Standard 3 Aspect C

Standard 3: Preparation programs ensure that candidates, upon completion, are ready to engage in professional practice, to adapt to a variety of professional settings, and to grow throughout their careers. Effective program practices include: consistent offering of coherent curricula; high-quality quality, diverse clinical experiences; dynamic, mutually beneficial partnerships with stakeholders; and comprehensive and transparent quality assurance processes informed by trustworthy evidence. Each aspect of the program is appropriate to its context and to the credential or degree sought.

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Stakeholder Engagement in Program: 
The School Counseling program makes an effort to connect with multiple stakeholders to ensure that candidates are ready for professional practice and engage in professional development in their careers. Our program aims for candidates, upon completion, to be ready to engage in professional practice, to adapt to a variety of professional settings, and to grow throughout their careers.

The School Counseling program closely adheres to state and national training standards with faculty committed to high quality clinical practices, to data based decision making, and to train effective school counselors. The program maintains active communication with stakeholders across the state including completers, local educators, schools, and districts. Moreover, the program faculty constantly revises and updates curricula, provides high-quality clinical experiences, and relies on evidence for quality assurance. 

The School Counseling program has strengthened its partnerships with stakeholders especially since Spring 2020, when the program received funding to appoint an Internship Coordinator, Dr. Song Lee. Dr. Lee plays a key role in partnering with stakeholders for improving the program as well as improving the K-12 internship experiences for our students. 

Site Supervisor Interactions:
One way in which the program utilizes stakeholder input is through interactions with Site Supervisors. When candidates are enrolled in their internships, site supervisors complete an Evaluation of Field Placement Student, which provides an avenue for connecting with stakeholders in different districts. The data collected from this survey provides a good example of a successful process of data collection, analysis, planning, improvement and innovation for the program through engagement with program stakeholders. In order to measure student practicum and internship performance, ratings for each item are entered into a database for data analysis. This consistent data analysis offers valued information for program faculty to address any weak areas among students and allows program faculty to monitor curriculum, process of preparation, and candidates’ readiness to practice in the field. 

Stakeholder Input: 
Our School Counseling Program Ambassadors, current students in the program, provide insightful information shaped by their experience that faculty utilize to plan and improve the program. Program faculty also utilize students’ evaluations each semester to identify strengths and weaknesses in our program.

Program completers and site supervisors are invited to complete exit surveys each year. These surveys provide opportunities for our graduates to reflect on their professional preparation and supervisors to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of our candidates and to provide feedback to the program as a whole. Survey responses are analyzed and reported to the entire faculty during a Spring faculty meeting. Based on the analysis , faculty then engage in planning, improvement, and innovation. 

Additional engagement that leads to collaborations with stakeholders occurs as faculty members, coordinator, and program advisors collaborate with stakeholders at local, state, and national levels through committee work and advisement boards. For example, School Counseling faculty (e.g., Drs. Griffin, Dr. Sharma) serve as board members on San Joaquin Counselor Association to forge partnerships with school counselors and other counselor educators in the Central Valley. 

Advisory Board Meetings:
We have also conducted advisory board meetings where we invited K-12 school counselors, site supervisors, and internship liaisons to seek their feedback. Recently, one piece of feedback focused on the program not being effective in communicating to site supervisors, who might be new in their supervisors’ roles, the expectations for supervising and the latest internship requirements. School counseling faculty and internship coordinators therefore prepared and have begun to conduct site supervisors training. During and after the training, faculty also seek supervisors’ suggestions on how to further strengthen the school counseling program. Moving forward, we plan to engage our stakeholders more by sharing with them our curriculum and seeking their suggestions on how to enhance the curriculum. We will also seek their suggestions on what to add, delete, or edit in existing internship evaluation surveys and candidate dispositions forms.

Stakeholder Engagement: (Also see tables created for CCTC Common Standards, Standard 1 & Standard 5)
Note that the School Counseling Program at Fresno State has just received support to have an internship coordinator during Spring 2020. Therefore, we anticipate the stakeholder list to increase as the internship coordinator establishes more partnerships with surrounding school districts.

Key Stakeholder Activity:

Fresno Unified School District Stakeholder Meeting

Clovis Unified School District Stakeholder Meeting

Advisory Board Meeting

Aspect D →