How Holistic Admissions Can Help Us Identify the Next Generation of Counselors

2:00PM Apr 11, 2024

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Hello and welcome to the thoughtful counselor, a podcast dedicated to bringing you innovative and evidence based counseling and mental health content designed to enhance your life. Whether you're a clinician, supervisor, educator, or a person wanting to learn more about the counseling process, we are here to demystify mental health through conversations with a wide range of counseling professional powerhouses. In each episode, you'll learn about current issues in the field, new science, and real life lessons learned from the therapy room. Thank you for joining us on our journey through the wide world of counseling. There's a lot to explore here. So sit back, take a deep breath. And let's get started.

Hi, everyone, welcome to the thoughtful counselor. I'm so excited today to have two lovely guests to share their research and work with holistic admissions review today. I have Dr. Dominique Hammonds and Dr. Lucy Ferguson. Welcome to both of you. I am very excited to talk to you about this. As I said, I've been involved with admissions on and off and our counselor education program. And I just got back into it last year and had so much fun. And it's been really interesting to see admissions trends and legislation and court, the recent Supreme Court rulings about admission. So I think there's a lot to dive into here. But first, I want to hear a bit about you both. I'll start with you. Dr. Hammonds, you're actually a returning guest to the thoughtful counselor. It's been a while but I want to ask you to both share your journey to counselor education. How did you get here?

That could be a loaded question. But how did I get here? I think I've I've always had a passion for helping people discover sort of their inner resources and creating pathways for growth. And so I've been very fortunate to be able to do that in a number of different ways, absolutely in counselor education, but I would say in counseling and clinical supervision. So all parts of that role, or each hat allows me to do that in a different way. And so that's really what keeps me in this work. In addition, I mean, I've got a lot of different interests, which I love to explore. I know Dr. Ferguson, I'm looking at her because she is a great research partner and co author and we explore things together. But so my interests really centered around culturally conscious teaching, counseling and clinical supervision, creative teaching and supervision methods, technology and counseling. And I will say I have more recently added sex therapy as a strong interest. I'm actually working on my sex therapy certification. So I'm a bit I just explore right and find, yes and find, find ways to, to kind of live those principles live those values in the things that I do. So through clinical supervision, I'll study something that applies to that, or through holistic admissions, which we're going to talk about today. That's a big piece of our role and something that I consistently work on every year in my role as program director and faculty member. So that's a little bit about me. That's cool. Thanks

so much. Dr. Heymans. Yeah. I love how the, you know, we're in a learning professional, we can continue to learn and expand and grow. So that's really exciting.

Do you have any interesting anecdotes from your own admissions process, like as a Master's undergrad or grad? Doc? Student? I guess? I know. I'm surprised I'm popping that question on you. Oh, no warning.

anecdotes, possibly. I'll be able to pull one in. Okay.

Great. All right. Great. All right. Dr. Ferguson, and tell us about you. How did you make your way to counselor education?

Yes, thanks so much for having us, Margaret. I mean, I've been looking forward to this because I get to spend time with one of my favorite people. Dr. Dominique Hammonds, you know, we've worked so closely together. And I heard you, Margaret, talk about like, the admissions process being fun, and it's certainly, I think, a creative process that we're excited to talk about today. So just wanted to extend our thanks for having us. And when I heard your question about How'd you get here, I always think of the people that got me here. And so I'll give a shout out to my mentor, Dr. Jose de Alba, who, when I was a master's student at UNCG back in 20 years ago, I'm getting ready to celebrate my twin At the anniversary of starting a master's program, but I remember him kind of saying Lucia, you really should apply for a Ph. D program, you know, I think he would be really successful at it and encouraged me to do so and, and that really meant a lot to me and I went on that, you know, to graduate and become a school counselor. And that's something that I always appreciated about the position of school counseling is that we get an opportunity to show students strengths that they may not see in themselves yet and to plant these seeds for them and open doors. And so I'd say I got into a Ph. D. program from just someone see seeing something in me and saying, Hey, have you thought about this and supporting that, and I think that that rings true for this topic, like thinking about how we want to encourage folks into this profession and honor the position we have in that. And so I got really excited to to be a school counselor, educator. And this is my 10th year I think in in counselor Ed, which feels like a girl milestone.

It is. So that's exciting. Congratulations. Um, well, I love hearing your stories and getting into the field. So talk to me about what led you to a holistic admissions review.

Yeah. I think it's probably helpful to start with our cake. Lucy's I think about you, Lucy. I know we call each other that, you know, by first names when we're in person. But I think in telling this story, that's my, my brain is kind of going there.

