Recruiting Undergraduate Students: Creating a Path to the Counseling Profession

Abstract

Counselor educators must find ways to encourage undergraduate students to choose to pursue a graduate degree in counseling. Related helping professions (e.g., psychology, social work) may have a recruitment advantage. Faculty in disciplines with both undergraduate and graduate programs can encourage high achieving undergraduate students to continue into graduate programs within their discipline. Due to the lack of a discipline specific academic pathway and an undergraduate advising system directing students into counseling graduate programs, counselor educators must find innovative ways to recruit undergraduate students. The authors will discuss the issues involved in recruiting undergraduate students, present a framework for sharing information about the counseling profession, and provide strategies for recruiting undergraduate students into counseling graduate programs.

Counselor Education and Supervision: 2017 Inaugural Review

“…Professional issues contributions not categorized elsewhere included presentation of an updated school counseling research agenda (Villares & Dimmitt, 2017) and Title IX perceptions and applications within counselor education (Welfare, Wagstaff, & Haynes, 2017). Scholars in one program proposed a community counseling center model focused on multicultural and social justice education (Grimmett, Beckwith, Lupton‐Smith, Agronin, & Englert, 2017), and Protivnak and Yensel (2017) explored recruiting considerations given a lack of undergraduate feeder programs within the profession.…”

Voices from the Desks: Exploring Student Experiences in Counselor Education

“…Upon first contact with the Counseling program faculty, students would benefit from information regarding funding opportunities within the program and university (Protivnak & Yensel, 2017). Counselor educators can advocate for greater financial support for graduate students by developing new graduate assistantships and working with alumni to develop new scholarship.…”

Untitled

“…Upon first contact with the Counseling program faculty, students would benefit from information regarding funding opportunities within the program and university (Protivnak & Yensel, 2017 have clear expectations about how they will transition into the workforce.…”