Heidi Levine
I think that a lot of what the mental health professionals who are working in higher ed have to offer beyond the direct services that they are providing and the clinical services that they’re providing to students is twofold. One, a heightened focus on prevention and we have students who so need to learn healthy self care strategies, and positive coping and emotion, emotional regulation and emotion, you know, managing their emotional well being. Because you know, 18 to 20 year old brains don’t do that necessarily Well, for starters, and then look at what these this cohort of students has been living with. These are real challenges for them. So I think that prevention work can be really helpful, but also helping to provide some training to faculty and staff.

Raechele Pope
Welcome to Student Affairs now, I’m Raechele Pope. And I’m also joined today by co host, Gudrun Nyunt. Who will you will hear from in just a bit. Today we’re discussing ACPA has roots in the counseling profession. This is part of a 13 episode series for a CPAs 100th anniversary and a partnership between ACPA and Student Affairs NOW, we have three great guests today. Leila Moore, Heidi Levine and Amy Reynolds, who are here to talk about ACPA has roots in the counseling profession, and the contributions and learnings from the field of student affairs in higher education, our students, and the counseling profession had benefited. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays find details about this episode, or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Today’s episode is sponsored by ACPA an independent 501 C three nonprofit association, which is sponsoring this special 13 episode series with Student Affairs NOW to celebrate its 100th anniversary, boldly transforming higher education. As I mentioned, I’m your co host for Raechele Pope, my pronouns are she and her. I’m a professor in the higher education and student affairs program at the University of Buffalo. And I also serve as a Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Student Affairs and the Chief Diversity Officer for the Graduate School of Education. I’m recording today near the University of Buffalo’s campus on the unseeded land.

Gudrun Nyunt
Hello, I am Gudrun Nyunt. My pronouns are she and her and I’m an assistant professor and program coordinator of the Higher Education and Student Affairs Program at Northern Illinois University. I also have the honor of serving on the ACPA at 100. core committee. And so I’m joining you today from Northern Illinois University, which occupies the homeland of peoples, also known as the Council of the three fires. The topic of today’s episode is ACPAs roots in the counseling profession. And so to get us started, I’m going to give you a brief overview of ACPAs history. But we can also add a couple links to the show notes for those of you who want to learn more. And so ACPA was founded in 1924 by nine women who were appointment secretaries, which means to help graduating seniors find appropriate positions. The organization was then called the National Association of appointment secretaries. As the organization grew, that name didn’t really align with the various responsibilities and positions that its members held. And so it went through a couple of name changes. And then in 1931, the name ACPA, or American college personnel association was adopted. And so over the years, there was five or six major guidance Association. And by the late 40s, early 50s, there were conversations about the need for more formal unification among those associations. And so in 1952, APGA the American personnel and guidance Association was formed, and ACPA became Division One of APGA. Now, what’s important to know is APGA has also gone through a couple of name changes, and you might know it better by its current name, ACA are the American Counseling Association. And so for 40 years SEPA was part of APGA, a Counseling Association, until ACPA, members voted for disaffiliation in 1991. And so what that means is that for many ACPA leaders, right, the work that we do in student affairs was really grounded in the counseling profession. And we still see that today, right? Many of our graduate programs include counseling or helping skills courses, and much of the work we do requires us right to provide guidance and counsel to students. And so I’m thrilled that we are joined today by three panelists who have been engaged in both Student Affairs and the counseling profession throughout their careers, and have held various leadership roles within ACPA. And so enough for me, let’s get the conversation started. And so if I can have each of you just introduce yourself with your pronouns, and then share a little bit about yourself and your connection to our topic, so your background and involvement with counseling, Student Affairs and ACPA Leila, would you like to get us started?

