College of Allied Health and Nursing Events

Suicide Prevention for Clinicians: Clinical Counseling on Access to Lethal Means (CALM) & Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO)

Don’t miss out—register early! Space is limited to 24 participants.

Cost: $150

Group/Agency Flat Rate: Want to schedule this training for an agency or group? $1,500 total for groups up to 10–24 participants. Contact Elizabeth Harstad for more information.

Earn 4 CEUs!

This training has been approved for 4 CEU's including 3 hours of Ethics by the Minnesota Board of Social Work, Minnesota Board of Marriage & Family Therapy, and the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC).
Counseling and Student Personnel has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 4558.

Training Summary:

This CALM Clinical Workshop is designed for professionals who provide counseling services and want to strengthen their ability to address access to lethal means with clients at risk for suicide. Participants will learn the rationale for means safety and develop practical skills for planning, initiating, and navigating conversations with clients and their families about reducing access to lethal means, particularly firearms and medications, during periods of elevated suicide risk. The workshop includes multiple opportunities to practice the strategies and language presented.

In addition to the core CALM content, this workshop will include an overview of Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs), an important legal tool that may temporarily restrict access to firearms during high-risk situations.

Presenters:

Darcie Davis Gage, PhD, LMHC, Certified Trainer through CALM America
Samantha Hoyt, MN Dept. of Public Safety Office of Justice, Certified Trainer through CALM America

Intended Audience:

The primary intended audience includes mental health clinicians, primary care providers, substance use disorder counselors, mental health hotline responders, and crisis intervention services.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this training, participants will be able to:

Explain the evidence-based connection between reducing access to lethal means and preventing suicide.
Identify and describe safe and effective storage solutions for firearms and potentially dangerous quantities of medications.
Initiate and navigate compassionate, collaborative conversations about safety planning and lethal means safety with individuals at risk for suicide and their families.
Apply lethal means safety counseling techniques through case discussions and practice scenarios.
Explain the legal framework for civil gun removal petitions and identify appropriate clinical and procedural steps related to filing, enforcement, and coordination to help prevent firearm-related harm.

Meet Your Presenters:

Darcie Davis-Gage, PhD, LMHC, is a professor in the Department of Counseling and Student Personnel and director of the Blue Cross® and Blue Shield® of Minnesota Center for Rural Behavioral Health at Minnesota State University, Mankato. A counselor educator, licensed mental health counselor, researcher, and organizational leader, she is dedicated to strengthening behavioral health services and improving access to care in rural communities. Her work focuses on rural-informed practice, behavioral health workforce development, integrated care, occupational stress, and community-based interventions. Dr. Davis-Gage also brings expertise in expressive arts therapy, first-responder wellness, compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and organizational resilience.

Samantha Hoyt brings nearly two decades of frontline crisis response and violence-prevention experience to her role as Minnesota’s Statewide ERPO Implementation Coordinator. After 18 years with the Brooklyn Park Police Department—where she served in the Community Health Unit and on the Crisis Negotiation Team—Sam developed deep expertise in behavioral health response, threat assessment, and ERPO petitioning. Today, she leads Minnesota’s statewide efforts to implement the ERPO law, building best practices, training systems, and cross-agency partnerships that support safer outcomes for individuals and communities. She holds a master’s degree in Forensic Behavioral Health and is dedicated to practical, collaborative strategies that reduce harm and strengthen community well-being.

Registration Questions: Email workforce@mnsu.edu or call 507-389-1094
Training Questions: Email elizabeth.harstad.3@mnsu.edu

Beyond Words: Creative and Expressive Arts Interventions for Children, Adolescents, and Families

Cost: $150 (cost includes morning coffee and lunch)

Location: South Central Service Cooperative (2075 Lookout Drive, N. Mankato, MN 56003)

Check-in begins at 8:30 & training beings at 9:00 with a 30-min lunch break at noon and two 15-min breaks

Earn 6 CEUs!

This training has been approved for 6 CEU's by the Minnesota Board of Social Work, the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC), and the MN Board of Marriage & Family Therapy.

Counseling and Student Personnel has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 4558

Training Summary:

Sometimes words are not enough—especially when working with children, adolescents, and families. Expressive arts offer engaging, developmentally responsive ways for clients to communicate experiences, explore emotions, strengthen relationships, make meaning, and practice new coping and regulation skills.

This interactive, six-hour workshop introduces foundational principles of expressive arts therapy and explores how creative interventions can be thoughtfully incorporated into behavioral health, school, healthcare, and community settings. Participants will examine several theoretical perspectives that inform expressive arts practice and consider how theory guides the selection and facilitation of creative interventions.

The workshop emphasizes learning by doing. Participants will experience practical activities incorporating visual art, movement, music, imagery, storytelling, metaphor, and other creative modalities. Special attention will be given to adapting activities for children, adolescents, couples, and families, including those living in rural communities.

Beyond building professional skills, this workshop offers participants an opportunity to slow down, reconnect with their own creativity, and have some fun! Experiential activities will encourage self-awareness, reflection, connection, and personal renewal. Participants will explore how expressive arts can support their own self-care and resilience while also expanding their ability to engage clients in meaningful ways.

No artistic ability is needed—curiosity and a willingness to participate are far more important. Participants will leave with adaptable activities, practical resources, increased personal insight, and renewed confidence in helping clients communicate and connect beyond words.

This workshop is designed for mental health counselors, school counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, psychiatric nurses, case managers, psychologists, substance-use professionals, family-service providers, and other professionals who support children, adolescents, and families.

