Concordia University Irvine (Townsend Institute)

What this program actually is

OrientationChristian-framed generalist counseling built on the proprietary Townsend growth model

Be clear about what this degree is. It is not a standalone marriage-and-family-therapy program — it is a 66-unit online M.A. in Counseling whose 42-unit core is a conventional, CACREP-shaped generalist counseling curriculum (the eight CACREP content areas are literally the program learning outcomes: ethical practice, social and cultural identities, lifespan development, career development, counseling practice, group work, assessment, research), with a 24-unit "Marriage, Couple, and Family Counseling" emphasis bolted on top. Only four of the twenty-two required courses are actually about couples and families: MCFC 606 Foundations and Contextual Dimensions of Marriage, Couple, and Family Counseling; MCFC 623 Foundations of Marriage and Family Therapy; MCFC 624 Advanced Marriage and Family Counseling; and COUN 627 Human Sexuality. The remaining emphasis units are psychopharmacology and the nine-unit practicum/internship sequence. And the accreditation picture is more complicated than the marketing implies: CACREP's directory shows Concordia University Irvine accredited for the M.A. Clinical Mental Health Counseling emphasis (since January 11, 2018) and the Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision, while the Marriage, Couple and Family Counseling M.A. appears separately under "In Process" — not accredited. The student handbook says the same thing in its own words: the MCFC program "was developed to align with the CACREP MCFC level standards, and is seeking CACREP accreditation under the 2024 curricular standards." There is no COAMFTE accreditation and none is claimed.

The Townsend overlay is not marketing decoration — nine of the sixty-six units are built directly on Dr. John Townsend's proprietary model, and you cannot avoid them. COUN 600 Townsend Institute Orientation (1.5) introduces "the Townsend Growth Model" and runs process groups; COUN 599 Townsend Institute Residency (1.5, with a $575 course fee) is the required in-person process-group intensive; COUN 610 Townsend Model Theory and Application (3) is a whole course on the model, "applied as a framework for conceptualizing human development, understanding mental health disorders, and developing growth and treatment plans"; and COUN 633 Counseling Skills and Techniques notes that "students will also learn the foundational Townsend Model techniques." The handbook defines the model itself: growth through "the Competence and Character Growth Path," with capacity in "the domains of attachment, separation, integration, and adulthood" determining outcomes in "people, personal, and performance," and "all growth and change occur with the nutrients of grace and truth, over time." Students are told they will apply it "to their own personal growth and development and with clients." If you want an evidence-based systemic family-therapy training, understand that a meaningful slice of this degree is a single practitioner's framework rather than an established school of family therapy.

On the Christian question, be precise: the framing is explicitly Christian, the required coursework only lightly so, and there is no theology requirement. The Institute's mission is to deliver experiences that are "biblically-informed, research-supported, and rooted in the Townsend growth model"; the counseling program's mission opens "As a Christ-centered counseling program"; the university's graduate learning outcome for Ethical Leadership is to "Apply standards of ethics informed by Christian teachings"; and program learning outcome 1 asks graduates to develop a counselor identity "informed by Concordia's Lutheran Christian identity." In the actual catalog course descriptions it surfaces twice: COUN 605 Legal, Ethical and Professional Issues covers "ethical, legal and Christian standards/principles for conduct," and COUN 601 lists "faith development" among the developmental domains studied. No Bible, theology or biblical-counseling course appears in the 66 required units. Finally, the fact that most affects a California applicant is buried in the handbook, not on the program page: "This emphasis is only provided for California-based students, and it has been approved by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences as meeting all academic requirements for the Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist application. The Concordia Counseling program cannot make a determination as to whether the program meets educational requirements in any other state." So yes for California LMFT — and effectively California-only.

The program’s own page →

See it and hear it

Program overview

The courses that define it

Every California program teaches law and ethics, assessment and a survey of theories. These are the courses that are not on every list — the ones that tell you what this particular faculty believes therapy is. The quoted text is the catalog’s own; the note underneath each one is mine.

The whole degree, term by term

What you would actually take, in the order you would take it. Sequences change; check the current catalog before you count on any single term.

Fully online and asynchronous-plus-synchronous, in seven-week terms, with five start dates a year (the next listed starts are August 31 and October 26, 2026, then January 11 and March 15, 2027) — so there is no fixed cohort or lockstep sequence and the published requirement is a course list rather than a term grid. The program advertises three to four years depending on load and expects 13–19 hours a week per course, recommending that people working full time take one course at a time. One four-day in-person residency on the Irvine campus is required at some point in the program. Tuition is $715 per unit (about $47,000 for 66 units). Course order is set by prerequisites: COUN 600 first, then the core, with MCFC 640 Supervised Practicum gated behind roughly thirteen prior courses. course sequence ↗

66units in total

How practicum actually works

Californian clinical training runs in two legally distinct stages, and the difference decides what a program can and cannot do for you.