Heidi Levine
Thank you Gudrun and hello, everybody. I’m Heidi Lavon. My pronouns are she and hers. And I’m coming to you from Simpson College in central Iowa, which is on the territories of the Ioway and Meskwaki peoples. I have lots of connections to some of my fellow panelists, including getting my undergraduate degree in psychology at Northern Illinois University a few years before Gudrun was there. But then spending quality time in Penn State with Leila, where I received my master’s in counselor education. And I have a PhD in counseling psychology from Temple University. Early in my career after my brief stint in Residence Life, which I think necessity, right, I spent more than 20 years in field of counseling mental health care on college campuses, and so worked at college counseling centers at both small private institutions but also mid sized public institutions. My last position in counseling was actually integrating a Health and Counseling Center at one of the other schools in the State University of New York system. It’s been eight years and it was a fascinating experience pulling together these two highly related and yet very distinct disciplines. It really good opportunity to think about holistic health care which fits with what we’re talking about today. My ACPA journey goes back to joining in the 1981 when I started my master’s programs so I’ve been a career long ACPA member and highly involved in the association including most relevant to our time versation today, having served as a director, directorate member and chair of the commission for Counseling and Psychological Services. Since moving in to more administrative roles in my paid professions, I had spent seven years at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa as the Dean of Students. And I’m finishing my ninth year at Simpson college where I’m the Vice President for Student Development, I’ve still been able to stay connected to my own professional brutes in mental health, through some adjunct teaching work primarily at the University of Iowa where I taught helping skills classes, using a fantastic volume that was written by one of my co panelists. And in 2016, co edited a new directions volume on college mental health, that was focusing on looking at student mental health, not from the perspective of practitioners, but for all student affairs, folks, and I’m sure we’ll be talking about that more as we go on.

Gudrun Nyunt
Thank you, Heidi. Leila, would you like to go next?

Leila V. Moore
Yes of course. My name is Leila Moore, my pronouns are she and her. I am meeting with you today from Hampton, New Hampshire, which is the territory of the Abenaki tribe. I want to give a little bit of background about where I came from first and where I am now, as many of you know, I’m already retired. So brace yourself for a long introduction, that I’m one of the things that what I want to make very clear about me is my growth as a professional occurred after I was encouraged by my Dean of Women upon leaving Carnegie tech as an English major for crying out loud, to go to Syracuse University for the student dean program. So I began my career in counseling really, from that perspective. And my journey took me first through a number of administrative positions, until I finished my doctorate at SUNY Albany in 1975. At that time, I taught for a couple of years and just finished the 45th reunion of the first class of students I ever taught in graduate school, we had a marvelous time and almost everybody was there. It it helps me understand that the word counseling for me is starting to morph even then, into a context in which the counseling or helping happens and so as I move forward in my career, my first any at EPA episode of being involved in the other side of the coin was when I went to Penn State and took a full time position as a faculty member. There, I really saw how counseling work together with the administrative side of the house in higher education. And at that point, began to hone both skills, serving for probably 25 to 30 years all told, in a variety of adjunct positions. As faculty member in a variety of settings, Bowling Green State University, Salem State University, Clarion University, Penn State, I came back for adjunct work there as well. Moving to the University of New Hampshire then I was asked to join the Teaching Excellence program as a faculty member be found myself teaching psychology majors, the importance of counseling, that was interesting experience to say the least. I retired a number of years ago but continued my involvement in the profession through working with the executive search firm of William Spellman executive search. The reason I point that out is that that whole experience is in in my journey, one of the most important culminating experiences in which I found myself using practically every skill I ever owned in so many different areas, establishing rapport with clients, behaving in a coaching and counseling way with clients who were not invited back for campus visits. And so my my work is continued a little bit. I’m still seeing some people for resume reviews, but I branched out a little bit and I do some coaching on this side as well, but I’m really fully retired at this point and enjoying it. My field of academic work is explained but now my professional involvement which is easy. I joined I joined APGA for First, and then was responsible as a leader of ACPA following that, in overseeing the separation of ACPA from APGA. The route there is the counseling focus of then a PGA. And the importance of that role as time went on. To all of us in higher education. The reason for the separation was to take into account the context of counseling within the setting of higher education. And in doing that, the transformation of the knowledge of counseling, the understanding of it, and most importantly, the inclusiveness of it became a big part of what I saw as what we were missing, because most of our work as a profession, up until that time, really focused on working collaboratively on campus, isn’t it, it really wasn’t quite the same experience when we were part of APGA, which then became the American Counseling Association, but the counseling part has remained, it’s alive. And well, it’s probably been greatly informed by the context of the college campus. My other roles of ACPA included being involved in a variety of leadership roles over the earlier years. And then I served as President, as I mentioned, for the separation of ACPA. From its parent organization at the time, I also served as a founding member of the foundation, and worked in that capacity for a number of years. And then finally, I began to pull myself away gradually to just the work was Feldman. And so my career really ended with with working with him full time in the executive search field. Thank you.

