LSU’s Jennifer Curry One of 20 Faculty Selected Nationwide to Attend School Counselor Summit in Washington, D.C.

December 14, 2021

BATON ROUGE, LA - Jennifer Curry, PhD was invited to attend the American School Counselor Association’s Counselor Education Summit held in Washington D.C. in early November. The ASCA invites 20 educators from across the country to the Counselor Education Summit every five years.

At the event, counselor educators problem solved major school counseling issues including how to recruit school counseling students, diversity and inclusion in counselor education, and accreditation concerns.

Curry explains the importance of these discussions; “There are currently 120,000 school counseling positions in the country, but many are unfilled. Like the teacher pipeline, we have a shortage of school counselors. We are working on problem solving this major challenge. In addition, we need to diversify the profession as the changing demographics of students in our country should be reflected in the counseling profession that serves students,” said Curry.

Given that 15 percent of youth have experienced a major depressive episode in the last year (The State of Mental Health in America, 2021), and one-on-one meetings with a school counselor to discuss college has a high predictability of FAFSA submission (6.8 times more likely), postsecondary attendance (3.2 times more likely), and bachelor’s degree program attendance (2.0 times more likely) (Dunlop, 2016), the statistics show that not having a school counselor is detrimental to students’ mental health and college attendance.

Curry is passionate about finding solutions to these school counseling issues and committed to the future success of school counselors. She currently teaches in LSU’s Counseling Program.

Learn more about the LSU Counseling Program.