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Counselor ed student honored by regional organization

RachelHenesyRachel Henesy, a UF graduate student in counselor education, has received the Outstanding Student at the Master’s Level Award by the Southern Association for Counselor Education and Supervision. 

The group is a division of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision. The award honors master’s students who exceed the demands of their graduate program and show exceptional promise for a productive career in counseling. 

Henesy is pursuing her master’s and specialist degrees in mental health counseling at UF’s College of Education, where her focus is primarily on community counseling, adolescent development, counseling research, and social justice. She is currently an intern at the PACE Center for Girls, a Gainesville alternative school for adolescent girls. She also serves as co-president for the UF student chapter of Counselors for Social Justice and co-chair for the advocacy committee of UF’s chapter of Chi Sigma Iota, the international honor society for students, professionals and educators in counseling. 

Rachel is a member of two faculty-led research teams and has worked as a student assistant on three grant-funded research projects. She has presented and co-presented at conferences held by the American Counseling Association, the Association for Assessment in Counseling and Education, and the Florida Counseling Association.

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Counseling group honors grad student for research, practice

MelanieVarneyMelanie Varney, pursuing her master’s and specialist degrees in mental health counseling at UF’s College of Education, has received the Association for Assessment and Research in Counseling’s (AARC) 2013 Master’s Exemplary Research and Practice Award. The award recognizes the contributions a master’s student has made in scholarship and service that align with the group’s mission. 

Varney’s research focuses on multicultural issues in counseling, especially cultural identity development. She has been involved in the Pediatric Counseling Research Team at the College of Education and has studied educational issues affecting historically underperforming minority students. 

She has made two research presentations at the AARC conference and the American Counseling Association conference. Varney was the lead presenter at the ACA’s conference last year, a rare distinction for a master’s student. Varney has been invited to return to the ACA conference again as a co-presenter for an educational session discussing the trends in African American counseling literature that have been published in the past 20 years.

Varney has also excelled in her clinical experiences. She is currently completing her internship at the UF Counseling and Wellness Center. Previously, she was a counseling practicum counselor at the PACE Center for Girls, a local non-residential delinquency prevention program for young females. Varney is also currently employed as a crisis intervention consultant for UF’s Department of Housing and Resident Education.

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Professor elected president of nation’s largest counseling association

GAINESVILLE, Fla.—Cirecie West-Olatunji, an associate professor of counselor education at the University of Florida’s College of Education, has been elected president of the American Counseling Association, the nation’s largest counseling professional organization. She will serve one year as president-elect beginning July 1 and will start a one-year term as the group’s 62nd president on the same date next year.

West-Olatunji

West-Olatunji has held leadership positions at the branch, division and national levels of the ACA, which has more than 43,000 members. She currently serves on the association’s executive committee and on the governing council as a representative of the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development. She is a past president of the latter group.

She joins an impressive lineup of national leaders from UF’s counselor education program, spanning several decades. The program is ranked second nationally in its specialty area in the U.S. News & World Report’s survey of America’s Best Graduate Schools, and has consistently held a Top 5 national ranking since the mid-1990s.

“Dr. West-Olatunji continues the long-held tradition of UF counselor education faculty serving as national and international leaders of the profession,” said UF education dean Glenn Good, who also has a counseling background.

West-Olatunji said she expects the ACA to be dealing with several major emerging trends during her presidency—including the globalization of counseling and new counseling theories based on patients’ cultural backgrounds, learning how emotional responses to traumatic events (such as natural disasters) can contribute to psychological distress, and “a flurry of theories related to counseling young children age 5 and younger.”

“The next decade in counseling will be very exciting times in which counselors will need to be more responsive than ever,” she said.

West-Olatunji’s research specialty is in multicultural counseling and the role of cultural identity in the psychological, emotional and educational development of socially marginalized students. She has worked with local school communities to improve supportive parenting practices among students in low-income African-American families.

With an unusually high number of natural disasters occurring worldwide in recent years, she has been promoting the need to train more practitioners who can provide counseling for victims of disasters and their surviving family members and friends. She has taken graduate counseling students to New Orleans to assist in post-Katrina disaster recovery efforts. (She earned her master’s and doctorate degrees in counselor education from the University of New Orleans.)

