Please join me in congratulating our future NARACES’ leaders who were recently elected for the following positions (and thank you for your vote!):
Krista Malott – NARACES Past President
The Fall 2022 edition of the NARACES Graduate Gazette is now available!
This eye-catching issue is packed full of fantastic writing on self-care and advocacy from graduate students in schools all over our region, and is worth checking out!
You can click here to download this latest issue: Fall 2022 Graduate Gazette
Here are a few helpful links as you make your way to join us in Pittsburgh:
Who is excited for this year’s conference?!?! I know we all are looking forward to reconnecting in-person. Please consider joining us for the NARACES 2022 Conference. Our theme is: Building Bridges with a Purpose: From the Classroom to the Field. From Awareness to Action.
The conference dates are November 8-13, 2022 at the Wyndham Hotel in Pittsburgh, PA.
Registration note: Please sign in to the portal using your ACA emails for the correct registration to apply. If you believe you aren’t getting the correct price for registration, please leave your application in the cart so the price can be adjusted, if needed, before you check out.
Hello NARACES Members!
It is that time again to honor those who we work with on a daily basis through NARACES 2022 Awards.
This is a wonderful way to acknowledge the hard work your colleagues, supervisors, students, and/or faculty are doing in their communities, academic program, and the field of counselor education. Anyone is eligible to nominate a NARACES member for any of these awards. Our award recipients will be honored at 2022 NARACES Regional Conference (November 8-13, 2022 in Pittsburgh, PA).
Below are the six award categories for this year:
To nominate someone for an award, please download the 2022 Award Nomination Packet. This packet contains detailed information on each award and procedures for nominations.
The deadline for nominations is July 15th, 2022.
Please send any and all questions about awards to benjamin.willis@scranton.edu
Thank you, and I will look forward to receiving your nominations!
Call for Proposals
Purpose: The purpose for this call for proposals is to support research related to counselor education and supervision. NARACES will fund up to three proposals for up to $500. Please see the Research Grants link for more information!
Dear NARACES members,
Thank you for voting in the NARACES elections. We would like to, again, thank all members who ran for open positions. Please join us as we congratulate the following newly elected NARACES board members starting in July 2022:
NARACES President-Elect: Dr. Devona Stalnaker-Shofner (Antioch University)
NARACES Secretary-Elect: Dr. Ashley Luedke (St. Bonaventure University)
NARACES Graduate Student Representative-Elect: Justin McDonald (Indiana University of Pennsylvania)
As leaders in NARACES, we would like to denounce the persistent and rising hate-crimes against members of the Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander community. We again are facing the reality of white supremacy, with the recent mass shooting targeting Asian Americans, in which eight people were killed. Six of the killed were Asian-American women.
This racism and white supremacy are something that we cannot stay silent about. We want to address the region and acknowledge the ongoing trauma and fear over safety that the AAPI community has always experienced and continues to experience at increasing rates in the last year. The rhetoric and language, particularly around the pandemic, has fueled continued bias, hate crimes, and violence against AAPI individuals. Anti-Asian violence and bias has unfortunately been a part of the national narrative since the inception of our history, and we have seen an increase of targeted hate language leveled at our Asian American neighbors, loved ones, and colleagues since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hate-crimes have increased, Asian owned business have been shunned, and bias language has persisted. The resulting fear has serious impact on daily living and individual mental health.
We value mental health, relationships, and wellness. White supremacy has negative impacts on all three of these and staying silent allows white supremacy to persist. Advocacy and social justice should be in the fabric of our professional identities. To our regional members who identify as Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander, NARACES stands with you. Please note that we have an upcoming BIPOC wellness group related to racial trauma. Also, please look for registration, opening in a couple weeks, for an affinity group for International Asian and Asian-American regional members in April. Both events are planned by our Wellness and Advocacy committees.
As counselors and counselor educators, it is essential that we identify racism when it happens and model this to students. We must recognize the insidious impacts of white supremacy, and openly challenge the white supremist narrative that simply a ‘lone wolf’ or ‘mental health issues’ have led to these acts of terror against minoritized community members. Initiate complex conversation with students about how to consider and communicate intersectionality in relation to this hate crime by reading this commentary. This article provides ideas and resources on addressing the history of anti-Asian racism and violence that can be adapted for graduate students. Further, consider attending this free bystander intervention training with your students. Finally, and as a reminder, ACA’s statement was accompanied with various resources and articles of note.
As NARACES leaders, we discussed how we would like to respond to the on-going racism present in our society, and specifically directed towards African Americans. With the recent murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, we believe it is very important to send out our own call to action as many of our professional counseling organizations (i.e., ACA, ACES, NBCC) have already done. Though we echo their sentiments, we wanted to take a slightly different approach by offering action items and invite you to: Read, View, and Do.
As counselors and counselor educators, we know about the stages of change. We also know how imperative it is to be advocates and allies, and to teach our students to be oriented toward social justice, and to model our own social justice commitment to our students. We realize that we are not all in the same place of action and responsiveness toward these racist events, and we ask you to think about where you are in relation to racism and your racial development. From there, decide where you need to be and what you can do to show that you will not stand for racism.
Below is a collection of resources for each category of Read, View, and Do. We urge you to ask yourself, particularly if you are White, ‘How am I being an ally?’ Only you know the answer, and we have provided a place to start, as well as suggestions on how you can begin doing something to take a stand against racism and show solidarity to the Black community. Engaging in these actions can be more powerful, and effect greater change, if you have a community in which to do so; please invite in family, friends, colleagues, and/or neighbors to also read, view, or do. Together, we can create positive change. James Baldwin once wrote “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” As a community, we cannot resolve the nation’s problems alone, but we can at least face our own issues that are relevant to the present situation.
A Call to Read
JMCD special edition on counseling African American clients in the era of Black Lives Matter, police brutality, and media stereotypes
American Psychiatric Association. (2017). APA Toolkit for Providers Treating African-Americans: Stress and Trauma Related to the Political and Social Environment.
Aymer, S. R. (2016). “I can’t breathe”: A case study – helping Black men cope with race-related trauma stemming from police killing and brutality. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 26,(3-4), 367-376.
DiAngelo, R. (2018). White fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism. Beacon Press.
Gase, L. N., Glenn, B. A., Gomez, L. M., Kuo, T., Inkelas, M., & Ponce, N. A. (2016). Understanding racial and ethnic disparities in arrest: The role of individual, home, school, and community characteristics. Race and Social Problems, 8(4), 296-312.
Kahn K. B., Steele J. S., McMahon J. M., & Stewart, G. (2017). How suspect race affects police use of force in an interaction over time. Law and Human Behavior, 41(2), 117-126.
Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law. W.W. Norton & Co.
Saleh, A. Z., Appelbaum, P., Liu, X., Stroup, T. S., & Wall, M. (2018). Deaths of people with mental illness during Interactions with law enforcement. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 58, 110-116.
The Guardian: The Counted Project. January 8, 2017. Young Black Men Again Faced Highest Rate of US Police Killings in 2016.
A Call to View
A Conversation with Obama: Anguish and Action
Yusef Salaam: The Marshall Project
A Call to Do
Facing History: Educator Resources