UM Upper Chesapeake Health Establishes Clinical Pastoral Education Program

Rev. Dr. Allen Siegel, Director, Spiritual Care Services, serves as clinical supervisor and educator.

BEL AIR, Md. (November 13, 2023) – University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health (UM UCH) has established a Clinical Pastoral Education program in collaboration with the Institute for Clinical Pastoral Training (ICPT).

Rev. Dr. Allen Siegel, Director, Spiritual Care Services at UM UCH, will be the program’s clinical supervisor and educator. He was recently credentialed as an educator for chaplain training by the ICPT after completing a 1,600-hour credentialing process.

Clinical Pastoral Education is a foundational chaplaincy training program that can lead to board certification as a professional chaplain. It is the first program of its kind at a University of Maryland Medical System hospital.

“We are so pleased to offer this innovative program at UM UCH,” said Elizabeth Wise, FACHE, MSN, MBA, President and Chief Executive Officer of UM UCH. “Clinical Pastoral Education training will assist efforts to increase chaplaincy for patients and staff support in addition to training members of the community to be chaplains of the future,” Wise added.

The UM UCH Clinical Pastoral Education program will begin January 1, 2024 for a 24-week, part-time course of study. Enrollment is limited to five students, and applications are due by December 3. For more information or to apply, contact Siegel via email at asiegel1@umm.edu or by phone at 443-643-1375. Clinical Pastoral Education is taught in 400 hour-long units, 100 didactic hours and 300 hours of clinical experience per unit. Professional chaplaincy requires four units of Continuing Professional Education—1,600 hours of combined didactic/clinical training.

Professional chaplains are employed in health care, prisons and corporate settings. Attendees of a Clinical Pastoral Education program gain valuable knowledge, personal insights and chaplaincy skills that will enhance their ministry or professional career.

The Institute for Clinical Pastoral Training is accredited by the Accrediting Council for Continuing Education & Training (ACCET). ACCET is listed by the U.S. Department of Education as a nationally recognized accrediting agency.

About University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health

University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health, part of the University of Maryland Medical System, includes the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Medical Center and the Patricia D. and M. Scot Kaufman Cancer Center on its Bel Air campus. The Klein Family Harford Crisis Center in Bel Air offers services for behavioral health. The Senator Bob Hooper House in Forest Hill is an assisted living facility that specializes in hospice. The University of Maryland Harford Memorial Hospital is located in Havre de Grace. The leading health care system and the second largest private employer in Harford County, UM Upper Chesapeake Health offers a broad range of health care services, specialty care, technology and facilities to the residents of northeastern Maryland. Visit www.umms.org/uch for more information.

About the University of Maryland Medical System

The University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) is an academic private health system, focused on delivering compassionate, high quality care and putting discovery and innovation into practice at the bedside. Partnering with the University of Maryland School of Medicine and University of Maryland, Baltimore who educate the state’s future health care professionals, UMMS is an integrated network of care, delivering 25 percent of all hospital care in urban, suburban and rural communities across the state of Maryland. UMMS puts academic medicine within reach through primary and specialty care delivered at 11 hospitals, including the flagship University of Maryland Medical Center, the System’s anchor institution in downtown Baltimore, as well as through a network of University of Maryland Urgent Care centers and more than 150 other locations in 13 counties. For more information, visit www.umms.org.