Raechele Pope
Thank you, Leila, I’m going to ask

Gudrun Nyunt
All right, and how about you, Amy?

Amy L. Reynolds
Thanks, thanks. I’m excited to be here with all of you. My journey has overlaps with both Leila and Heidi, but it also has its own distinct flavor. I began my career I got a master’s in student affairs student personnel. With Bob Rogers at Ohio State. He was my advisor. And randomly I got chosen to get a minor while getting my Master’s in Counseling Psychology. And I knew immediately that I didn’t want to be a student affairs administrator, I wanted to be a counselor, a psychologist. And so I, I finished my master’s in student affairs, and went on to get my doctorate in counseling psychology, with the belief and expectation because I still wanted to work with college students, that I would spend my entire career at the counseling center level, culminating with at the time what my interest was, was being a training director. So I got my PhD, got my first Counseling Center job at the University of Iowa, where I was, in fact involved with training. But then I had the opportunity to move east and become a faculty member. So I did, I did that in counseling psychology. But then I was kind of missing Counseling Center work. There’s a sense of team and staff that solving problems together, that is clearly not part of faculty life. And so I had the opportunity I worked at the counseling center at Buffalo State College. But about that time, I decided to go back to faculty, and that’s where I’ve stayed since 2005. But I always sort of jokingly say, I consider myself to be bilingual. I speak Faculty and Student Affairs. And both are core to who I am. And a big part of my my, my story. So I would say that I got involved in ACN. I joined ACPA in 82. Right around the time you did Heidi and I got involved in leadership as well. I was there on the Executive Council or board when Leila was president when we did the separation from APGA and that was powerful for me to observe an organization really kind of doing that and being true to their mission and taking a big risk, which clearly has paid off greatly. I would say that as a counseling psychologist, some of my research over the years, much of my research over the years has been involved in in a student affairs and context. And so many of the books I’ve written. Some of the research I’ve done has been focused on higher education. So while I may be a faculty member training, counseling psychologists, you know, my heart is still As a student affairs as well.

Leila V. Moore
Thanks, that’s really interesting listening to this. And though you may try to run and hide from student affairs, we always bring you back. So that we are we are thrilled and having these connections with you. And I hadn’t heard the term APGA in 100 years. And so thank you for bringing that back Leila and reminding us that because I to live through, I think I was on the Executive Council that I lived through that separation as well. But today, we really want to talk and this and I think this is a good transition about ACPAs roots in the profession, in the counseling profession, and how that serves us. And so what I’m going to talk ask you all about is, what are those roots? How are how is ACPA? How is student affairs connected to the counseling profession? And Leila, I’m gonna ask you to, to give us a service out there, tell us what how you see those connections?

Raechele Pope
So what are those roots? Leila? Why don’t you start us off?

