Thank you to the 383 directors who completed the 2023-2024 Directors Survey.  The survey team is working to organize, clean, and analyze the data set.  Be on the lookout for emails clarifying your data in November and December.  Also, coming in December: the launch of the Salary Survey!  

While the surveys might be the most apparent work related to research, AUCCCD does much more.  In January 2024, AUCCCD hired its first part-time Data Analyst.  Pete LeViness, PhD, former director at the University of Richmond and former AUCCCD Survey Coordinator has done an incredible amount of work, merging a decade worth of survey data.  For the first time, we are able to look at long term trends in our profession.  Pete’s expertise, attention to detail, and love of data have been such a boon to AUCCCD.  

The Research Committee is close to completion of the next AUCCCD position paper, entitled Essential: The Roles and Impacts of the University and College Counseling Center.  This paper extends the last position paper Navigating a Path Forward (Gorman et al. 2023), which discussed the pressures on counseling centers and how the field of college mental health has changed in the last decade.  The focus of the current paper is clarifying and focusing on the essential functions of a counseling center to strengthen the role of counseling centers in the college ecosystem. A draft of the paper is currently with our organizational partners for their feedback and hopefully their endorsement.  I am deeply appreciative of Gary Glass, PhD, former director at Oxford College, lead author on this paper.  Without Gary’s passionate commitment to this project, it would not be the excellent paper it is.  Look for the release of the paper in early 2025.  

Finally, you might not know that AUCCCD and the Center for Collegiate Mental Health (CCMH) are close partners, with the Survey Coordinator serving at the AUCCCD liaison on the CCMH Advisory Board.  Currently, our two organizations are in the early stages of exploring how we might partner to research the outsourcing of counseling centers.