A trainee is a student. You see clients while still enrolled, at a site your program approves, supervised by someone the site provides. This is practicum, and it is the stage a program controls. An associate — registered with the Board after you graduate — is no longer a student, is usually paid, and is working toward the 3,000 hours the license requires. The Board renamed this stage from “intern” to “associate” in 2018, so any page still saying “MFT intern” is quoting something out of date.

Hours you bank as a trainee count toward the 3,000, up to a limit, which is why the size and quality of a program’s placement matters long after graduation: a student who leaves with 1,000 hours starts the associate years a third of the way through them, and one who leaves with the 225-hour minimum starts at the beginning.

Practicum is also where a degree most often stops being on schedule. Coursework runs on a calendar the school controls; placement does not. The questions that matter are therefore all about who owns the problem of finding you a site — and the answer differs enormously between programs on this list.

What happens after the degree →

There is no in-house Concordia training clinic; because the degree is delivered online, every student trains at a site in their own community, and the handbook makes clear the student pursues the placement while the program approves it. A named faculty Field Coordinator (currently Joy Kelly Phifer, PhD, LCMHC, NCC) "oversees, coordinates, and manages the practicum and internship process," including "managing and approving site placements," but the handbook's advice to students — "Students should prioritize pursuing practicum and internship sites where video/audio recording is permitted" — is written to someone doing the pursuing. Practicum comes first and is the smaller, more closely watched piece: 100 hours with at least 40 direct client hours in a single semester, weekly individual and group supervision from a Concordia professor, and presentation of two or more case conceptualizations backed by audio/video recording or live observation. The two internships then move supervision to a dual model — weekly individual and group supervision from both a site supervisor and a Concordia supervisor — at 300 hours each with 120 direct client hours each, all logged in the Supervision Assist platform and evaluated with the CCS-R. Practical requirements you should budget for: proof of individual professional counseling liability insurance before you can even register for any of the three fieldwork courses, and a background check, since one listed bar to graduation is "a background check that indicated behavior incompatible with the field of professional counseling." On the California handoff: while enrolled in these courses you are an MFT trainee under BBS rules, and the handbook directs MCFC students to the BBS website for the post-degree Associate (AMFT) path — but it describes no formal traineeship-to-associate transition service, and the MCFC emphasis itself "is only provided for California-based students." source ↗

Will this degree travel

What the Board requires of any qualifying degree →

What it is, on paper

The program’s own page →

What it costs

The figure below is the institution’s own, from its own page, with the year it applies to. Multiply the per-unit rate by the actual unit count and add campus fees before comparing it with anything.

$695 a unit — source

What a month costs to live on while you study →

Getting in

Must have earned a cumulative GPA of 3.00 on a 4.00 scale source →

admissions page ↗

How its graduates did on the Board’s exam

Recorded by the Board as Concordia University. Its list is kept by institution and its names lag: a school that has since renamed appears under the name it had when the candidates sat.

July 2018 - December 2024, pooled (13 semiannual BBS reports) · the Board’s published exam results by school →

What people say about it

Nothing credible was found. Searched by every name variant across Reddit, Student Doctor Network and The GradCafe. Silence is not a verdict — small programs generate little discussion — but a missing section should not read as an endorsement, so it says so.

Threads about the decision itself, rather than about one school →

What to ask before you apply

None of these are answered on a program page, and all five change what the degree is actually worth to you.

What I could not establish

Everything above is sourced. These are the things I looked for and could not establish - take them to admissions, and note how quickly and precisely they answer.

• Cohort size is not published and, with five rolling start dates a year and no lockstep cohort, may not be a meaningful figure. No completion, licensure or job-placement rates are published for the MCFC emphasis.
• The claim that the program is "approved by the CABBS as an approved MFT program" is sourced only to Concordia's own program page and student handbook. The California BBS's LMFT applicant page points to Business and Professions Code section 4980.36 for degree requirements and references a "Schools with MFT Programs" list, but that list could not be located at a live URL on bbs.ca.gov during this research, so the claim could not be independently verified against a BBS-published source.
• The handbook repeatedly refers to a separate "MA Fieldwork Handbook" / "Practicum and Internship Manual" that contains the actual site-approval, recording and supervision protocols. That document is not publicly linked from the catalog or the program pages, so the precise mechanics of how a student finds and gets a site approved are unverified beyond what the student handbook summarizes.
• No relational (couple/family) direct-hour minimum is published for practicum or internship — the 280 direct hours are defined generically as direct service with clients, which is a real difference from COAMFTE-accredited programs.
• Whether the practicum and internship sites must be physically located in California is not stated. The handbook says the MCFC emphasis "is only provided for California-based students," which strongly implies it, but the site-location rule itself is not spelled out.
• No credible student discussion could be found. Reddit and comparable forums were not reachable during this research (Reddit blocks automated access and site-scoped web search was unavailable); GradReports carries 33 reviews of Concordia Irvine overall but none tagged to this program.
• The student handbook's stated degree requirements (45 core + 6 elective + 9 clinical = 60 units) describe the Clinical Mental Health path and do not match the catalog's 42 + 24 = 66 units for the MCFC emphasis. The catalog was treated as authoritative for MCFC.