University Of Mobile: Q&A With UM Marriage & Family Counseling Prof Glenn Hollingsworth

Press release from the University of Mobile:

Kathy Dean

November 11, 2021

Now, Hollingsworth teaches students to do the same through the Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Counseling program in the University of Mobile College of Arts and Sciences. With degrees in marriage and family therapy, theological studies, and human development, combined with a heart for serving others, this professor prepares UM graduate students to fulfill their professional calling.

We talked with Dr. Hollingsworth about the field of marriage and family counseling, his interest in serving the military community, and the joy of a made-from-scratch pizza.

Q: Your dissertation was about military family reintegration. What drew your interest to that area of study?

A: Honestly, I initially went with strategy over passion. My curiosity seems to know no limits, so nailing down a dissertation topic was a struggle. I happened to work in a research lab at Virginia Tech whose primary task, among other things, was program evaluation for Operation Military Kids, which was created to provide support to geographically-dispersed children experiencing a parent’s deployment.

Among our more fun responsibilities was to visit OMK camps for military kids around the country and conduct focus groups around their experience of deployment and their military parent’s return to the home.  I was so struck by the stories these kids and their parents told of both pain and resilience as they managed to do life with a mom or dad on the other side of the world and in harm’s way.

When our lab was later tasked to conduct an assessment of how these families were faring overall, I jumped at the opportunity to get a couple measures related to boundaries, roles, family functioning, and so forth added to the overall survey. So the dissertation emerged from the generous contributions of hundreds of service members and their spouses/partners, and I remain grateful for them to this day.

I am fortunate as a civilian that I get to continue to be connected to the military community through my clinical work with Veterans Recovery Resources, a local non-profit outpatient clinic (with a residential facility in the works) that grew out of the need to fill some of the gaps in veteran care on the Gulf Coast.

Q: Why should someone choose to study Marriage & Family Counseling at the University of Mobile?

A: Our program is unique in lower Alabama as it’s the only one to my knowledge whose graduates can pursue either (or both) the Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist credentials after graduation and receive this education in a faith-based environment. Moreover, the courses are in the evening to allow for students of all ages to maintain much of their existing work schedule. Perhaps most importantly, given that the focus of a counseling program is really on what it means to be human and how to live well, even if a student never does another counseling session and goes into a different field entirely after graduation, he or she will still have benefited from an intensely personal and relationship-building experience that will continue to bear fruit for a lifetime.

Q: What is your favorite class to teach?

This press release was produced by the University of Mobile. The views expressed here are the author’s own.