So Lucy, and I used to work together. And in a program well, in a department, she was professional school, counseling myself clinical mental health counseling as our programs. And we had the opportunity to explore the admissions process from two different programmatic standpoints. And each program had their own individual process, and procedures, own applications and deadlines, and pretty much everything. And so Oh, yeah, it was really interesting. Starting to compare those processes and, and within the same department, being faced with the same contextual challenges, but recognizing how each program was addressing those challenges differently. And so that got us into lots of conversation. What are you doing? How does this work? What does this look like? Are you noticing the same trends? And I think it was through discussion of the trends. That really birth this research?

Yeah, thank you, Dominique. Lucy, we're gonna add to that,

yeah, I just pulled it off that, you know, at the IBM former school counselor, where so much of what we do is look at removing barriers and thinking about equity and access and education. holistic admissions just felt like a natural extension of the work that school counselors do in K 12 settings to apply that to higher ed and your dominate talked about her research interests. And I think our research interests really aligned in this area to thinking about the importance that holistic admissions can be in terms of removing barriers and increasing access. And that really pulled on interest in both of us. And part of my scholarship involved. Working with TARIO says community cultural wealth framework is STS assets based approach to social capital. And I also think holistic admissions is a natural extension to applying that model into higher ed as well. In higher ed admissions specifically.

Yeah. Wow. Okay. So tell us about what holistic admissions review actually is. And yeah, why is it why it's important what it is just, yeah, give us the whole deal on it?

Well, I think depending on what field you're looking at, it may be a little bit different and it's applied differently. We have seen in the research, a strong focus of holistic admissions review, in medical programs, in psychology, in speech language pathology, just a number of different I would say, medical or allied health fields. And actually the AAMC associate or American Academy of Medical Colleges has put out a definition of H AR and I have it because I think it's really helpful to get a sense of where this started and then the how we have tried to expand it in some of our research. So AAMC defines holistic admissions as flexible, individualized way of assessing and applicants capabilities by which balanced consideration is given to experiences, attributes and academic metrics. And when considered in combination, how the individual might contribute value as a medical student, and future physician.

Guess you probably hear in there that like one, one, the pieces that stick out are really this balanced approach. So not just looking at metrics, which is, you know, traditionally programs or looking at often have like benchmarks around GPA, or GRE, but are looking at things beyond academic math metrics. And then the other piece that stands out is moving beyond like evaluating what makes a good student to really thinking about what's going to make a good future counselor.

Hmm, I mean, we could probably spend the next hour talking about just that piece right there. And our observations of that, as Counselor Educators, I mean, how many of us have been in the position of being an evaluator serving on admissions committees and looking at all of these applications and trying to get a sense of well, who actually is this person? What is their capacity to actually work in this field? And looking at some of the the criterion, the things that they're submitting for evaluation? Sometimes there's traditionally really, there's been a bit of a mismatch, when we're looking at these things that they have are providing and us being able to actually meaningfully pull information to judge will they be a good counselor? I think sometimes the traditional evaluation components, they actually just allow us to gauge if a student has the capacity for graduate study, and not if there'll be a good practitioner.

Yeah, so Can Can you just sort of put some names on some of those things? Right, because I think for different programs, it's different. So what are and maybe that's a question about the current state of the field. What are some of the typical evaluation components that you see at admissions in the admissions process in the counseling field?

I'm happy to jump in there. So I think people tend to use some kind of either state written statement or personal statement or a list of application questions that are geared towards different things, maybe counseling related experiences. Asking letters of recommendation are still pretty common. And then looking at undergraduate GPA. programs, I think we were unable to find a specific statistic on this. So listeners, if you're out there, or if you happen to know how many accredited CACREP accredited programs are still using the GRE. You know, anecdotally, we I know that programs I've worked in, have used it and some programs have eliminated, I think that varies. And it could even vary by region. But that's still somewhat viewed in in a application packet as well. So if we're thinking about the personal statement, a resume letters of recommendation, potentially some type of most people require transcripts, we actually had a recent conversation about transcripts and the barriers that that can introduce, especially if a program requires a student to produce all of the transcript from any school they've taken a class at. So anyway, those are some of the common things we see. Did you want to add on to that? Dominique?

Did you say GPA? I'm sure you did. Okay. Yeah, those things and there's there's actually limitations that that we have identified with, actually each of those components, and they can create barriers for students who traditionally maybe don't have the resources or access to in order to show up in the like, present the packet of materials in the way that I think we as the programs are looking for them to present them. Goodness, I think GPA if we start with GPA, for example, we know that it can be slanted bias maybe, but depending on where someone went to school, if you have a school with more access to AP courses, for example, right, that can artificially inflate someone's GPA, and that it's in comparison to other people's GPA, it's going to look much higher. I mean, there's so many examples, I'm not sure how much time we have all of those, but um, the GRE, as Lucy just mentioned, our programs have moved to eliminate the GRE but there are still programs that are using them and There's your there's years of research about the potential bias that GPA or GRE actually introduces, we know that it's expensive to take, we know that just the way that it is it's designed can create challenges. I just exhale on.

