Division of Biblical Studies
Faculty
Dr. Bonnie Osmon
Assistant Professor of Family Studies
and Counselor Education
Course Syllabi:
Introduction to Family Science
Dr. Bonnie Osmon is a professor and a therapist. In addition she has an active life of fishing, music, and friends.
Dr. Osmon’s professional activities include full-time teaching of family therapy graduate and family studies undergraduate students at JBU. Bonnie is dedicated half-time to the graduate marriage and family therapy program and half-time to the Biblical Studies Division’s Family Studies program. Her favorite classes are Family Therapy, Family Science (for which she co-authored the textbook along with David Brisben), and Family Sexuality (which she has found to be the course most directly related to our relationship with God). Bonnie’s office is in the Biblical Studies Division. The Biblical Studies faculty who come from different denominational backgrounds provide a respectful, stimulating, and fun place to work.
Bonnie is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and a licensed Professional Counselor in Arkansas and is licensed to supervise trainees in both of those areas. Her doctoral training is in psychology with an emphasis in family psychology and her specialist degree is in school psychology. However, she prefers to identify herself as a marriage and family therapist, which she has found to be the most effective approach in helping people.
Bonnie describes her first calling as a Christian, and it is from that reference that she does all her work. She has more than fifteen years of experience counseling with people who face problems that are either inside of them (such as sadness, anger, fears), outside of them (such as violence, trauma, abuse), or between them and other people (such as marital issues, parenting, pre-marital counseling, or becoming an adult in the eyes of one's parents). Two areas of expertise is in working with adults who were abused as children and with children.
Bonnie provides counseling from her office at JBU and at PeopleCare Clinic. At PeopleCare she can offer low-cost counseling to clients willing to allow graduate students as co-therapists with her. Bonnie enjoys working with adults as well as with children, young adults, and older adults. As much as she loves doing therapy, Bonnie equally loves training others in family therapy. In addition to supervising and training people who are becoming licensed marriage and family therapists in the Northwest Arkansas area, Bonnie supervises MFT students at JBU and at Harding University.
Dr. Osmon is passionate about marriage and family therapy. In 1999 she was appointed as the marriage and family therapy representative to the Arkansas Board of Examiners in Counseling, the body that regulates and licenses LPCs and LMFTs. She is also the State’s representative to the American Marriage and Family Therapy Regulatory Board. Previously, she has served as President of the Arkansas Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and continues to work at both the state and national levels of the profession.
Bonnie has been married to Paul since 1965 and has two grown children who live in Austin, Texas and Fayetteville. Two dogs help to round out the family. She and her husband enjoy ultra light fishing, fly fishing, playing guitar or fiddle (especially bluegrass/traditional music) with friends or at church, traveling around the back roads, and “callin the Hogs.” They are a part of Fellowship Bible Church in Siloam Springs.