Dr. Michael J. Carter has been a professor at California State University, Los Angeles since 1990 and serves as Coordinator of the School-Based Family Counseling Program (MFT+PPS/CWA) graduate program. Over 95% of these students graduate and over 87% obtain jobs in the field within 3-6 months after graduation. Dr. Carter teaches the Family Counseling Clinical Courses in Multicultural Conjoint Family Therapy and MFT fieldwork courses. He has been a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist since 1984 and is a Credentialed School Psychologist and School Counselor.  He earned a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from UCLA and has served on the California State Department of Education’s Student Mental Health Policy Workgroup for the past fourteen years. This group has been charged with finding ways to increase access and utilization of mental health services by students with diverse backgrounds, while reducing the stigma that is often associated with mental health services. A major obstacle has been that many of these services focus solely on the individual student and do not incorporate the family’s participation and worldview into the process of counseling. Most families value education as a means of improving their children’s lives but are hesitant to become involved in mental health services. Dr. Carter is primarily interested in preparing counselors to work with families and children in public agency settings such as schools and clinics to change the lack of engagement by people with diverse backgrounds in mental health services. This involves adopting a multicultural approach that incorporates parents’ and families’ desire to be a collaborative partner in the models used in their mental health services.
Dr. Carter has served as the Director of The School-Based Family Counseling Clinic for the past 35 years. This Clinic has a long history of specializing in delivering multicultural conjoint family counseling services in order to increase access and efficacy of mental health services to its surrounding communities. A major component of this approach is that the Clinic invites and requires families be involved in each step of the counseling process with their children. Recent estimates indicate that in the U.S., 15-20% of children experience a mental health problem severe enough to require treatment, yet 60-80% never adequately access services. Among those who initially engage in treatment, up to 80% drop out of care before receiving an effective treatment of 6 or more sessions. Latin youth and families have lesser engagement in child therapy services. In contrast, in the latest evaluation of the Clinic attendance data from 2016-2023, the SBFC Clinic showed an 85 % overall attendance rate with more than 90% attending 6 or more sessions, and with 86% of clients from underrepresented groups including Latinx, Black and Asian backgrounds. 

Dr. Carter is a lucky husband & father of 3 children and loves to ride bikes and play basketball.