No. Go ahead, let's see, well, I was just gonna say and also the anxiety that it creates, knowing that I have to go through this standardized test and sign up and your experience with that in the past or knowing that the test is doesn't feel like an accurate measure or assessment of what you know, and knowing the information about the biases that are introduced. Just the the knowledge that you have to take that produces a lot of anxiety. I was just having Dominique, we had done a presentation for some potential candidates into our graduate program. And the real the visible relief when someone clarified and wait, you don't you don't, you don't need the GRE. We don't have to take that like, and we were able to say, No, we don't, we don't look at that that's not part of our holistic admissions review process, was really affirming of why we elected to remove that.

Well, yeah, I was thinking to, you know, what does the GRE actually say about anyone's capacity to succeed? Not only in the counseling profession, but even in a counseling program. It's so skills based, and there's just so many other things than, you know, having your vocabulary and math and you know, that piece so.

And there are two like to your original question about what are some programs doing? You that was part of what Dominique and I discovered, when we are kind of immersing in this research and scholarship. You know, there have been some pieces of a holistic admissions review that helps our educators and scholars and researchers have looked at so this positions, for example, there is a counseling disposition tool. Now, that's going to test my citation knowledge. I think it's Dr. Garner, and colleagues that worked on that. And they they really created a tool to be used at admissions, which is interesting, because that really maps on to some of what the research that's coming out of the medical fields in terms of their admissions procedures and what they've used, looking at some attributes and things like that. And then I think a lot of us probably, if we've been involved with admissions committees and thinking about those questions, naturally try to think about, you know, exposure to counseling related skills and things. But the piece about the holistic part, that was an aha moment for me when we got into this research is like, it's about alignment, like we already have tools that we're using to assess students skills and knowledge and dispositions while they're in the program and that we're required to do for accreditation. So Oh, my goodness, why aren't we making sure that those are lining up to how we are thinking about students at the admission space?

Yeah, Dominique, were you going to add something in there?

I was, but I don't remember. All

right. So. And this is probably a disguise like it kind of diving into a discussion later. But I know that you've seen some programs, and I don't know how much this is still happening us like, I think in an effort to identify dispositional issues have used sort of personality kinds of assessments or other mental health assessments, is that something that you saw in your research that people are really doing still or that an unknown?

I think it's, it's probably more helpful to lean toward dispositions, because that's something that is consistent with a process that's already part of what we're doing. And, you know, students are being evaluated using dispositions in the program and to speak to Lucy's point about alignment. So how can we use the tools that we already have to think about how we are intentionally moving students through this process? And we as as academic units or programs, how are we intentionally identifying what, and I'll use at least the three categories that AMC referenced, academic metrics, characteristics, or experiences? And how are we how are we prioritizing those in relation to what a skilled counselor might look like? And then kind of extrapolating all that onto the process? So what do we value perhaps as my program and perhaps empathy is one of those things, perhaps self awareness, perhaps, you know, some of the other commonly identified traits that you might read about in the counseling research? How are we identifying those at admissions? That's the real question.

Yeah, I guess I was thinking, perhaps in programs that are not using holistic admissions review, or do you see people still sort of holding on to Do we want our students to take the MMPI? And things like that? Or maybe that's just information? We don't know. Yeah.

I haven't seen that as much. Okay.

Yeah, that wasn't something that we came across. And I do like, just to kind of map on to what Dominique was saying, I think, you know, part of when we're talking about holistic admissions to is really thinking thoughtfully about campus partners and a collaborative process, because we, especially when we're thinking about dispositions, we want to be really thoughtful to working with like, for instance, our AOA to make sure that we're assessing that fair as as unbiased ly as we can, and fairly. And so I think that we'll probably talk about collaborators and things to consider as we go throughout this conversation today. But I think it's also really important to make sure that your admissions process that you have consulted with people on campus around that to disability services, for instance, in terms of the questions asked and types of questions. Yeah,

so maybe that's a great place to transition to talk, telling me about, you know, what does this process look like in reality as a, you know, faculty member, chair, you know, admissions officer, right, like all of those pieces, what is just kind of walk us walk us through that process about what that looks like?

