Delta Kappa is the National Honor Society for Marriage & Family Therapy (MFT). This organization serves to further complement the fine work that is done by the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, the American Family Therapy Academy, and the International Family Therapy Association.

The national honor society for MFT has three primary goals. The first goals is to train emerging leaders in the MFT field to assume the mantle of leadership in the profession. The second goal is to provide a structure for developing scholarly forums that present up and coming cutting edge research and theories on MFT to be able to provide practitioners on an ongoing basis. The goal is to have this information promoted at the local, state, regional, national and international levels. The third goal is to recognize and further promote the wonderful achievements made by MFT clinicians and scholars.

In order for a MFT professional, or in our case student, to quality to join Delta Kappa, they have to meet GPA requirement of 3.7 or higher and have to be enrolled in a COAMFTE accredited marriage and family therapy program. There are only 8 COAMFTE accredited programs in California, and only 2 of those program have Delta Kappa Chapters, and Chapman University is one of them. The other COAMFTE accredited program is Hope International University, and the program director of their MFT program, Dr. Susan Hastings, attended the installation ceremony. The President of Delta Kappa, Dr. Michelle Robertson, who is also a Professor of Marriage and Family Therapy at Friends University in Kansas, flew out and gave opening remarks at the installation ceremony. Dr. Janeen Hill, Dean of Crean College, presented the welcome address for the installation ceremony and kicked things off on Friday April 28, 2017.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the induction ceremony on Friday April 28th, 31 Chapman University MFT students were inducted into Delta Kappa along with Dr. Naveen Jonathan (director of MFT program), Dr. Brennan Peterson (MFT Professor), Dr. Arpita Lal (MFT Assistant Professor), Ms. Susan Jester (Director of the Francis Smith Clinic), and Ms. Cassidy Manton (MFT Program Manager).

Amanda (Mandy) Herrera, President of the new Delta Kappa Chapter at Chapman University, was voted as President by her fellow MFT classmates. When asking her what it meant to be inducted to the national honors society she stated “It is quite an honor to be nominated by my peers. Their sheer support and enthusiasm will help build the foundation for this inaugural program as we aim to provide an exciting and renowned legacy for Chapman”. Mandy will graduate in May 2018 and thinks that being a pioneer of this program alongside her peers will “allow me the ability to further my skills as a leader, supervisor and professional. This society of scholars will foster networking opportunities that will propel us into life as interns and later as licensed clinicians.”

We then asked MFT program Director, Dr. Naveen Jonathan, what it feels like to be considered part of the MFT national society as an MFT professional he said “I feel that it is an honor to be part of the national MFT honor society. For me as an MFT professional I am interested in being part of a larger organization that supports excellence in the discipline of MFT at all career levels.” In turn, when Dr. Arpita Lal was asked what it meant to her to be inducted into the new Delta Kappa chapter she said “It is an honor and a responsibility to be part of the MFT Honor Society. I feel a sense of responsibility to make a contribution to further the work that has been done by outstanding professionals in our field.”

 

Having the new chapter of Delta Kappa further illustrates the strengths of the MFT program in Crean College. Please join Crean College in congratulating the MFT program on this exciting accomplishment of opening a Delta Kappa National Honor Society chapter!