for California state licensure (MFT) and registration by the American Art Therapy Association (ATR). Students and alumni seeking to export this MA degree outside of California must research the other state’s degree and licensing requirements.