April 19, 2021
SRI International
CJ Park, REL Appalachia
As a college access counselor, you provide guidance and expertise to students charting their path to postsecondary education and employment. So, how do counselors build their knowledge and expertise? The Virginia College Access Network (VCAN) 2020 virtual conference, attended by Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia staff, offered sessions designed to guide counselors as they support students' access to postsecondary opportunities. Here are some highlights from a few VCAN sessions, as well as other resources that can support counselors.
Conference speakers focused on gaps in postsecondary access and degree attainment in Virginia across student subgroups, particularly for students of color and students from low-income households. The goals in the Virginia Plan for Higher Education, developed by the State Council for Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) with extensive stakeholder input, reflect the need for educators to help address these inequities. The plan presented at VCAN prioritizes access and attainment that is:
Additionally, staff from SCHEV shared recommendations to change the state's need-based financial aid to further these goals, specifically, by allocating more funding to institutions with a larger proportion of low-income students than to large institutions with more students overall.
Research suggests some actions counselors can take to support student postsecondary access and completion as well. For example, counselors can:
One conference session attended by REL staff featured the Virginia Career Coach Certification (VCCC) program, which is available to Virginia Community College employees and partners for a fee. The VCCC program is a 40-hour program offered by the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) to provide counselors with shared core knowledge in career coaching that may not have been a deep focus of their prior training. The program includes 10 hours of face-to-face training in helping skills, career development theory, assessment, ethics, and program planning. The additional 30 hours of training includes self-paced learning through online modules such as, “The role of the career coach,” “Career-planning models,” “Assessment, goal-setting, and action planning,” and “Ways to use labor-market information to guide academic and career planning.” The online content is multi-modal and includes learning assessments.
The VCCC program also offers counselors a stackable credential. Counselors who have completed the VCCC program can then pay a fee and take an 80-hour Facilitating Career Development (FCD) course offered by a certified National Career Development Association (NCDA) instructor to further develop their skills. Upon completion of the FCD course, individuals can apply for a credential through the NCDA as a Certified Career Services Provider or through the Center for Credentialing and Education as a Global Career Development Facilitator. The credentials can signal expertise and training specific to career development.
For additional, free resources to strengthen your counseling practice, check out the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Appalachia-developed Paving the Pathway to College and Careers Resource Compilation for evidence-based strategies to develop students' nonacademic knowledge and skills that will help you support students' postsecondary transitions. The compilation includes sections related to the logistics of the college application process, preparation for the expectations of postsecondary, and relevant social-emotional competencies.
A session from the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities highlighted the importance of building students' sense of belonging. The presenter guided participants through reflection on memorable events from their own K–16 experiences. The session focused on five statements that indicate a sense of belonging:
For each statement, the presenter asked participants to think of strategies that can help students feel they belong at their postsecondary institution, such as encouraging students to join organizations or clubs reflecting their interests and identities, creating a wellness center on campus, or providing safe housing.
Research also suggests that building a sense of belonging can promote students' academic and postsecondary outcomes. 5, 6 Helping students who are about to enter college understand that challenges are common and that they shouldn't doubt their success had positive impacts on students from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds in one study, including increasing their first-year full-time college enrollment rates. 5
This REL Northwest infographic presents research-based actions for building students' sense of belonging that counselors can adopt:
In conclusion, counselors supporting young people plan for the transition to postsecondary education and employment have multiple resources, including those from VCAN and the REL program, to inform their work.
______________Footnotes:
1 E. P. Bettinger, B. T. Long, P. Oreopoulos, & L. Sanbonmatsu. (2012). The role of application assistance and information in college decisions: Results from the H&R Block FAFSA experiment. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 127(3), 1205–1242.
2 M. M. Chemers, L. Hu, & B. F. Garcia. (2001). Academic self-efficacy and first year college student performance and adjustment. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(1), 55–64.
3 L. Ramos-Sanchez, & L. Nicholas. (2007). Self-efficacy of first-generation and non-first-generation college students: The relationship with academic performance and college adjustment. Journal of College Counseling, 10(1), 6–18.
4 E. Barnett. (2016). Building student momentum from high school into college. Ready or not: It's time to rethink the 12th grade. Boston: Jobs for the Future.
5 D. S. Yeager, G. M. Walton, S. T. Brady, E. N. Akcinar, D. Paunesku, L. Keane, D. Kamentz, G. Ritter, A. L. Duckworth, R. Urstein, E.M. Gomez, H. R. Markus, G. L. Cohen, & C. S. Dweck. (2016). Teaching a lay theory before college narrows achievement gaps at scale. Proceedings of the National Academic of Sciences, 113(24), E3341–E3348.
6 REL Northwest. (n.d.). Shifting the current school climate: Sense of belonging and social and emotional learning. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Northwest, https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/ regions/northwest/pdf/social-emotional-learning.pdf