I think we can tell a bit of a unique story with us, implementing these processes from different standpoints, we started together. And then to my dismay, you know, Lucy left us and now she's in another program. And you know, they're benefiting from from just her brilliance. But what we were able to do was intentionally track the process of applying holistic admissions through two different programs. And actually, we were putting together some research now that that describes that process. But in general, you know, let me back up and first say, you said your question was, what does it look like? A mess? No. What I what I mean by a miss is, it's intentional, you need to be intentional, but you're going to get yourself into a lot of discussion about the whys. Why are we doing these things? And so that can cause perhaps a little bit of tension at times? Because we really have to examine, are we just holding on to the traditional practices for the sake of holding on to them was, what was the reason that these were are consistently applied? And what? What are the reasons that we need to think about changing things? So we'll get different opinions there, it takes time as well. I don't even know, I wish I would have tracked somehow, how how many hours that my program spent redoing all of our questionnaires, right, redeveloping our admissions tools, and communicating back and forth with campus partners, for example, the graduate school and reworking all of this because now it's not just these internal documents that we have to rework, it's, it's going through the formal channels and making sure that our decisions are being reflected so that the information can get out to everyone else. So that's why I lovingly call it like, it's gonna be a lot. But it was important for us that yeah, it was important to us that we committed to the process, and we took the time to thoughtfully engage in it.

Yeah, and I think it's, yeah, it starts with having creating the space within the faculty, like within your program meetings to really review. I mean, this is a school counselor, and we are data driven. And you know, and that equity lens, reviewing the data on admissions and like really thinking about because we had just, we were just in a conversation with some colleagues about holistic admissions preparing for the ACES conference. And you know, one of the things that that I think many of us have encountered as Counselor Educators that gives a little like, peeing into let's, let's think about this process for a second, because I don't know if you all have had the experience of going through a waitlist and recognizing that some of the folks that were further down on your list of admitted students that got admitted later in the program, once they're in the program are some of the best and strongest students you've had that always made that that kind of experience made me pause and think then what is it about the admissions procedure, our procedure, either how we've created a rubric or how we're ranking students, where this student who is clearly like demonstrating so many skills contributing so much to classroom conversation, was not able to show Okay, so that in the application process, so approaching that with some curiosity, I began having conversations with colleagues first about Yeah, what have we noticed about this? And let's look at what we're doing. So I think that that's one and, and then conversations about program values. You know, hey, here's what we've identified, that's important to us. Here's our mission, here's the university's mission, let's look at our components of our application process and the process and policies around admissions themselves, and see if there is congruence here, or where there's areas to flex and, and that's one of the things that that we had a good conversation today about is that, you know, and unfortunately, we work in systems that have some things in place that are hard to change and flex. But what can we within our individual programs do as workarounds?

Okay, so you've had the conversations, identified the values, said, This is what we're looking for in students. So then how do you translate that to the nuts and bolts of or maybe what does that look like? What are students submitting to you? How do you how do you make that transition from those ideas to the nuts and bolts of it all?

We're lining up every year. One of our favorite, you get money. Okay, go ahead.

Okay. So it now that we've kind of walked away through the beginning parts of the process, and we've committed to what we're, what skills, characteristics, values, we let me not say values, but what skills characteristics experiences we value, then there's the intentional alignment piece and identifying where we can, where we can make sure that all of our questions and the components of our process align there. So just a couple of examples. First, so my program does an interview process. And we have the just general packet that applicants submit to us before we add invite a select group of folks to to interview with us. So when they submit their packet, first, we'll ask them to complete or submit a CV, a questionnaire and the questionnaire includes questions that are designed to speak to their reason for being interested in the program. Just helping us learn a little bit more about them and their skills and experiences. We do still ask for recommendations. And I know that's something that we we differ on right now. Recently, my the graduate school went from requiring three recommendations to two so that's there's some wiggle room there. But one of the things that as of this admission cycle we've we've changed is that instead of doing an open ended, kind of unguided recommendation, we went to asking people to submit recommenders names or you know, whenever they type their recommenders names into the application site, it'll send them a questionnaire, and the questionnaire is meant to be completed, they just go through and rate the applicant based on a number of specific characteristics. And so these characteristics, we actually pulled directly from some of the disposition literature. Right. And so we thought, well, that's another opportunity to to make sure there's alignment between dispositions and what they're going to be evaluated on, throughout the program, and at admissions. Right, because admissions, starting way at the beginning of the process is actually our first opportunity to gatekeeper right, we make sure it's an opportunity to think about potentially catching some potential dispositional issues right from the beginning, rather than allowing people at the entrance into the program, and then it being much more challenging to remediate. So what are those things that we can pick up on are right at the beginning of the process? So the other thing that I really like about the decision to transition from the open ended just letter is that typically, when people write those letters, they say very, you know, common things. So instead of was a hard worker, they were they contributed consistently to class. They worked with me on a project. Okay, those those are all wonderful things, and how do we use that information to, to aligned with, right, what are those identified skills and traits and blah, blah, blah, right? We can't really, and when you have about 200 of them, and you're reading all the same, the same statements, how how are you able to gauge who's a stronger candidate based on that? Right? So the theory is that making the transition to using a standardized tool might actually help reduce bias, in some ways to because everybody's being evaluated with this same same measurement. That's just one example. Yeah, no, I

