“I Am Strong. Mentally Strong!”: Psychosocial Strengths of International Graduate Students of Color

Positioned at a unique intersection of managing academic pressures and embodying racial and ethnic minority identity status, international graduate students of color (IGSCs) are frequent targets of multiple stressors. Unfortunately, extant counseling literature offers counselors little information on the psychosocial strengths IGSCs employ (e.g., strong familial bond, friendships) to cope with such stressors. To address this gap, interviews with eight IGSC participants were conducted and analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis and the lens of the intersectionality framework. Five psychosocial strengths were identified—familial support, social connections, academic aspirations and persistence, personal growth and resourcefulness, and resistance and critical consciousness. Recommendations for employing an asset-based approach in counseling and counselor education are offered.

Disrupting the Narrative on Recruiting Graduate Students of Color in Counselor Education

The voices of students of color are largely absent in the literature on graduate student recruitment in counselor education. The existing literature focuses on university personnel and can portray a deficit perspective of students of color. Using grounded theory and a critical race theory framework, we sought to develop a theory that described the motivations of graduate students of color for pursuing counselor education. We interviewed 19 graduate students of color and used a constant comparative method to understand their motivations for and supports utilized in pursuing counselor training. Grounded in our participants’ counternarratives, we identified a theory to describe their drive to serve marginalized communities, to attend programs committed to diversity, and the supports they received in applying to graduate school. Based on this theory we provide implications for how counselor education programs can demonstrate a commitment to diversity and support graduate students of color through the application process.

Peer Support of Graduate Students of Color Through a Formal Graduate Student Association

This chapter explores the experiences of graduate students of color and examines the support systems in place to promote their success in the academy. The authors provide an overview of the relevant literature and pertinent theoretical frameworks, including critical race theory and self-determination theory, as they relate to the experiences of graduate students of color. Furthermore, the chapter describes the initiation and early development of a Graduate Students of Color Association at Merrimack College, a private, Catholic college in New England. The chapter include both benefits and challenges of participating in and sustaining the group, while offering recommendations for future practice and research. It may be of particular interest to graduate students of color; faculty, staff, and administration in graduate education; and researchers focused on graduate degree attainment among individuals of color.

“Just My Being Here is Self-Advocacy”: Exploring the Self-Advocacy Experiences of Disabled Graduate Students of Color

Self-advocacy is emphasized as a critical practice for improving the retention and increasing the success of disabled students. In higher education, disability service offices and academic researchers jointly shape the conversation around what comprises effective self-advocacy. Students who are not engaging in these prescribed strategies are then framed as underprepared and/or lacking the skills required to self-advocate effectively. Unexamined within this discourse are how identity, power, and environment shape students’ self-advocacy as well as the ways students engage in self-advocacy outside of normative accommodation structures. This study intervenes by examining the extent to which dominant scholarly and practitioner understandings of self-advocacy align, resonate, and/or diverge from the lived experiences of self-advocacy among disabled graduate students of color. By centering the voices of multiply marginalized students, this study raises questions about what may be obscured when scholars rely only on academic definitions of self-advocacy in the design, framing, and analysis of their research.