Leila V. Moore
Okay. When I first became a member of APGA, I noticed very quickly that the advantage, advantage of being in an umbrella organization had its benefits. There, I met an awful lot of individuals who had shared an interest in counseling, and certainly provided me with information about the different parts of the route, including rehabilitation work, works as private counselors. But I did find at the same time that that root seemed to focus almost all the time on counseling members, counselors, who were members of organizations for which a master’s degree was required. But that was that was all and I knew that working in higher education, the inevitability of having knee training, postmasters was pretty critical. And so I miss seeing, except for the ACPA meetings, that much was being done to support the context in which I understood counseling, and soon came to realize that it was the type of thing that would require greater degrees. Obviously, the separation was not an easy decision by any man or means. It meant taking ourselves away from an organization where the national headquarters was somewhere else. And we never bother too much about what was going on with APGA except that we were there as ACPA types. So the going ahead with it was a godsend in some ways, and also an enormously difficult responsibility. There’s where I think the counseling routes find themselves again, surprisingly, when we separated, there was no such thing as the Leila show, or the Terry Williams Show. These are the presidents who were there at the time of the separation, we found ourselves working collaboratively, inclusively learning to be tolerant of the differences we held about separation about the way the national office should look and so on. And so it became a kind of a brand for all of us that we collectively saw the relationship of separation as a six to seven to eight year process. Not to mention the time it took after that to invent the changes that were necessary to make it a full fledged standalone organization. Of all the routes to me the counseling reputation that we held, even in the connection with APGA poured a sharp and bright light on the work that we did and said Your work is important. But I do remember one thing and then I’ll check back as I finish it off. I was presiding at the meeting where I turned over everything to Terry Williams, who is the president and followed me and I took I took a question from the floor someone said congratulations things are separating as as We wanted them to and I said, Yes, they are. What? What would you like to know about? She said, Are you going to change the name of ACPA as a result, and the only thing that came out of my mouth was not on my watch. I had a very long watch with all my friends collaborating, and I couldn’t imagine taking the seconds, I’ve been looking for a name change, right after all of that great work at them. So the counseling never really stopped. To put it on a sharp point, Raechelle, the the work that was done was there from the beginning, the importance of helping skills found their way in the curriculum in the early years, the relevance of the work was obvious, and it was time for the counseling profession as a whole to find itself more emboldened, with a separate organisation. Thanks.

Raechele Pope
I appreciate that little, you seem to have taken this perspective of really focusing on some history that a lot of people wouldn’t know that ACPA was part of a totally different association that had is one part the work that we do on college campuses. There are other parts of our route. And you got to that towards the end when you talked about what is the root of our profession. So when one looks at, you know, and I’m looking at Heidi and Amy from this from really steeped in a counseling role to what have we maintained from this counseling organization, but that also has this administrative connection and is a very focused role on students in the college campus. Either one of you see what you can, how you might respond to that.

Heidi Levine
When when I think about ACPAs connection to counseling, one of the places that that I see that that counseling background shaping our association, as it’s developed, is on the holistic focus on student development and well being, you know, and that that goes even farther back than ACPA coming under the umbrella of APGA, like, you know, with go back to some of our founding documents from the 1930s that, that focus on student development was clearly there. And still is. You know, I was also a member during the time that we disaffiliated. I remember some of the questions and angst about are we losing touch with our counseling routes around the time that learning reconsidered was being published and that there was a shift on so we’re going to focus less on student development and more on student learning. And those of us who were connected through through doing the counseling work, I think, like, struggled a bit with what does that mean for, for where we fit in? Right. I think the other thing that like when I when I think about how her counseling has shaped the way ACPA has evolved, and what what for me made ACPA unique as professional association, in some ways is the flip of how things were functioning when we were part of APGA. You know, at that point in time, it was this counseling organization. And we were like this subset that was focused on student affairs work. And the roots were already there, even when we were part of APGA. But it was really clear think after we became an independent association, so now we’re this umbrella Student Affairs organization that’s made up in part of folks who do different kinds of who work in different kinds of functional areas, including counseling and mental health. And I found as a professional with, you know, masters, you know, like a MC, you know, entrenched in the Student Affairs, further graduate work in counseling Psych and doing work as a therapist and a psychologist. ACPA was the one place I could come where both pieces were informing the conversation. I could go to APA if I wanted to talk about therapy, but I was going to lose the context. And that context matters so deeply.

Heidi Levine
Embedding that mental health piece within ACPAs work that helps us inform the broader student Ferris work to be attentive to student mental health needs and well being in a way that I don’t think would be the case was if that perspective was absent from the conversation. Sure.

Raechele Pope
Thank you. Heidi, anything you’d want to add to that? Amy?

