Counseling Program Wins Top National Award

UNC Charlotte’s doctoral program in counselor education has received the Robert Frank Outstanding Counselor Education Program Award from the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES), the premier organization dedicated to quality education and supervision of counselors. ACES recognizes one master’s and one doctoral program nationally each year for excellence in the education and supervision of counselors in all work settings.

Phyllis Post, founder and director of the Multicultural Play Therapy Center in the Cato College of Education, noted, “Given our Southern urban setting and given the ethnic diversity of our region and of the master’s students in our program, I proposed we develop a doctoral program with a focus on diversity and multiculturalism. That was in 2000. With the support of former professor Mary Thomas Burke and our faculty, we began an amazing journey.”

From the beginning, the mission of the program has been to prepare multiculturally competent, ethical, clinically skilled and knowledgeable professionals who could provide quality direct service to diverse populations in community settings.

“Students need to learn from a variety of voices, so we have valued diversifying our faculty positions over the years in terms of race, gender and sexual orientation,” said Post. It is a group that is always ready and “willing to tackle difficult conversations,”said counseling professor Susan Furr.

The program uses data to inform admissions practices, which supports a more holistic approach that promotes diversity among its students, allowing the doctoral student body to better reflect the cultural makeup of the Charlotte region. The success of the program speaks to the efficacy of this approach, with countless publications, awards, fellowships, grants and teaching positions of graduates, who now feature among the staff of dozens of universities nationwide. The program also has had lasting impacts on the community.

“What makes our program unique is that our students work directly within our local communities to engage in advocacy,” said Sejal Foxx, professor and chair of the Counseling Department. One of the program’s enduring legacies is the consequences of the insistence on outreach. It is “creating access to mental health services to undocumented immigrants, helping nonprofit organizations develop programming for first-generation college students and working with homeless shelters to develop best practices for mental health services,” said Foxx.

Multiculturalism remains the program’s focus since it broke ground 20 years ago, making UNC Charlotte a leader in counselor education across the nation.

“Although this idea does not seem radical in today’s culture, at the time, no other program in the country made this statement,” said Furr. “The clearest, strongest thing I have learned is that our program is better and stronger because of the diverse voices we welcome.”