appreciate that. I, I know, I mean, one, I don't love writing recommendation letters, one, because I'm not necessarily sure, you know, what this agency or what this doctor doc program is looking for in my students. And, you know, I don't, I don't know how larger programs are, but sometimes I've seen a student once or twice in a class, you know, in classes, and that's not enough for me to, you know, speak eloquently or accurately, even to their work. I'd also just have my own bias against the recommendation letters, because I think, you know, especially the further you get into the field, they tend to, there's an opportunity for bias because you can get this, you know, quote unquote hotshot person to write you a letter, and you don't know how accurate that is. But the name is very, you know, compelling. So, and, you know, you might not even know that compelling name, you don't even know how how good they are at their work, you know, in and out day to day work at their university. So it's like, it's just feels like it's full of traps. And so I've always found that to be really challenging. And also, yeah, when you're reading them on the admission side, it's the, they're not all that insightful. Nobody's really asking someone to write a bad, you know, you've got a bad experience with someone, you're not going to write them a letter. So

yeah, I was just gonna say, you know, in our process, we, what's coming up for me in terms of like, the How to is that it may not require a full revamping of the materials you're asking for, but more just like the lens in which you're looking through those materials, and like, I know, for us, it's really I use the term crosswalk, because we would, we looked at our application questions, and we were really putting that against some of our like, program, mission and values and saying, okay, like, how is where, what is this question really getting at? Is it pulling on this one? Or where are we not asking a question or using a component of the admissions materials to assess for this piece. And it was interesting, because our first round with the, with our new tool, and after undergoing like conversations in our program, we were just trying to bring more intentionality to what we were looking for in the letter recommendation process, like what you mentioned, Dominique, and in our second round, we just ended up eliminating them completely. And have it I mean, just this is just me, I have not missed them in terms of like what they ended up providing. So I think what without answering that is it's not always necessarily completely revamping what students are submitting, but how we're asking them to do so. So just a quick example, you know, we have a resume component. I think that's pretty common. But what we really tried to do was give candidates specific examples of headings they could use. And within that examples of what they could include. So I'll just use one example of student I have seen a lot of students have anxiety or just questions about applying when they've taken a break from a large gap between their undergraduate or when they have gaps in their employment, because they were caregiving for family. I mean, we've just come off COVID-19, it's not gone. I know, people are still getting it. But in terms of the pandemic, lots of people were caregiving for children caregiving for family members, and those are really relevant skills that are very useful to the counseling profession. And so being able to say as an example, in the employment experience, this does not have to be paid employment, this can be caregiving in the service of others, we had so much positive feedback that that really helped people feel seen in terms of what skills they might have that they could contribute.

Yeah, I think you Lucy also mentioned rubrics earlier. Is that something you use at the process before admitting someone to an interview? Where do rubrics come into play for you?

Yes, and I know Dominique uses them as well. Yep. That was a new that because I've been in three counselor ed programs first time, that that we really integrated a rubric thought for I think thoughtfully in the admissions phase at the point of like, looking at folks who we're going to invite for interviews. So we do we did it through a Google form, but we have each component that's part of that process is just thinking, what is that trend to capture and creating Have a Likert scale item of their their response and how much it captured that specific component. And then we just use that information when we're at in our program deciding who to invite we pull that up and kind of look at how, how people responded to those. I think that's similar to you. I mean, it may be a little different.

No, very similar. I think what's important about the rubric development process is the weight. So the weights that first identifying what you want to be on the rubric, what are you measuring? How are you? Where are you looking for that component? So that's the other thing like if your application has multiple components, are you pulling empathy, for example? Or self awareness from the questionnaire or candidate statement? Are you pulling it from? I don't know how you will? Different programs may do it differently. But are you pulling it from the recommendations? Are you pulling it from their CD? So there's a lot that needs to be strong agreement in how the process is unfolding, not just the fact that there is a rubric. So identifying those things. And then the weights if we're looking at experience in helping in a helping role. Similarly to what you describe Lucy? How are we weighing that as a program, does that outweigh capacity for graduate study? Right, we still have to evaluate that. And I know Kate Krebs says that, but I think we have some leeway in how we evaluate that right? capacity to work with diverse individuals. Another thing Kate Krupp says, we have to evaluate where, how, how and like, what, how would you rank that importance? And is that being translated into the scoring rubric?