Amy L. Reynolds
Well, just just a few things. I, you know, I agree with Heidi totally that, you know, the student development focus is the common thread between Counseling and Student Affairs, and always has been going all the way back to so Lloyd Jones. Right. And, and so that has remained constant to this day. And I agree with you, Heidi, that, you know, it’s it’s affects the very essence of who ACPA is. And all you have to do is compare NAPSA and ACPA and see that, whereas NAPSA has always been not that they don’t have a counseling. I don’t remember what the different groups are there. But they do. But it’s always been heavy, heavier administration. Versus that. And I guess, the way I feel it’s coming full circle now is that as student mental health issues and concerns accelerate, and worsen and deepen, everyone working in student affairs, has to be attended to mental health issues in the most direct way possible. And so, you know, it was always that way to some degree, but now that the need is higher, and this generation of students is more willing to express those needs and ask for accommodations and ask for support.

Amy L. Reynolds
I feel like all student affairs professionals need a certain degree of helping skills in order to do their job effectively. I feel like that was always the case. And that was something we attended to but I feel like the moment this context that we’re in now makes it vital to Student Affairs.

Heidi Levine
I, to piggyback on what Amy was just saying, I don’t ever go to a meeting with other SSA NGOs, you know, where, you know, what, what’s, what are the hot topics on your campus? What’s top of mind for you comes up that student mental health issues isn’t right at the top of the list. And again, that’s not new. But it feels like there’s a different urgency than maybe there was 10 or 15 years ago.

Leila V. Moore
Yeah, I think it’s not good. I just break in from it. I think it’s not just the urgency. Because our roots are in counseling. And because we understand mental health, the enormous difference in the amount of stress felt by faculty, staff and students is a huge difference, that it would have been hard for us to manage, I think, if we hadn’t had the kinds of connections to counseling and helping skills and mental health issues that all of us grew up with. And so I think the, frankly, I still think that the, the golden part of this whole thing is the, the fact that we were already aware of what we needed to be doing, and we got it done. We are able and resilient as a result of our interest in our own mental health as well.

Gudrun Nyunt
Yeah, so it’s interesting listening to all three of you, because I think that those roots in counseling, uh, so, you know, you’re so aware of those, right, and they’re so central to your involvement in ACPA, and how you think about ACPA. But I went, when I think back to when I joined, I wasn’t aware necessarily right of that history. Like many of us, it was whoever right your faculty is affiliated with and encourage you to what association to go. And so I’m wondering if you’re thinking about, like new professionals who are considering graduate students, right, who are considering what Association Should I join? What is it that today, right really makes ACPA unique? And why new professionals? Right? Like, what is it that ACP can give them that other associations might not be able to because of its roots in counseling?

Amy L. Reynolds
I think it remains a student centered organization. Students are at the center of ACPA. Regardless of what commission or involve, you know, group that you’re in the student is the center. And I think as long as you do that, then meeting the holistic needs of the student will be core to what it means to be a member of ACPA.

Leila V. Moore
I would agree with me, I think that what we offer to the new professional in so many ways, is the worldview that we possess, the things that we pay attention to that aren’t even in this country but elsewhere. And when we share that information with our students, we find that they their willingness and devotion to service, which is a huge change from what I remember it, and he case that students with an interest in serving others and an interest in their own spiritual growth, find their way to ACPA. Without too much hesitation, I think I think we offer that we offer a comfortable place, a safe place, we offer incredibly good minds, to share not only the safety of thoughts and feelings, but mostly opinions and attitudes as well.

Heidi Levine
You know, and in those ways, Leo, I think we offer a challenging space is well, and, you know, the the association has continued, like, multiple times to continue to evolve it, you know, including, you know, several years ago adopting the strategic imperative for racial justice and decolonization, which, again, has added another filter to our work, coming back to the issue of our roots in counseling and how that has shaped the association. And, at least for me, part of what made me choose to be an ACPA member and so actively involved there. Were also at a challenging point in time, as institutional budgets have gotten tighter, and y’all probably know, like, and everybody listening knows, you know, when budgets get tight, a thing that’s easy to cut back on is professional development. And so professionals have had to be much more thoughtful about where, where are they going to spend their dollars. And there are more other associations now, particularly in the counseling space. For folks who work in a college and university counseling than there were when Amy and I were new professionals, so you can join the Clinical Directors group, or you can join the training directors group, and there has always been the directors group. And we’re having a hard time keeping a place that feels relevant for the folks who are working in our counseling and mental health centers where a CPA is increasingly losing them to those other very more clinically focused associations. And I think that is to the detriment of ACPA. Because I firmly believed and like maybe this is entirely self serving on my part. But I think the presence in the strong voice of those of us who come from that counseling background has mattered profoundly for the association, and then ultimately for the students we serve. And and I’m hopeful that, that this is something that the association leadership considers how do we make sure that we don’t let that completely slip away?

