Equip yourself with the tools needed to become a successful marriage and family therapist through Iona University’s Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) program. Upon completion of your degree, you will have gained the experience and skills necessary to help clients from a variety of backgrounds achieve lasting, positive changes.
Iona University’s Marriage and Family Therapy program is committed to social justice. The program will provide you with the culturally responsive and inclusive skills needed to work with a diverse group of individuals, couples, and families.
Our dedicated faculty and staff are all licensed marriage and family therapists. The small size of our MFT program enables faculty to provide individualized instruction that feels more like mentoring than teaching.
We prepare you to develop an effective self-awareness in your training as a therapist by focusing on the Self-of-the-Therapist. This allows our MFT students to become fully prepared and confident marriage and family therapists.
Our program emphasizes hands-on learning through the Iona Family Therapy Center and other clinical field placements in the New York City and surrounding areas. In the Iona Family Therapy Center, graduate students work directly with clients on an array of important areas including family conflict, bereavement, divorce, coping skills and much more.
Iona University’s Marriage and Family Therapy degree is one of only four programs in New York State accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE).
Our alumni data collection reflects a 100 percent pass rate for the National Exam for students seeking state licensure. Graduates are eligible for therapist licensure upon completion of additional post-master's New York State requirements.
Students can complete this 60-credit degree – including their 500 supervised face-to-face clinical experience hours – in 3 years. Our hybrid in-person/online learning model reduces time on campus which allows working professionals to maintain their current employment for part of the program.
As part of the NewYork-Presbyterian Iona School of Health Sciences, students in the Marriage and Family Therapy (MS) program will develop the skills and experience needed for tomorrow’s workforce.
Iona students may have the opportunity to do clinicals and rotations at NewYork-Presbyterian, ranked one of the top hospitals in the nation by U.S. News & World Report 2022-23.
Align your education with your career goals at the NewYork-Presbyterian Iona School of Health Sciences and earn a degree of tremendous value for your future.
1-2 page autobiographical statement explaining what spurred your interest in becoming a Marriage and Family therapist, two letters of recommendation, and GRE scores if overall GPA is below 3.0.
Navigating your relationships as you enter post-pandemic life
In this feature, Program Director Dr. Awosan discusses how the pandemic has affected relationships and what couples can do to improve communication.
You will build the practical skills and knowledge to become a family-centered therapist through coursework in the fields of therapy, behavioral science, education and social services. Discussing individual, couple and family development, your counseling education examines different life phases along with the various challenges typically encountered in each life stage. As part of the coursework, you complete 500 supervised face-to-face clinical experience hours with individuals, couples and families.
Throughout the MFT degree, our COAMFTE-accredited curriculum introduces the different models of family therapy. This focus on family systems is the cornerstone of marriage and family therapy programs, compared to other psychology, counseling or social work degrees.
One of the most exciting and important areas that we study is you! Our graduate program in marriage and family therapy emphasizes “the self of the therapist”–your personality, your family background, culture(s), ethnicity and gender, all of which have shaped who you are and continue to influence how you interact in the therapy room.
In addition, our curriculum highlights all types of human diversity because it is important to understand the people with whom you will work as therapists and the appropriate intervention techniques.
