NOTE: Faculty appointments are currently full, and the waitlist for teaching at Sentio University is approximately two years. If you would like to join the waitlist, please complete this form.

Teach at Sentio University

At Sentio, we've reimagined graduate education in psychotherapy. Rather than separating theory from practice, our Clinic-to-Classroom method brings real clinical work directly into the learning environment. This approach is grounded in the Deliberate Practice model, where students spend roughly half of nearly every class session engaged in active skills training rather than passive lecture.

As a Sentio faculty member, you'll guide students through repeated skills rehearsal, provide immediate feedback, and facilitate reflective learning. Your classroom becomes a simulated clinic where students work with real cases from the Sentio Counseling Center, practice therapy techniques through role-plays, and receive structured supervision. You'll help trainees develop not just theoretical knowledge but the procedural skills, self-awareness, and adaptability essential for effective clinical practice.

Comprehensive Faculty Development Program

Teaching at Sentio means joining a community committed to excellence in education. We provide extensive support for our faculty through:

Initial Training: When you join Sentio, you'll receive comprehensive orientation to the Deliberate Practice model and our Clinic-to-Classroom and Deliberate Practice Supervision methodology, ensuring you have the tools to facilitate experiential learning effectively.

Weekly Professional Development: Every week, our faculty gather for collaborative learning and growth. These sessions keep you connected to cutting-edge developments in clinical training and allow you to learn from colleagues across the program.z

Video Review and Individual Feedback: Here's what makes Sentio truly distinctive: Every single class session you teach is video recorded. Our Chief Academic Officer personally reviews each recording and provides you with detailed, individualized feedback during weekly faculty meetings. This level of support is unprecedented in graduate education. Just as we ask our students to embrace observation and feedback as pathways to mastery, we model this same commitment to continuous improvement in our teaching.

This video review process facilitates developmental coaching that helps you refine your teaching methods, identify opportunities to enhance student engagement, and strengthen your facilitation of experiential learning. You'll receive specific observations about what's working well and concrete suggestions for growth. Many faculty members describe this feedback as the most valuable professional development they've ever received.

What We're Looking For

We seek faculty who are passionate about skills-based training, comfortable with direct observation and feedback, and committed to the Deliberate Practice philosophy. You should be an experienced clinician who values experiential learning over purely didactic instruction and who wants to be part of a teaching community dedicated to continuous improvement.

Sentio’s Clinic to Classroom Approach

Sentio’s teaching model brings real clinical work directly into the learning environment through what we call the Clinic to Classroom method. This approach integrates three elements:

1. Real clinical material in the classroom

2. Structured, repeated practice of therapy skills

3. Ongoing feedback and reflection driven by data and supervision

The method is grounded in the deliberate practice model of skill development, which emphasizes focused rehearsal of specific skills, immediate feedback, and gradual refinement over time (Levenson, 2024; Rousmaniere & Vaz, 2025). In practice, this means that in most Sentio courses, approximately half of class time is devoted to active skills training rather than traditional lecture.

Key features of the Sentio approach include:

1. Regular use of real and simulated cases
   • Students bring recordings or transcripts from their work at the Sentio Counseling Center, a nonprofit online clinic, into class for review.
   • Faculty guide structured role plays that mirror common clinical situations so that students can apply techniques in real time.

2. Deliberate practice in every course
   • Complex therapy skills are broken into smaller, trainable components.
   • Students repeatedly rehearse specific interventions in their zone of proximal development, with clear learning targets for each practice segment.

3. Intensive supervision and feedback
   • Faculty and supervisors observe student work, provide immediate, specific feedback, and collaboratively set practice goals for the next cycle of learning.
   • Supervisors receive formal training in deliberate practice methods so that feedback is consistent, structured, and growth focused.

4. Outcome informed learning
   • Students track client outcomes session by session and share data in supervision and class.
   • Faculty help students interpret their outcome data and use it to identify strengths, blind spots, and targets for focused practice.

Overall, the Sentio classroom is designed to function like a simulated clinic. Students do not only learn about therapy; they practice therapy, receive feedback, and refine their skills in each class meeting (Rousmaniere & Vaz, 2025).

What It Means To Teach at Sentio

Teaching at Sentio aligns closely with this Clinic to Classroom framework. Faculty are expected to:

1. Integrate clinical material into teaching
   • Invite students to bring real session material, where appropriate and ethically sound.
   • Use role plays, live demonstrations, and structured exercises to translate theory into action.

2. Emphasize skill acquisition, not only knowledge transfer
   • Design class sessions so that students spend substantial time practicing targeted skills.
   • Provide clear performance criteria and help students monitor their progress.

3. Offer specific, compassionate feedback
   • Observe students closely during role plays or case discussions.
   • Give feedback that is concrete, behaviorally anchored, and oriented toward small, achievable improvements.

4. Support self awareness and adaptability
   • Facilitate reflection on the student’s internal experience during sessions, including anxiety, emotional reactions, and values.
   • Help students develop the flexibility to adjust their approach to different clients and contexts.

Who We Are Looking For

Sentio faculty typically:

1. Are licensed or license eligible mental health professionals with strong clinical experience.

2. Value evidence informed practice, are open to videotaping their teaching, and welcome feedback about their work.

3. Enjoy hands on teaching, including role plays, demonstrations, and close supervision of student performance.

4. Are committed to ongoing learning, self reflection, and cultural humility.

Prior experience with deliberate practice is welcome but not required. More important is a willingness to engage deeply with this model, receive meaningful feedback, and to experiment with new ways of teaching.

Why focus on Deliberate Practice teaching?

There is longstanding consensus between researchers and trainers for the need of more procedural skill building opportunities in clinical training programs. For example, prominent researchers Lambert and Ogles concluded:

“The research in rather unequivocal. If a mental health training program values the development of basic interpersonal or interviewing skills, this can best be achieved with a program that clearly specifies the skills to be learned and then develops training (including modeling and practice) directed at this goal. Systematic teaching is superior to unsystematic teaching.” (Lambert & Ogles, 1997, p. 427).

Similarly, an influential literature review on therapist training by Clara Hill and Sarah Knox concluded that:

“Research … has pointed to the effectiveness of instruction, modeling, feedback, and especially practice for learning helping skills.” (Hill & Knox, 2013, p. 803; underlined added)

Research indicates that Deliberate Practice learning procedures seem to be reliably more effective than passive methods at changing behavior (McGaghie et al., 2011; Cross et al., 2011; Beidas & Kendall, 2010; Beidas, Cross, & Dorsey, 2014; Herschell et al., 2010). The Deliberate Practice methods used at Sentio are also distinctive in that they focus on direct observation and monitoring of trainee’s work performance, provision of expert feedback, and tailored behavioral rehearsal aimed at refining one’s performance (Ericsson & Pool, 2016; Rousmaniere et al., 2017).