Right? I feel like you just made this so much more complicated. Right? Not only do you have to decide, as a group of faculty, very highly educated folks have to come to an agreement on what the values of the program are and what you're looking at students, but also, which How do you rate those those pieces too. So I can imagine, that's a lot of conversation. So kind of getting back to the nuts and bolts pieces. So you've talked about asking for a CV, I love the idea of a template. I've even moved towards that with my coursework of just I don't want this busy work to get in the way of your ideas. I want to see the ideas. And so just giving them a lot of structure. You've talked about the the recommendations from outside folks. And transcripts, I think somebody talked about transcripts. And and then like the questionnaire any other things that you look at or find valuable in the holistic process prior to the interview process. Do you Does anyone do a disposition assessment prior to the interview? Lucy, you're shaking your head?

Yeah, we don't I know, I was just going where you are going, which is that? You know, I think part of the complexity and is that an important thing, technologists, there's only so much of, of skills, and experience of a person that you can get through an application. And I think that really, I was just going to jump to like, a lot of the holistic admissions Part Two comes through in the interview stage. So I was gonna jump there, but Right,

no, I think that's great. That was where I was going next was like, Alright, now you have them. Because I think even my experience is that we don't see a ton of the paperwork process. A lot of that is done by our admissions, folks. And so sometimes we're really mostly seeing them like when they get to the interview stage. And so that's a huge component for us. So wanting to hear you talk about that interview process, what that looks like for both of you. Yeah,

and full transparency, it what we what I have found in the past couple of admission cycles is the group that we invite for interviews is has been larger. I don't know how many we haven't talked about that. So be curious if you haven't had that same experience. But we ended up inviting more. So I think that that's just something to keep aware of in terms of like that commitment, that time commitment capacity, like someone's got to schedule that and interview that and have space and we've had to actually do two days instead of like one very full year, we've had to dedicate more time. But I will say that that's been really a rewarding part of the process too, in terms of the creativity that comes in and like what do we want books to do? So I'll give an example of like one of the things that we have done we're really wanting to and to see individuals openness to feedback and also create a situation in the interview. Do that mirrors what they might experience in the classroom and some of our experiential activities. So we get folks into small groups, and we do it online, we, we, I'll try to keep it, I try to tend to go off on a tangent about like, doing online or hybrid or in person, that's probably a separate thing to talk about. But in this experience, we have a group of like five to six students, and they take turns, role playing active listening with one another, I'm always the clients, you know, that comes in with some stress management issue, work life balance or something. And they practice active listening, but then they also give each other feedback, constructive feedback on what they observed. And we're really paying attention to what kind of feedback are they giving each other? And how is the person receiving that feedback? And then we asked them to like, talk about what they heard, and then come back into the roleplay and implement it. And it's cool just to see, are they able to, like, pick that feedback and apply it right away? Are they able to, you know, just be receptive to what folks are saying, and, and that's been a really cool new thing that we've been doing.

I love that dominate, what are you? What does your interview process look like?

It has grown in it has shifted over the past couple of years, I think, due to COVID Primarily, or at least it was the driving factor that kind of got the got the buy in from from the program to shift completely online. In the past, we had been doing face to face interviews. And you know, I think that this is actually been a really positive move to do them online, because it allows more participation from people who may not have the resources to participate face to face, right, I'm just thinking about the stress that it may create for a candidate. They're looking at graduate programs, and they're thinking, Oh, my gosh, if I have to go to this face to face interview, that's going to require me to pay for a hotel room, it's going to require me to maybe buy a flight, and then I have to get transportation and food and like that can get astronomical. And you know, depending on how many students or potential prospective students a program invites to an interview process, it could be very slim chances that someone would actually get in. And so we're in the past, in the past, we have been kind of facilitating that, knowing that very few of the those candidates would actually get in. And so that's, that doesn't feel good. And so I'm glad that we've made that transition, so that we are considering students resources. And we've actually, anecdotally, we were just talking a bit ago about trying to pull the data to see how much we have to see, to validate kind of where we're thinking because we really have seen an increase in socially and culturally diverse students who have applied to the program and actually shown up for the interview process. Because I don't know, we can't really say if it has been because we have moved the online or move our interviews online or not. But you know, that's just my perspective, I think that has that was a barrier that we've now removed. So okay, that that aside, I know that was really important to know, I

think that's so important. And I'll just add, I was just talking with our admissions team, like our actual admissions office, not our within our program, but and they are talking about even at the doctoral level, how a lot more programs are moving to online interviews, because, you know, I mean, in back in my day, you know, you would, you had to fly to all of the dock programs that you wanted to go to and plan to stay for maybe two, two to three days. So it was not a small, you know, it was, that's a heavy resource requirement. So I really love that. Okay, so now you're going to tell us about what your interview process looks like.