Raechele Pope
I think that is such an important role, because I believe and I felt that when I entered the profession, that having the people who worked in college counseling centers, who were counselors who were therapists, came to ACPA, and really sharpened and expanded our discussions around the issues that we’re facing, and so losing that it would be very different and detrimental to the association, particularly as we go back to something you were all talking about before and that is this increasing need this urgency that is facing students right now that their mental health concerns and considering the urgency to address this and the Student Affairs practitioners role in providing support to the students and responding to the mental health crises. How might counseling, continue to shape the future of Student Affairs? How might what counselors do in the counseling centers, what they have learned through their research? What the researchers of course studying student mental health concerns, provide for the Student Affairs practitioner.

Heidi Levine
I think that a lot of what the mental health professionals who are working in higher ed have to offer beyond the direct services that they are providing and the clinical services that they’re providing to students is twofold. One, a heightened focus on prevention and we have students who so need to learn healthy self care strategies, and positive coping and emotion, emotional regulation and emotion, you know, managing their emotional well being. Because you know, 18 to 20 year old brains don’t do that necessarily Well, for starters, and then look at what these this cohort of students has been living with. These are real challenges for them. So I think that prevention work can be really helpful, but also helping to provide some training to faculty and staff. And like I had mentioned, like, Amy, when I, when I was teaching your book, on helping skills for non clinicians was great, and like, met a real need, at least at the point that I was teaching this particular class. And there are other resources, including the monograph that I had worked on, that are focused on non clinicians, but helping them learn some of the basic skills that they need, but also helping them know, what’s the limit, because if you’re a residence hall director or a fraternity advisor, chances are you’re not a trained mental health provider. And so, basic skills are great and understanding is great. And you need to know what your limits are, because somebody’s going too far, and practice and doing things that are beyond the scope of their training can do more harm than good.

Amy L. Reynolds
I think what I would add to that as well, is that, in my own experience, when I worked on various Counseling Center staffs, I felt part of the student affairs team, right, and I wanted to make contributions to the student team, in terms of doing outreach. You know, counseling centers do a lot of outreach. They do programming on campus, to teach some of those prevention skills that Heidi’s talking about, but also, you know, to engage with offices, you know, I was working at the University of Iowa when, when one of the very first student meetings occurred at the University of Iowa, and one of our biggest jobs was doing outreach to faculty, and helping them us, you know, deal with the fear they were having about how do I assess when students have serious mental health issues. So there’s so much that we contribute to the campus that is part of the mission of Student Affairs. So I guess I want to take it there beyond just the ACPA. And, and sort of highlight the ways in which we are also part of the bloodstream, of a campus and, and the more we are integrated into a campus, because back when we all started counseling centers, often where psychodynamic and therapists saw clients as long as they wanted to. And, you know, this is not the world that we live in. Now, you know, most counseling centers have brief psychotherapy, session limits, more applied, some counseling centers, even do emergency only. And so, you know, the services that are offered on campuses have really evolved. And so those staffs have had to evolve. And some of that has to do with budgets. There was a time period when I worked at the University of Iowa, when there was discussion about whether or not universities should even pay for accounting services. She just refer everything out. And I think a student need has heightened that’s no longer an issue and even states are giving New York State just gave a lot of money to fund Counseling Center positions on its campuses. The University of California did the same thing several years ago. So rather than fight it, and sort of say we’re here to for the academic part of the eye, you know, not the cuts aren’t being made, and those issues aren’t there. But I think administrators have finally seeded the argument that we have to attend to the well being and mental health of students.

