SOC-OFE Masters Students - Field Experience Manual:

Student Application Requirements

The field experience application is extensive and requires information and documentation from your field site as well as documentation that you will complete on your own. It is imperative that you start the application process early to submit your application during the published application window for the quarter in which you intend to complete the field experience. An application is required for every quarter of field experience (Practicum, Internship I, Internship II, as well as Extensions and Incompletes).

The field experience application consists of several checklist items, all of which need to be completed to submit the application. See the Meditrek® Student Guide for detailed application submission instructions.

Some of the Meditrek® checklist items are documents that will need to be completed outside of Meditrek® and uploaded into your Meditrek® field experience application. Required documents are available for download on the SOC-OFE website.

Field Experience Application Worksheet

The Field Experience Application Worksheet must be completed in coordination with your proposed site supervisor. It provides the site supervisor with an overview of the field experience requirements, and you will use the information contained within the document to help you complete your field experience application in Meditrek®. We highly recommend that you schedule a time to meet, in person or virtually, with your proposed site supervisor to go over this information together. This will ensure that you gather all the required materials at once. Please do not just email the form to your site supervisor and ask them to complete it. It is your responsibility to complete the form and then submit your application in Meditrek®, but you will need input from your site supervisor to gather the necessary information. The Field Experience Application Worksheet is available for download on the SOC-OFE website (make sure to choose the correct document for your program).

Professional Liability Insurance 

You are required to obtain professional liability insurance prior to beginning a field experience and to maintain active professional liability insurance throughout the duration of the field experiences. The professional liability insurance must meet the following requirements:

1. Coverage dates: The insurance plan must cover the entire quarter in which the field experience will occur. The dates must cover the duration of the field experience course(s).
2. Memorandum or certificate of coverage: This must contain your name, address, date of the policy, coverage amounts, coverage type, and expiration date.
3. Coverage amounts: The plan must cover a minimum of $1 million per incident and $3 million aggregate.
4. Coverage type: The coverage type must be clearly stated in the memorandum or certificate of insurance coverage and must show coverage as a counseling student (mental health or school, depending on your program).

Walden University does not endorse any specific insurance company, and you are free to shop for a policy that fits the field experience liability insurance requirements. The most used insurance provider for counseling students is Healthcare Providers Service Organization (HPSO).

Note: You must secure your own professional liability insurance policy, regardless of whether you are covered by your field site’s insurance policy.

Note for School Counseling Students: You are encouraged to join the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) for your professional development. The liability insurance included with ASCA student membership does not, however, meet Walden’s requirements for professional liability insurance. You will need to ensure additional supplemental insurance or find another insurance provider to meet the coverage requirements.

Several application checklist items are online forms that you will complete right in your Meditrek® application. You will gather information needed from your field site to complete these online forms in the Field Experience Application Worksheet. It is imperative that the information in the Field Experience Application Worksheet exactly matches the information entered in your Meditrek® application. This includes, but is not limited to, site supervisor information, information related to provision of TMH and in-home counseling services, and your employment status with the proposed field site. Discrepancies will result in rejection of the field experience application and could result in a delay of the field experience.

Counseling Work Samples are required of any student who has not satisfactorily participated in an academic practice experience in the School of Counseling (pre-practicum or field experience, which require satisfactory formal evaluations of counseling skills via Meditrek) for longer than 2 years. The current ACA Code of Ethics mandates that all counselor educators evaluate students’ academic and professional development continuously throughout the program. Please refer to the current ACA Code of Ethics for further information.

Students will provide the date of their last (or anticipated) Walden professional practice experience in the Demonstration of Skills Competency checklist item on their field experience application. If a Counseling Work Sample is required, it will need to be submitted along with the Field Experience Application (see Application Submission Windows). Detailed instructions for submission of Counseling Work Samples are available on the SOC-OFE website.