I will, but first, I think this is an important opportunity to take to further link the opportunities that the online space kind of gives us here and consideration of, of diversity and how important that is. And I would also say consideration of the processes, their policies, your procedures, the things that you were typically just doing without questioning that we're creating barriers for students. So for years, that was our practice, and it just went unexamined. Right, but now I'm making that change. Wow, we removed a barrier. So it kind of this is the lens that we're viewing this whole process through holistic admissions is what are we doing what have we consistently been practicing? What are we just, you know, out there every day doing that impacts students in this process, and how can we intentionally remove those barriers. So okay, I will transition now.

Well, I just ate Yeah. And I just want to add to that, like, as you're talking I'm thinking about, this isn't even just about, you know gatekeeping and and dispositions, but it's also about building a richer student body with a wealth of experiences, and then hoping to see that eventually, hopefully, more quickly than we've been moving a richer and more diverse counseling profession that can meet the needs of the folks in communities where they live. So anyway, I just loving everything that you're saying. So I really appreciate just thinking about this from so many different perspectives. Yeah,

thank you. I appreciate that, too. I think that is that's I don't want to speak for for Lucy, but I think that's one of the reasons that we were so passionate about, about holistic admissions is right, it's creating those opportunities and pathways, right for folks to get into the field so that we can meet the needs of a diverse population, right, our world is growing and changing. And we need people who mirror the population out practicing and who are trained well. So this is an opportunity to help create that. As far as interviews, and how we can use the holistic admissions process there, we have similarly to what we see mentioned, we've done a number of experiential activities. But I will say it has been very challenging in the transition from face to face to online, right. So we're using a video conference platform. And we do get some kind of visual cue, of course, we can, we can hear the candidate, but we do lose something and being able to, to interact, face to face with the candidate and kind of observe them and all these different spaces and interactions. And so we've tried to be really creative and thinking about how can we design intentionally an activity that will allow them to display their their skills and their characteristics? And how can we, again, going back to this alignment piece, how does that then map on to whatever those things are that we're looking for. So one of the activities that we did was paired students, and we asked them, we put them in individual zoom rooms, I guess, breakout rooms, and we asked them to introduce themselves to each other. And very similarly, test testing, evaluating, I'll say that evaluating active listening, so we then gave them a certain amount of time, and then ask them to come back to the big group and then introduce the other, the other applicant, right, their partner, what do you remember? Right? Right, how would you describe that person? Was that accurate? And so we did that actually, as an introduction activity. And so we tried to build that in so it wouldn't take up any more time than it had to. But that's just a small way that we could consistently gauge those things throughout the process. So we first allowed the other, the other partner to introduce, and then we checked in. Okay, well add to that, right. How accurate was that description? And would you add, would you like to add anything. And so it was really interesting to hear feedback from the partner about the accuracy of what was shared and what they added. And so we did not prepare the students for that it was just an activity that we asked them to do kind of on the spot. But active listening is a really important counseling skill. Right. Now, I understand that that's something that people will develop as well in the program. But some of their some of our research, that's something that has been identified as an important component to holistic admissions.

So all of this is to get these students into your program and develop future counselors. So tell me about your student body. How has this admissions process impacted the students you see in your program? You want to start dominate.

To be continued is my official answer. Right. I think that data is still developing. Yeah, we, we've made a number of these changes probably over the past two cycles where we've actually implemented them. And overall, I'm hopeful that we will continue to see growth and change. I think we're up against some real barriers as well. So it's hard to say what impact we We'll see later on. But anecdotally, I do think that we are seeing our the number of applicants go up. Actually, that's not even anecdotal. Let me brag a little bit. So my, my program last year experienced the highest, the highest number of applications that we've received since I've been there. And I wish I could, I'm sure we could ask the graduate school to go back and pull past 10 years or so. But we received almost 200 applications, which was up by about 50. Wow, that's a lot, a lot more now. Was it? Perhaps students looking at okay, interviews are going to be online, or the GRE is no longer a requirement? Right. So there's probably a combination of things that we're combination of changes that we're making, that they're possibly looking at and saying, Okay, this application feels doable. This program feels inviting, I don't really know what it is quite yet. But I think that that's one thing that we have noticed. As far as the challenges that I've mentioned, student housing continues to be kind of a bear to navigate and to secure. And we had a number of students except sort of at the beginning of the process. And then as soon as the nuts and bolts, the the numbers started adding up, and then thinking about how how to secure housing in a very rural area, which our program is located in, you know, unfortunately, reality set in. And so I think we're also up against how to help students navigate some of those challenges. But we're trying to think about what do we have control over within our programs within our academic units? And how does that impact the decisions that we're making?

