President’s Welcome

ACCA members and friends,

A new year is upon us. The past year has been a wonderful one full of growth and energy under the leadership of Dr. Greta Davis. She has pulled together an amazing group of talented leaders and has moved our organization forward as the eminent national voice for college counselors, psychologists, family counselors and educators.

As your professional organization, ACCA has been working hard to be a force for positive change in college mental health. We have strengthened our efforts in creating a new face for our website and developed a new online forum to harness our individual expertise to benefit our members. We continue to build a diverse membership through the creation a board position for community counselors (Amy Lenhart) and foster opportunities to expand our connection to international students, counselors, social workers, psychologists and educators. We established a strategic partnership with the Center for the Study of Collegiate Mental Health and conducted a successful search for our new editor for the Journal of College Counseling, Dr. Joshua Watson (Many thanks to Dr. Woody Schwitzer for his service!).

Under Greta’s leadership, we have developed several online seminars with the help of Rick Hanson and Gregory Eells (past AUCCCD president). These seminars have provided student affairs administrators and college counselors a perspective on mental illness trends on campus in 2010 along with an informative look at how to a counselor/psychologist fits as part of a behavioral intervention team. MJ Raleigh (president-elect), and Perry Francis (governing council representative) and Jason Ebbeling, ESQ will be offering our next online seminar detailing discussing how to manage a suicidal student back to campus on September 14^th with our online partner, Paper-Clip communications.

ACCA has been involved in the exciting process of developing a singular definition of counseling through the work of Dr. Perry Francis and the 20/20 commission. The definition reads: Counseling is a professional relationship that empowers diverse individuals, families, and groups to accomplish mental health, wellness, education, and career goals. The hope was to create an “elevator” definition that counselors, educators, social workers and psychologists would be able to share quickly with others defining the work we do. I believe they have accomplished this and I encourage you to make this your signature line in your email and post the definition on your website and counseling brochures. Spread the word (and give Perry a hug).

ACCA will be moving to annual conference starting in 2012 at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando Florida. We will then be in New Orleans in 2013. ACCA is growing as a professional organization and the executive council felt a key step to strengthen our numbers and increase member benefits was to create a yearly conference and choose exciting destinations that offer a chance to relax, refresh, learn and grow.

Let’s continue the momentum and make this next year a strong one for ACCA! A great way to support ACCA this year is to join us at our national conference in St. Louis. This is an excellent way to network and connect with others in our field.