Leila V. Moore
I do want to add something to what Amy’s saying I just got a an update on the status of some organizations called universities right now. And it seems that the issues of financial back background financial issues that presidents face and how they make the decision to make cuts in the budget are looking like physicians and such as residence halls, and other places where some cuts could be made, are being made. So the work of counseling is going to have a whole different shift and what the things are that they can do. And I’m, I’m concerned that in many cases, our ability to advocate for emergency crisis based stress focused funding is going to go sideways on us. And we will find in universities taking draconian cuts that include, sadly enough, the people who are the best able to keep that campus together. The one thing that’s missing on so many campuses right now is the willingness of a college president to allow for alternative funding sources to come into a campus in order to protect particularly the mental health issues that students and faculty are facing. But as that occurs on many campuses, even with permission, the institution very often dips into those coffers without warning, scooping money away for some other purpose that doesn’t relate to making sure that there are students alive and well and capable of learning the things that there are to be taught. And so I worry that as we try to do something important that we are going to be facing some different skills, we’re going to be facing the importance of advocacy, the importance of objection, the importance of being far more articulate with people who never understood counseling to begin with, we have to find ways to break that through.

Heidi Levine
I was thinking about the same thing, because even while I think there are pockets, there are places where there’s definitely more support for counseling and mental health and there had been previously as schools are facing significant budget challenges. And then considering the risk that goes along with maintaining mental health care on campus, I think there are rumblings again, of shifting models where mental health care is concerned and asking the question, well, should this even be the thing that we’re doing? You know, our conversation started with remembering some somewhat forgotten history, I think another piece of history administrators would be well to look back to is the 1990s when there was a trend to outsource both Counseling and Health Services. And it didn’t work well, because those pieces of outreach that Amy was talking about get missed when you’re, you’re paying somebody else to come in and provide that clinical care.

Leila V. Moore
yep, we need we need people who have seen the light to share the Word of the importance of mental health so that the words aren’t always coming from somebody who walks that every day under the same stress that students have. The one missing piece, I think, in our conversation so far, has been the accountability piece, I believe that we are very, very good now. Noticing how to monitor change, looking even at the bottom line, the dropout rate, the high transfer rates that many campuses are feeling, put us in a position to offer information that supports the the centrality of the mental health profession, at least for the next 40 or 50 years. I think. So. I don’t mean to be glib about it. I do think that without that kind of hard nosed therapeutic approach, if you will. And I don’t mean that in a funny way. I’m thinking about the things that we have to be talking about that we aren’t, you know, what is the bottom line when it comes to drop out? When we interview students? Are we giving up the information that shows the president why what we do is important, we’re not doing that in as many cases as we should. I think our conversation stopped when, when conflict comes about. And we don’t all necessarily have a really good way of managing our own conflict, let alone conflict with the one who pays our salary could get fired for that. And people kind of fall away in their allegiance to the importance of these issues on behalf of students.

Gudrun Nyunt
Yeah, and so you’ve already brought up some really important challenges, right, that we’re facing, looking into the future. The one thing I would add or the one last question I have, and I know running out of time, so we’ll probably only have time for one of you to respond to that. But we also see an increasingly diverse student population right on our campuses. And so what do you see as the counseling send us role in meeting the needs of minoritized students who would like to give us an answer to that, and I know, we’ll see how much time we have left for that.

Amy L. Reynolds
Well, I’ll jump in and try to be brief. So if somebody else wants to pop in, this is an issue. I know, Inside Higher Ed today talked about discrimination as a form of trauma for students for some students. And, you know, I think that that is true. And so counseling centers are developing different ways of doing this. So so it’s not uncommon now for counseling centers to have staff members whose primary role is to do outreach to students of color or international students and such, and to focus on building those relationships. In part, knowing that some of those students are less likely to come to counseling, less likely to come to the counseling center, and so meeting them where they’re at. There’s a lot also now a lot of embedding of counseling counselors in different units on campus and trying to build those connections that way. Counseling Centers are overflowing with students. So it’s not like in the old days, when you are trying to build a business, there’s no reason to do that now. But you want to make sure, like here at the University of Buffalo, where I am, Sharon Mitchell, who’s a director is committed to having the percentages and the diversity of the student body be the same as they are at the counseling center clients, and works very hard to make that happen. So there are a lot of things that campuses and counseling centers are doing in that regard.