Yeah, thanks, Dominique, let's see, how about you? What are you seeing in terms of your student body?

Yeah, so I think this, you know, I think, and I'll kind of couch this, and I've only been here, this is my third year. So I'm only looking at kind of two admission cycles, but a goal of ours, especially for our school counseling students. You know, we noticed that we were having a lot of students where where are we live is an area that people want to move, it's very expensive. But we were seeing people that wanted that were coming just for the graduate program and then leaving. And so some of our goals are, we really want to train folks in our area, to be able to stay in this region and in our Central Oregon region. And so we are seeing more people from this area, working in schools, that is a real goal. We have increased our number of students that are bilingual, which is really important, our students of color, also students that are parents and are balancing and have been out of school for a while. So we're seeing those that as well. And I also want to mention, and I know this isn't directly related to holistic admissions, but some of that I think it's also because we're trying to remove the cost of graduate programs that has been, I just want to talk about that recently. That is such a barrier. And so we've been trying to look at grant opportunities to provide tuition funding and support. And I think that that has been pivotal to that process as well. Yeah,

that's so cool. All right. So what do you see as the future of admissions and counseling, you know, bringing in a holistic admissions framework? What else do we need to be thinking about and really shifting our profession to be ready for the future?

Well, I think you did this whole, this is such a timely topic, especially in light of the Supreme Court decision removing affirmative action from admissions decisions, I think we are in a time where you know, different states are coming out with laws about what can and can't be asked. And I think holistic admissions and engaging in this intentional process is what we need to be doing. I mean, Margaret, you spoke to the heart of this work, the heart of this work is ensuring that we have counselors that are from communities and serving the communities that they are living in. And that's really important to us. And I think that this process is a route to that. So just want to know, this is a passion platform of mine. This is a rigorous process. I mean, you've probably heard that I mean, at the Dominique, you talked about the time commitment, I mean we are developing rubrics, we are increasing intentionality. We are looking at this from a very informed lens and working with multiple people to through this process to screen in and invite in. The most qualified applicants and our students are qualified like that cohort by this I can't say enough wonderful things about them like just the most. It's have such diverse experiences come into classes. is ready to engage and discuss and share that out. It's such a vibrant learning environment that we have. And that's truly at the heart of this work.

What would you add dominate?

I couldn't have stated it any better. I think that this is a timely topic. And I'm happy that Lucy and I have been doing this work. And we've got a foundation already set. And so I'm hopeful that we'll be able to continue to speak more about about holistic admissions and get our research out there. We have done some, some further research with a Delphi study. And that's we're hoping that we'll get out there. And what we identified was 81. Was that right? Lucy 81 items that were important to counselor education, were holistic admissions and counselor education. And so it really is expanding upon some of the work that's already out there in the medical fields and in some of the other allied health fields. And we tried to think about what makes this process unique to what we do and what are what are we really looking for, we're saying what's a good counseling student? And so I think that that research is going to be helpful in, in facilitating counselor education programs, or academic units, kind of adopting this holistic admissions review process, so that there's something out there that they can use as a bit of a framework, a place to start.

Yeah, I was gonna say, where, where would you send folks who are ready to start having these conversations right now? I know you all have an article, which I can link to in our show notes or put the title in there. Yeah. We're also is a good place to go. Let's see. Sure.

So yeah, Dominique, and I have the article that's out. But also, you know, it's, it's really cool. I think this is an opportunity for counseling, in terms of the helping profession to kind of come out front with what we believe is important about admissions and holistic admission. So for, for programs that are interested in seeing some of what's been done, the nursing profession is actually really leading the way in this work. For example, if you go on, and I need to, I don't have it off the top of my head, but you could probably Google. They're like, like the nursing education that that organization, right on their page, information about holistic admissions, a toolkit, and that's what we're hopeful to be able to bring in to counselor education, some of those same things. Try to the graduate school like the graduate, that handles all of graduate education. They have some really good tools. And you might find that your universities already come out with something related to holistic admissions, for instance, Oregon State where I am they like released a guide in 2021. That was helpful. So I would be encouraging folks to check their own University's Graduate School materials and resources, looking into nursing and then there's some things that are coming out within counselor Ed, for us that we've been working on.

Oh, I can't wait to share. And thank you so much for this conversation and your work on this. I'm so excited to see where you go with it and what else you're learning and sharing with the profession. I think this is so exciting. So thank you both so much for being here today.

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