TPC Journal V7, Issue 1-FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 1 27 and advocacy skills. PME provided a sense of purpose and meaning to advocacy and leadership in the counseling profession. Theme 2: Awareness of advocacy needs within diverse client populations . Participants responded that a greater awareness of the needs of diverse populations, particularly minority populations, was a result and benefit of their PME. Through working with underrepresented populations, they had a greater appreciation for the need to develop leadership and advocacy skills. One participant also described having a “deeper understanding of the difficulties faced by certain populations within our society,” which laid the groundwork for developing leadership and advocacy skills in the doctoral program. Once involved in a doctoral program, advocacy felt like a way to “join forces with people who care” to address inequities and help marginalized groups. In this way, having exposure to different cultural groups through their PME provided the context for understanding and developing advocacy action strategies. Theme 3: Motivation and direction for leadership and advocacy . Participants described that the motivation and direction for their leadership and advocacy work was inspired by the sense of respon- sibility and the awareness of needs that originated in their PME. In this way, PME helped to pave the way for the focus of their subsequent leadership and advocacy work. Regarding leadership, partici- pants reflected that direct counseling work “consumed them” once in the profession and, as a result, professional development became something that you fit in when you could. Once they re-entered into graduate work as a doctoral student, they valued leadership and professional involvement and could give these aspects of development a more passionate focus. In a way, not having much time for professional development and leadership roles while directly serving clients provided motivation for becoming involved as a doctoral student. Participants also reported that the presentations they submit to conferences are motivated by the needs they became aware of during their PME. Many credited their PME for helping them develop awareness of the future needs counselors were going to face, which motivated their advocacy for im- proved counselor training. Theme 4: Development of leadership and advocacy skills on-the-job . Many participants described the need to develop leadership and advocacy skills on-the-job during their PME, and how valuable this was to their doctoral work. Participants experienced first-hand the lack of funding and resources in the community and school settings, which forced them to act in creative ways to get clients’ and students’ needs met. In addition, some described working in a position with multiple roles or serving multiple school campuses, which forced them to learn how to initiate programs independently, bal- ance multiple roles, communicate with a variety of stakeholders, and thus develop leadership skills. Advocacy also was essential to develop on-the-job, as described by this participant: I worked as a bilingual counselor, the only one at my clinic, working with a specific population for a period of time. I had to do a lot of leadership and advocacy work at the clinic to help my supervisors and colleagues understand this specific population and the resources that were available in the community specifically for this population. Theme 5: Confidence to speak up . Again, confidence emerged as a theme with regard to developing leadership and advocacy skills during doctoral study. Having PME gave participants the necessary confidence to speak up in classes, in meetings and at conferences. Many reported that they became much more confident about voicing concerns and advocating due to their first-hand knowledge of issues facing counselors in the field, as did this respondent: