Pillar 1
Outreach & Mentoring
In order to increase membership and participation in counseling psychology we plan to advance SAS as a vehicle of communication between and among students, professionals, and prospective students. We have made it a goal to foster mentoring relationships with Master’s level students, undergraduate students and high school students. We have made initial steps in this goal by involving Master’s students in the development of this proposal. These relationships will increase awareness about counseling psychology and promote acts of service learning among SAS members. These service learning projects will facilitate professional dialogue by acknowledging differences and taking a proactive stance on the future field of counseling psychology. This will be accomplished through connecting with TRIO programs, Psi Chi, and other undergraduate organizations to encourage and increase awareness about the field of counseling psychology. This also serves the dual purpose of increasing membership of minority groups in the psychological profession and informing undergraduates about the science and practice of psychology. In the hopes of expanding the role of mentorship within the community, we plan to implement a mentoring program designed for high school students interested in counseling psychology. This mentoring program will have two parts: the first part would be an online community, and the second would be an intensive on-campus experience. Various high schools across the nation will be asked to identify students who express an interest in psychology. Training directors nationwide will be also asked to consider a few students in counseling psychology programs who would be interested in being paired with the identified high school students in a mentoring relationship. Special effort will be made to recruit mentors and mentees from historically underrepresented populations. An online community will be developed in an environment such as Yahoo! groups for these pairs to communicate. The second aspect will be for those mentoring pairs who desire greater immersion in the subject. The student pairs will be invited to campus for a week-long summer program focusing on preparing for careers in psychology and discussing issues within the field of psychology. Our university provides opportunities for unique summer programming through small grants. Our plan is to obtain funding for this program through one of these grants.
In addition to APA programming, we will speak with the program coordinator for the International Conference of Counseling Psychology about obtaining space for SAS programming. Through this endeavor, we will increase the visibility of SAS on an international level as well as within all levels of counseling psychology. This will also reinforce our commitment of social justice and diversity. As another means of increasing our visibility, we will maintain a bi-annual newsletter. This newsletter will inform the members of SAS events and it will be tied to our goals of increasing SAS membership and strengthening the relationship between the organization and the universities that members attend. Using this newsletter as a vehicle of communication could also encourage more involvement from campus representatives.
We will maintain and expand upon the existing SAS website. This website will continue to provide comprehensive resources for counseling psychology students and facilitate communication and interaction between students and professionals. The expansions of the website will include: scheduling live chats with professionals and posting them as podcasts, (downloadable videos of lectures that will be streamed on the website), facilitating discussion forums about professional issues and ethical dilemmas, and providing a question and answer discussion board collectively called SASchat. These activities will serve to directly increase membership and involvement in SAS because they will meet particular needs and relevance in counseling psychology. Other strategies for increasing membership include spotlighting counseling psychology programs and certificates of recognition for active members and chapters.
We understand that a wealth of resources is necessary to make the changes above. Therefore, we have procured the support of our university, which includes the technological tools and know-how to make these changes possible. We have been guaranteed use of digital recorders and the use of server space to upload these conferences by University Relations. It will be solely our responsibility to run this program but they will also provide help in nationwide publicity. This expansion of the website will aid in increasing membership and strengthening the student foundation of SAS by enhancing dialogue between students, creating a live chat room, providing recommendations for books and movies related to the profession, offering self care tips, and posting student-friendly conferences by region.