The Department of Counseling Psychology in the University of Wisconsin's School of Education was awarded the 2005 Suinn Minority Achievement award by the American Psychological Association (APA).
The department received the award for its efforts in recruiting and graduating minority students.
The award was presented to Professors Bruce Wampold, department chair, and Alberta Gloria, training director, during a ceremony in Washington, D.C., this August. The event was part of the APA's 113th annual convention.
"It has always been our mission to encourage our students, faculty and staff to view all people as cultural beings," Gloria said. "We are focused on training students to be competent counselors and psychologists."
The award, created by past APA President Richard M. Suinn, annually recognizes two or three psychology programs nationwide.
UW students Le Ondra Clark, Erica Chu and Mariko Lin coordinated the nomination. The application consisted of detailed statistics on ethnic and racial minority students involved in the department over the past four years.
"The APA sent an application and we decided to get involved because we are really proud of the department's investment towards multicultural awareness," Clark said. "The award is a great honor."
Letters of recommendation from students and the dean of the School of Education at the time, Charles Read, were also included.
"The faculty, staff and students never lose sight of our increasingly multicultural society as the context for their teaching and scholarship," Read said in his letter. "In addition, counseling psychology has been generous in sharing its experiences with the university as a whole."
The Department of Counseling Psychology's current rate of retention to graduation for minority students is 97 percent. Forty-four percent of the students are racial and ethnic minorities, including 50 percent of the doctoral and 40 percent of graduate students.
"The thing I think is important is the high number of ethnic and racial minority students we have retained in both our masters and doctoral programs," Gloria said. "We also have nine faculty members who are minorities. Our department is highly invested in teaching the importance of multiple cultures in classroom settings and outside activities."
To bring together nationally recognized scholars on the subject of diversity, the department initiated a Social Justice Conference in 2002 that will be held annually to discuss the issue in a warm environment.
"The Social Justice Conference has a different theme each year, and it focuses on different issues," Clark said. "We have had storytellers from different cultures speak in the past, and then they show how their lives relate to social counseling. It's a really great event."
The department is one of the top counseling psychology programs in the country, ranking fifth overall in the 2005 U.S. News and World Report ratings.