2014 Report

Student Affiliates of Seventeen (SAS) has served as the representative body for student members of the Society of Counseling Psychology (SCP; Division 17) of the American Psychological Association (APA) since 1977 (Glidden, Zachar, & Jaschik-Herman, 1991). SAS works to connect student members nationwide to provide opportunities for professional leadership and service to the Division, APA, and the communities we serve. The organization also advocates for students’ needs and interests, provides networking and mentoring opportunities, and strives to further students’ academic and career pursuits. Cleveland State University (CSU) is honored to serve as the host institution for SAS for the 3-year term 2013-2016. We would like to thank the SAS Executive Board at The University at Albany, the former SAS host institution, for their guidance throughout the transition period, and SCP leadership for its support and encouragement. As the SAS host institution, CSU is proud to serve the SCP, and most importantly, our peers.

In the first year of our term, our focus at CSU has been to promote professional development, networking, scholarship, and leadership for all SAS members as emphasized in the institution’s pillars and goals. The four pillars upheld by CSU are multicultural competence, research and scholarship, ethical practice and professional development, and advocacy and community action. Through these pillars, we aim to achieve the following five goals: (a) promote leadership and professional development, (b) advance multiculturalism and a global perspective, (c) encourage advocacy through professional and community service, (d) support professional development informed by scholarship and practice, and (e) improve student engagement and communication within SAS.

In our first year, we strengthened the SAS membership network by filling vacant program and regional representative positions to increase communication among the SAS community. We aimed to continue to improve student engagement and leadership development to meet the needs of students. To recognize the effort and hard work of students, SAS continues the tradition of granting three individual awards to help support student research, social justice advocacy efforts, and travel to professional conferences. The Social Justice Award was new this year to encourage advocacy through professional and community service. It is awarded to a student who exemplifies the promotion of advocacy and community service within the field of counseling psychology. With the development of this award, SAS is acknowledging the praxis of advocacy and community action that is inherent in the tenets and theoretical discourse of SCP. Although selecting only one student award recipient was a challenging task, we were thrilled to see an overwhelming number of social justice award nominations, as it is a reflection of students’ commitment to—and passion for—social justice. Therefore, in the future, we hope to increase the total number of social justice awards available to SAS members.

In addition to organizing and hosting SAS Programming at the Annual APA Convention, this year, SAS also played a key role in contributing to the planning for the Atlanta Counseling Psychology Conference held in March 2014. As SAS co-chair, Brittan Davis served on the Conference Steering Committee to provide a student perspective in the planning of the conference, and also served as co-chair (along with Dr. Kathlyn Dailey of Texas State University) of the Conference Student Subcommittee. The Subcommittee was formed to support student programming, which facilitated student networking and provided a vehicle for student interaction with distinguished scholars and early career professionals (ECPs) in the field. This bridged the gap between students and professionals and encouraged mentoring. Student-focused programming also concerned issues of social justice and provided opportunities for students to collaborate with distinguished scholars by co-facilitating roundtables covering a variety of research topics. Consistent with our goal of promoting mentoring and leadership development, these events focused on international and domestic diversity broadly defined and aided in the development of interactions between counseling psychology programs, ECPs, and the SCP.

New to SAS this year, we cohosted the 27th Great Lakes Regional Counseling Psychology Conference at CSU. To support the professional development of counseling psychology students, the Great Lakes Conference has historically served as a venue for students to deliver professional presentations and network with students and faculty from counseling psychology programs in the Great Lakes Region. In keeping with this tradition, CSU provided the opportunity for students to present and obtain feedback on their research, and attend invited symposia featuring prominent scholars discussing pressing issues in the field of counseling psychology. To increase national participation, SAS and CSU incorporated web-based technology with live webinars to allow students and faculty from any geographical location to participate virtually in the conference by viewing the presentations and contributing questions during the invited keynotes, symposia, and conversation hours. These sessions were also recorded and are available online at http://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/

CSU is excited to continue to work with the SCP leadership to focus on initiatives important to students in counseling psychology. Two initiatives we plan to work on this year include a mentoring program for counseling psychology students from marginalized groups and the creation of student workgroups to address the student loan crisis and concerns related to Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Education Programs (CACREP) restrictions that could negatively influence the careers of counseling psychology students. Although counseling psychology programs are becoming more diverse, we recognize the unique challenges faced by students with marginalized identities, as many experience isolation within programs that lack representation of faculty and other students who share similar identities. As such, a mentoring program that explicitly includes and supports students from traditionally underrepresented and oppressed groups will help to build connections across institutions, provide a relational venue in which to address the intersection of identities and the challenges presented when living in the margins, and increase students’ sense of belonging in the field. Through this initiative, we will implement our goals of mentoring and leadership development, and will help to advance a multicultural perspective within counseling psychology.

SAS is collaborating with the SCP leadership to create a student workgroup to voice students’ concerns related to current CACREP accreditation standards that will negatively affect the future job market of counseling psychology students. Furthermore, SAS is working with the SCP leadership to develop a student workgroup that will tackle the student loan debt crisis by advocating for counseling psychology students in the following three ways: (a) encourage equal federal loan caps between counseling and clinical psychology training programs, (b) urge counseling psychology programs to advocate for their students at the university level to ensure that internship year is considered full-time status, and (c) promote the inclusion of counseling and clinical psychology training programs in granting the same automatic loan deferral during internship year as medical students are granted during their residency.

The entire SAS Executive Board thanks the SCP leadership for its continued support, the SCP and SAS membership for its encouragement and inspiration, our SAS Board for its hard work and dedication, and our faculty advisor, Dr. Donna Schultheiss, for her relational mentorship.