05/01/2014

Welcome to Our New Department!

By Chad Luke

Hello and welcome to the new Counselor Educators and Researchers department here at Career Convergence! This new department is intended to infuse educators and researchers with energy by providing an outlet for sharing creative strategies and for linking with colleagues and ideas. The NCDA Board of Directors has determined that the area of “Counselor Educators and Researchers” is valuable enough to the membership that a Trustee position has been created. Dr. Lourdes M. Rivera will serve in this position through 2015. In the words of the magazine’s creator and editor, Melanie Reinersman,

 

Articles in the Counselor Educators and Researchers department will cover counselor preparation, career course content, research trends, career and professional development opportunities for masters and doctoral level professionals in the schools, and advocacy efforts to promote the teaching of career development.”

 

So you can see that we will be sharing great ideas for advancing the profession and the people with whom we work.

 

New Associate Editor

I am the new associate editor for this department, Chad Luke. I am an assistant professor at Tennessee Tech University and a Licensed Professional Counselor, and I love career counseling – practicing, researching, and teaching it! I’ve been a career counselor, director of a career office and an associate dean responsible for both counseling and career services in a community college. Along the way, I’ve come to a more full appreciation for the relationship between career issues and just about every other area of people’s lives. That’s why I’m so excited to join the team at Career Convergence upon the addition of this new department focused on counselor educators and researchers. Together we’ll continue to advance the field by inspiring one another to great teaching, training and research.

 

Career Education and Research

Think about the career course you took during your counselor training. What did you think about having to take a course specifically devoted to this topic? Hopefully you were excited about opportunity to learn how to help millions of people who aim for career satisfaction. However, if you are like most of the students and professionals I talk with, you may have been at best ambivalent about taking a course with less apparent pizzazz, when compared with psychopathology, group counseling, and theory courses. What accounts for this disposition many have about an area so integral to us all- touching virtually every facet of our lives? Perhaps the answer lies in the question itself: jobs, work, career, vocation – whatever you may call it – is so interwoven into our collective unconsciousness that it can seem mundane to study it so explicitly. Perhaps it is because there is so much riding on career choice and vocational identity that it feels too overwhelming to explore too closely. Or maybe it’s because career counseling feels somehow less engaging than treating depression, schizophrenia, learning disabilities, and the like. As our readers know, nothing could be further from the truth!

 

Advancing the Field

             Regardless of the reason, what would happen if teachers of career counseling and researchers in this area were able to ignite a passion for connecting issues of career to many, if not most, aspects of our lives? What if theories of career identity and development could be extended to other spheres of our lives? Would our students and clients feel our enthusiasm and move toward embracing these areas of human development? Let’s find out! Send your article submissions for the Counselor Educators and Researchers department to cluke@tntech.edu. Please contact me with draft articles, ideas for articles, or help with brainstorming. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis. Read the full the Submission Guidelines now.

 

So once again, I welcome you to this new area and invite you share and receive, and most of all be energized about this transformative field!

 


 

Chad LukeChad Luke, PhD, LPC-MHSP, NCC, is a counselor educator at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, TN and a clinical supervisor. He teaches courses in theory, group counseling, practicum and internship, and neuroscience for counselors. He is a Licensed Professional Counselor and NCC. His research interests include the relationship between career identity development and college student retention. You may contact him at cluke@tntech.edu.

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2 Comments

Rich Fellr   on Thursday 05/01/2014 at 07:21 PM

Thanks Chad for your view and for taking this important task on...

Jon Rosenfield   on Friday 05/02/2014 at 10:53 AM

I believe that the co-mingling of "mainstream" counselor training and career counseling is of vital importance to both mental health and career counselors. The department I currently work in is staffed by trained (mostly licensed) counselors and we are a training site for MA-counseling students (I did my practicum here).

I feel that having a career counseling course in my curriculum was important, but unfortunately the thoughtfulness seemed to stop with the course's inclusion. In other words - the course itself was not very well laid out or integrated into other coursework. I think that it is important that an introduction to career theory and practice not only be offered, but also integrated into a counseling curriculum.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the comments shown above are those of the individual comment authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of this organization.