She also has organized national teams of counseling students, faculty and practitioners to travel to South Africa and Botswana for community-based counseling of HIV and AIDS patients.

After visiting post-earthquake Haiti and other recent disaster sites, West-Olatunji has designed a new online certificate program in disaster counseling at UF for licensed mental health professionals and state-certified school counselors drawn to the field. She is developing a training model that can be used in places like New Orleans, Port Au Prince, Haiti, and Japan, and is planning a trip to Latin America for another outreach trip next year.

She has received numerous awards for research and service to the profession from groups such as the AMCD, Florida Counseling Association, Counselors for Social Justice, and the Association for Black Psychologists.

CONTACTS

     SOURCE: Cerecie West-Olatunji, associate professor, UF College of Education; (w) 352-273-4324; cwestolatunji@coe.ufl.edu

     WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news & communications, UF College of Education, 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

 

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New online certificate in disaster counseling addresses shortage in field

Imagine 5,000 families, left homeless by the forces of nature, living in tents crammed in an area the size of a football field. Imagine their struggles and feelings of helplessness that come from the lack of basic necessities like food, water, clothing or even a bathroom. Since the catastrophic Haiti earthquake in 2010, thousands of Haitians still live in these post-earthquake “tent cities” and face overwhelming physical and psychological hurdles daily.

West-Olatunji

Now, imagine having the skills and resources to help improve the lives of such injured and traumatized victims in disaster-affected areas. After visiting Haiti and other disaster sites, Cirecie West-Olatunji, associate professor of counselor education at the University of Florida, is using her experience in disaster counseling to better prepare mental health professionals for work in the fledgling field.

West-Olatunji has designed a new online certificate program in disaster counseling for licensed mental health professionals and state-certified school counselors drawn to the field of disaster counseling. She said the 12-hour graduate program, due to start classes next spring, is one of three such programs in the country, and the only one housed in a college of education.

“Counselor educators have a perspective that lends itself very well to disaster counseling,” West-Olatunji said. “I hope the certificate program revolutionizes a cadre of people in the counseling profession going out in response to major disasters.”

She said the new course will explore how to enhance sensitivity and competence when providing disaster-response counseling in other cultures.

The online program, nationally accredited by the Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), features courses in disaster mental health counseling, multicultural issues in disaster counseling, post-traumatic stress disorder, counseling vulnerable populations and a capstone-experience course.

West-Olatunji said the demand for disaster counseling is increasing because of the frequency of natural disasters happening lately. She said disaster counseling currently is not covered extensively in counselor education programs.

“What’s new is that catastrophic disasters have been on the rise and we’re finding we’re not adequately training mental health students to respond,” West-Olatunji said.

West-Olatunji said her first outreach trip to New Orleans after the devastating Hurricane Katrina in 2005 opened her eyes to the need for disaster counseling. She is developing a training model that can be used in places like New Orleans, Port Au Prince, Haiti, and Japan.

“The overwhelming majority of countries don’t have qualified counseling professionals, so when disasters occur, they need a rapid response,” West-Olatunji said. “The Red Cross can only bring so many people and can only stay so long.”

In Haiti, West-Olatunji and other counselors went to churches and other community groups to counsel people and gauge their needs. The team gave presentations on sexual abuse, which is a large problem in the tent cities due to the lack of security.

She is traveling to Latin America for another outreach trip next year.  She previously led national disaster, mental-health outreach teams on consulting and counselor-training trips to New Orleans following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and has twice organized national teams of counseling students, faculty and practitioners to travel to South Africa and Botswana for “community-based counseling” of HIV and AIDS-infected individuals.

For more information about the online disaster-counseling certificate program, visit the program website or inquire via email.

Other related quick links: YouTube, Facebook, Blog.

CONTACTS

SOURCE: Cerecie West-Olatunji, associate professor in counselor education and mental health counseling track coordinator, UF College of Education; 352-273-4324; Cirecie@coe.ufl.edu

MEDIA CONTACT: Larry Lansford, director, news and communications, UF College of Education; 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

WRITER: Jessica Bradley, communications intern, news and communications, UF College of Education

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