603 Susan F. Branco, Melonie Davis The Minority Fellowship Program: Promoting Representation Within Counselor Education and Supervision Susan F. Branco, PhD, NCC, ACS, BC-TMH, LPC, LCPC, is a clinical assistant professor at The Family Institute at Northwestern University. Melonie Davis, MA, NCC, LCMHC-A, is Professional Development Coordinator for the National Board for Certified Counselors Foundation. Correspondence may be addressed to Susan Branco, 618 Library Place, Evanston, IL 60201, susan.branco@northwestern.edu. The Professional Counselor™ Volume 10, Issue 4, Pages 603–614 http://tpcjournal.nbcc.org © 2020 NBCC, Inc. and Affiliates doi:10.15241/sfb.10.4.603 In 2012, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration awarded funding for the Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) to be managed by the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) Foundation. The MFP aims to increase representation of minoritized students enrolled in counselor education and supervision doctoral programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP). From 2012 to 2018, the NBCC MFP has disseminated 20–24 monetary fellowships each year. This article reviews representation within counselor education, offers a history of the MFP, provides doctoral fellowship recipient outcome data, and concludes with implications for counselor education. Keywords: Minority Fellowship Program, counselor education and supervision, National Board for Certified Counselors Foundation, CACREP, representation In August 2012, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) awarded $1.6 million to the National Board for Certified Counselors Foundation (NBCCF) to oversee the Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) for underrepresented, minoritized students in doctoral counselor education and supervision (CES) programs (Shallcross, 2012). The groundbreaking award for the counseling profession aimed to increase minoritized student representation in CES doctoral programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP). It is important to note that NBCC now also offers MFP master’s-level fellowships for those students committed to collaborating with underrepresented and minoritized populations (NBCCF, n.d.). The goal of this article is to review the status of underrepresented racially and ethnically diverse faculty within counselor education, describe the doctoral MFP, and share the grant outcome data from its inception in 2012 through 2019. Underrepresentation in CES Diverse racial and ethnic representation within counselor education impacts recruitment and retention of master’s- and doctoral-level students of color (Henfield et al., 2013), perceived quality and content of course instruction to promote diverse perspectives (Seward, 2014), and preparation for graduates to work with diverse client populations (SAMHSA, 2020). Further, the ACA Code of Ethics (American Counseling Association [ACA], 2014) mandates that “counselor educators are committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse faculty” (F.11.a, p. 15). Similarly, CACREP (2015) requires that counselor education programs seek to recruit and retain both diverse faculty and students. Although representation of faculty of color in counselor education has increased (Baggerly et al., 2017), the majority of counselor educators are White (71.38%), with 14.52% Black, 4.77% Latinx, 4.03% Asian American, and 0.7% Native American (CACREP, 2018).
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