TPC Journal-Vol 9 Issue 3-FULL

The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 3 255 benefit from a consensus on licensure requirements, resulting in fewer barriers to licensure portability (Burns & Cruikshanks, 2018). In an attempt to explore these issues in one area of the United States, the authors established a regional licensing committee. The Interstate Licensing Agreement Committee In 2015, the Rocky Mountain Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (RMACES) board authorized the formation of the Interstate Licensing Agreement Committee. The committee members were comprised of counselor educators and clinicians who represented the six states in the RMACES region: Colorado (CO), Idaho (ID), Montana (MT), New Mexico (NM), Utah (UT), and Wyoming (WY). The goal of the committee was to have representatives from each state in the RMACES region work together and with their respective state licensing boards to develop an interstate agreement for counseling licensure reciprocity. Table 1 shows the similarities and differences between the state licensing requirements in the Rocky Mountain region (ACA, 2016). The first column identifies the state, and the second column contains the acronym for the top tier title for a counseling license. The next two columns contain the educational requirements, including type of programmatic accreditation and the minimum number of credit hours. The next four columns are experiential requirements, which include the required number of hours of clinical supervision, the number of direct client hours, the minimum number of years of post-graduation experience, and the total number of overall counseling-related hours. Many attempts to find common licensing ground and facilitate discussions between even two of the state boards was met with resistance from licensure board members. The committee hoped to open dialogue regarding the possibility of establishing greater alignment between a minimum of two states. The attempts of collaboration between state boards became futile so the committee then turned their efforts toward engaging in research on topics related to counselor licensure and portability. The Interstate Licensing Agreement Committee representatives are the researchers in this study and the authors of this manuscript. Table 1 Summary of State Licensing Requirements in the RMACES Region State Top Tier Title Educational Requirements Experiential Requirements Exams Accreditation Credit Hours Supervision Hours Direct Hours Years Total Hours CO LPC CACREP 60 100 NS 2 2,000 NCE + CO Exam ID LCPC Accredited 60 80 2,400 2 3,400 NCE + NCMHCE MT LCPC Accredited 60 1:20 a 1,000 NS 3,000 NCE NM LPCC Accredited 48 100 3,000 2 NS NCE + NCMHCE UT LCMHC CACREP 60 100 NS NS 4,000 NCE + NCMHCE + UT Exam WY LPC CACREP/CORE 60 100 1,200 NS 3,000 NCE or NCMHCE or CRCE Note . NS = Not specified. Table adapted from data in Licensure Requirements for Professional Counselors: A State-By-State Report (2016 Edition) . Copyright 2016 by the American Counseling Association. a Requires 1 hour of supervision for every 20 clinical hours.