Raechele Pope
Push back on just a piece of what you said, Amy, you know, I want to explore this more. There was a recent article, meaning for those of us who hear this recently that in Inside Higher Ed today isn’t discrimination as a form of trauma for some students. That was the title of the article. And it was basically saying that, you know, that that we might be missing the mark on the issues and that because of discrimination, and then we’re heightening the, the mental health concerns for those students. And that one of the reasons that for bipoc students people are doing some outreach is because they haven’t attended to the, the diverse counseling staff on their campuses. And so the students aren’t as willing to go, because of all the explaining that they have to do. So I was I love that you brought up how Sharon Mitchell here at the University of Buffalo is saying, look, for if we’re to serve the needs of these students, we need to make sure that we’re tending to the identity of the people who are providing services. And I think that’s an important piece in getting back to Gudrun’s question about what is the Counseling Center’s role in meeting those needs. And so I really appreciated that you that you started there. So when I said pushback, I just gave the wrong beginning to that question. But I met that that needs to be so important. There. Are there other things that need.

Amy L. Reynolds
To be a corollary to that? So one of the things so counseling centers need to pay attention to is then the demand on the on the therapists of color. Yeah. So time and time again, the intensity of what they’re dealing with is the the trauma that they’re holding, you know, it’s very difficult for them, and many times, some can’t, one of my former students, she’s a black woman, psychologist, she, she sees all the black students want to see her just fine. She wants to be there for them. But that creates challenges for her and her own well being in herself care. And that and so counseling centers have to pay attention to, you know, their needs, you can’t just have one faculty member of color or one black will be not faculty, but psychologists, one black psychologists, one Asian psychologist, it’s not enough, because the need is too great. And those people get in and dated.

Heidi Levine
Yes. Not unlike in other parts of the academy, where like that same dynamic plays out. Right?

Raechele Pope
Well, I, I just want to say this was probably an amazing conversation here. We were thinking, you know, 45 minutes is going to be far more than enough to have this conversation. It’s not there are so many pieces. There’s the history part. There’s the current part, what we’re experiencing today. And there’s there, there’s the future, you know, what can we anticipate needing to happen? So there are so many more questions. I hope for our audiences, this is a teaser. This was the beginning and they start exploring this on their own campuses and and other places. But I think this conversation has been terrific and we really appreciate your leadership. I also want to thank the sponsors of Today’s episode ACPA. ACPA college students, educators International is celebrating its 100th anniversary. If you don’t believe me look behind Goodwin’s look good drums backdrop. And that 100th anniversary of boldly transforming higher education by creating and sharing influential scholarship, shaping Critically Reflective practice, and advocating for equitable and inclusive learning environments. ACPA aspires to be higher education and student affairs most inclusive, community driven Association by leading our position, our profession in centering social justice, racial justice, and decolonization as defining concepts of our time. And the foreseeable future. ACPAs annual convention this year is in March 18 through 21 In Chicago, so we encourage you to be there. Throughout its anniversary year ACPA is publishing interviews and think pieces about the past, the present and the future. And you can find all of those pieces in ACPA development, we encourage you to consider contributing to ACPAs ongoing conversations about the future, visit my aicpa.org or connect with them on Instagram, Facebook, x. By that I mean Twitter. To learn more about ACPA, I want to send a huge shout out to our producer Natalie Ambrosey, who does all of the behind the scenes works to make us look good and sound good. We love the support for these important conversations from our community. And you can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to our podcast, watching us on YouTube. And sign up for our weekly newsletter announcing each new episode and more. If you’re so inclined, you can leave us a five star review. I’m Raechele Pope, and along with Gudrun Nyunt we want to say thanks to our fabulous guest today Leila, Heidi, Amy, and thanks to all of you who are watching and listening. Make it a good week, folks.

History of ACPA

https://www.counseling.org/about-us/about-aca/our-history