Learning Objectives:

Describe foundational principles, theoretical perspectives, and therapeutic mechanisms associated with expressive arts interventions.
Apply foundational principles from varied counseling theories to design and facilitate expressive arts interventions, translating theory into purposeful practice.
Select and adapt expressive arts interventions to meet the developmental, cultural, relational, and sensory needs of children, adolescents, and families, including those living in rural communities where access to specialized behavioral health resources may be limited.
Apply at least three experiential interventions that support emotional expression, regulation, communication, connection, and meaning-making.
Use expressive arts activities to increase professional self-awareness, encourage reflective practice, and support self-care, resilience, and personal renewal.

Meet Your Presenter:

Dr. Davis-Gage is trained in expressive arts therapy and incorporates creative, experiential, and activity-based approaches into clinical practice, professional training, and community programming. Her work emphasizes practical strategies that build connection, encourage exploration, and support coping and resilience beyond traditional talk-based methods.

She also brings expertise in occupational stress, compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, first-responder wellness, and organizational resilience. Across her work, Dr. Davis-Gage combines clinical knowledge, creativity, and experiential learning to help helping professionals strengthen connection, regulation, and wellbeing.

Registration Questions: Email workforce@mnsu.edu or call 507-389-1094
Training Questions: Email elizabeth.harstad.3@mnsu.edu

Noticing & Nourishing Yourself in the Therapy Room: Practical Nervous System Regulation for Clinicians Training

Start the new year by making space for yourself. Join the Blue Cross® and Blue Shield® of Minnesota Center for Rural Behavioral Health for a practical training designed to help clinicians notice their own nervous system responses and develop strategies for regulation in the therapy room.

Cost: $99 (early bird price of $75 if registered by December 31, 2026)

Earn 4 CEUs!

This training is approved for 4 CEU's by the Minnesota boards of Social Work and awaiting approval by the boards of Marriage and Family Therapy, Behavioral Health and Therapy, and Psychology.

Training Summary:

Clinicians are trained to closely attend to the experiences, emotions, and needs of their clients but in the process of doing so often disconnect from their own internal experience in order to meet the demands of the work. Over time, this can contribute to chronic stress, diminished presence, compassion fatigue, and burnout.

This experiential, introductory workshop will help clinicians understand how their own nervous system state influences attention, decision-making, boundaries, and connection in the therapy room. Through accessible education about the autonomic nervous system, guided reflection, somatic inquiry, and gentle embodied practices, participants will learn to recognize signs of under-resourcing and respond with greater awareness and choice.

Rather than adding more complicated strategies to an already-full workload, the training emphasizes small, practical pauses that can be incorporated into the clinical day. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of their own patterns and one or two tools they can begin using immediately to support both personal well-being and therapeutic presence.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

Describe how autonomic nervous system states can influence a clinician’s attention, interpretation, boundaries, and capacity for connection in the therapy room.
Identify personal cognitive, emotional, and physical cues that may indicate stress or under-resourcing during clinical work.
Apply a brief notice–pause–choose process to increase awareness and agency during or between clinical encounters.
Practice at least two accessible somatic strategies that can support regulation and embodied presence during the clinical day.
Develop a personalized micro-action plan for integrating one nervous-system-supportive practice into their work.

Meet Your Presenters:

Jessica Dorzek, LCSW, is a clinical therapist, writer, and nervous system educator with more than 20 years of experience helping people create meaningful, sustainable change. Her work integrates clinical social work, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Polyvagal Theory, family systems, and mindfulness to explore how stress influences behavior, relationships, boundaries, and professional effectiveness. Jessica is the founder of Mindshift Counseling and co-founder of Calm & Strong, where she develops practical, accessible training for individuals, clinicians, and organizations.

Jessica is particularly interested in the gap between knowing what would help and being able to access it under stress—a challenge clinicians experience alongside their clients. Her teaching emphasizes recognizing nervous system states, interrupting patterns of over functioning and disconnection, and using small, intentional pauses to restore awareness and choice. Through storytelling, clinical examples, and practical tools, she helps participants translate complex concepts into everyday practices that support boundaries, sustainable care, and greater presence in the therapy room.

Alyssa Baker, LICSW, is a clinical social worker and advanced yoga teacher whose clinical approach is grounded at the intersection of the mind, the body, and the human experience and is informed by Internal Family Systems, Polyvagal Theory, the biopsychosocial model, Somatics by Thomas Hanna, and yoga therapy through The International SomaYoga Institute in Duluth, Mn. She holds a Bachelor of Exercise Science and Master of Social Work from Minnesota State University. Alyssa has over 15 years of experience across mental health, health and wellness, and higher education settings.

Through her private practice, Collective Remedy, Alyssa supports women in developing self-awareness, self-compassion, and choice while working to understand and change patterns that no longer serve them. She is particularly passionate about helping clinicians learn to tend to what accumulates in them due to the nature of clinical work through use of somatic inquiry. These practices include cultivating interoceptive awareness, improving breath function, regulating the nervous system, and releasing muscular tension — so that clinicians ultimately learn how to better support both their own well-being and their ability to be present with clients.

Not able to attend January 21st?
No problem. Register for the recorded session and a link to view it will be emailed to you after the September 24th training.

Registration Questions: Email workforce@mnsu.edu or call 507-389-1094
Training Questions: Email elizabeth.harstad.3@mnsu.edu