April 10, 2024
Faculty and Students in the Counselor Education Programs
Submitted by Daniel Tillapaugh
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the graduate students and faculty in the Department of Counselor Education have certainly had their lives flipped upside down. In March, our faculty had to quickly adjust to moving their face-to-face classes to an online-only format, and our students had to transition to taking classes in new formats. It hasn’t been easy for any of us. Trying to continue instruction in the midst of a global pandemic, attempting to figure out how to navigate fieldwork when K-12 schools and colleges/universities began social distancing procedures, and figuring out how to keep up with the regular changes that would occur would be challenging to anyone. But our faculty and students have shown how resilient they are. We’ve started to figure out how to still practice our socio-emotional counseling skills in online formats. We’ve seen students support one another by supplemental conversations via Zoom as well as personal and group check-ins. We’ve seen faculty reach out directly to students and debrief how they’re feeling and engage in mindfulness practices to start off class so that we collectively can work through these times together. We’re all trying to finish the semester as strong as possible and still provide a high level of empathy and rigor for our students and their professional preparation for the field. We’ve seen the incredible care that our students and faculty members have for one another as we navigate these difficult times. As department chair, I am so proud of our Counselor Education community and extremely grateful for everyone’s patience, flexibility, adaptability, and graciousness as we try to support one another together. (To see more stories about our community members’ care and compassion for one another, please visit our Instagram account at @callutherancounselored where we’re sharing these stories throughout the day today!)