Dr. Christine Yeh is Chair of the Department of Counseling Psychology at the University of San Francisco (USF) School of Education, and also serves as Co-Director of the Center for Research, Artistic and Scholarly Excellence (CRASE) at USF. Dr. Yeh embodies the vision of social justice, as evidenced by her scholarship, advocacy, and teaching, and her mentorship of faculty, students, and staff ensures there will be a generation of social justice advocates for years to come.

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Her research and service focuses primarily on developing, implementing, and evaluating culturally responsive school and community based programs for historically targeted communities. She has received numerous grants and fellowships to support her research including a 5-year National Institute of Mental Health grant investigating cultural adjustment and mental health among low-income Asian immigrant youth in New York City schools and a 3-year Spencer Foundation grant on youth identities. From 2012-2013, she was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar and Visiting Professor in the Department of Counseling, at the National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. Her collaborative Fulbright project on Atayal aboriginal youth was featured as a major exhibition in the National Taiwan Museum has been touring in numerous other museums in Taiwan. Dr. Yeh has authored over eighty peer-reviewed publications, and actively disseminates her work in public scholarship outlets including news articles, blogs and opinion editorials. In her research, she actively partners with youth and community members to insure an advocacy-oriented, transformative, and participatory approach. Dr. Yeh’s focus on addressing social injustices does not only occur in her research activities, but is also evident in her teaching.​​​​​​​​​​​

 
Before coming to USF, Dr. Yeh was an Associate Professor and Coordinator of the School Counseling Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. At both Universities she envisioned a training program that facilitated school counselors’ developing cultural awareness and competencies, a rare perspective within the field. This vision is evident in how the School Counseling program has been shaped at USF. Here, all school counseling students are placed in diverse urban schools that include students who have been under resourced. The USF students are charged with collaborating meaningfully with students to harness their cultural strengths, and to utilize these assets to transform oppressive structures and systems in schools and to support community leadership. Dr. Yeh holds the importance of cultural identities at the forefront of her work, and she expects her students to do the same. The result is culturally competent school counselors who are the leaders of addressing inequalities in Bay Area K-12 schools.

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In addition to her vision for equity in research and teaching, Dr. Yeh is also a passionate mentor to new colleagues in the field of counseling psychology. She is extremely generous in her time and ideas, and is truly invested in building up those around her. She strives to make the community around her stronger, and this includes her community of fellow researchers. This mindset is reflected in her service work at the University of San Francisco. She, along with her Co-Diretcor Saera Khan, are the first directors of the USF Center for Research, Artistic, and Scholarly Excellence (CRASE). The center strives to support, promote, and celebrate faculty research, artistic and scholarly excellence through interdisciplinary and community connections, innovative approaches, social impact, and active dissemination. The center has helped transform the research landscape at USF, and has increased the number of interdisciplinary research projects that are currently in place. CRASE provides regular workshops and trainings, with topics that include how to write and submit Op-Eds and blogs, how to secure grant funding, and geospatial mapping workshops, to name a few. Center events have addressed urgent social issues such as the global refugee crisis, the presidential election, and Islamophobia. Drs. Yeh and Khan’s vision for promoting scholarly excellence and collaboration has contributed to an active and engaging research community at USF.

 

Dr. Yeh’s vision for a socially just world has influenced every aspect of her professional and personal life, and it is exciting to see what her next steps on this journey will be.

Dr. Laura Owen, a research professor at American University, focuses on evaluating the impact of interventions and programs designed to address the persistent equity and access issues that so many students across the country face. Previously, Dr. Owen was an assistant professor and director of the school counseling program at San Diego State University (SDSU) and held an appointment as assistant professor in counseling at Johns Hopkins University. A prior urban school counselor and district counseling supervisor, she is a passionate advocate for closing college opportunity gaps.

 

Dr. Owen has worked collaboratively with leaders from across the country to address systems issues impacting student postsecondary outcomes. She was a panelist at the Harvard White House Convening where she discussed research-based approaches to address financial aid and college affordability, the college enrollment process, and the summer transition between high school and college.

Laura co-led the SDSU White House Convening and was a cofounder of the National Consortium for School Counseling and Post Secondary Success (NCSCPS), which supported the former First Lady, Michelle Obama’s, reach higher campaign focused on increasing equitable and accessible pathways to postsecondary success for all students, especially those who face formidable barriers.

Dr. Owen believes that all children, regardless of gender, race, socioeconomic status, or disability, have the right to receive the highest quality education available.  Her research has focused on financial aid, FAFSA completion, and the high school to college transition. In collaboration with researchers from across the country, Dr. Owen is studying this trend by working with large urban school districts to understand how to better support students and their families as they transition from high school to higher education. She is also evaluating text messaging and tools like Bridgit, an online program that helps students prioritize complex college admissions tasks, and how summer melt programs help students navigate the financial aid and college admissions process. Understanding and addressing the barriers students face at this stage will help to increase postsecondary opportunities for all students.

 

Dr. Owen’s work has been supported by the Abell Foundation, the Austin Chamber of Commerce, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CollegeBound (Baltimore, St. Louis and Kansas City), the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, the Foundation for California Community Colleges, Harvard University, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the U.S. Department of Education Federal Student Aid Department.

 

Dr. Owen is the recipient of two teaching awards, Johns Hopkins University (JHU) School of Education Excellence in Teaching Award (2013) and the SDSU College of Education Most Influential Faculty Member Award (2015) .

 

Dr. Owen is a co-author of the recently released Revisiting the Path Forward Report . In response to the need for increasing school counseling support for college and career readiness, the Kresge Foundation charged the NCSCPS to survey the field and review existing scholarship to document a blueprint for the future of school counseling.

 

The report, which draws from research from the field as well as existing work, seeks to bring further understanding and recommendations to the ways school counselors can make an impact in young people’s lives. With the growing recognition that the school counselor is central in achieving educational outcomes, school counselors still operate under severe constraints, juggle multiple roles, and are hampered by large student caseloads. Ideally, a repositioning of the counselor role as a college and career readiness leader must also be accompanied by attention to freeing counselors from unnecessary administrative work and other duties that detract from their core mission of designing and implementing student achievement interventions. [Press Release, 2017]

 

The recommendations serve as a guide to the field for improvements in school counselor preparation, credentialing, and professional development. The report recommends new areas for research, as well as ways to more effectively engage community-based providers, parents, and families,

In partial response to these recommendations, American University will launch the Center for Postsecondary Readiness and Success this fall and Laura will be the Director of the center. The Center aims to create an aligned system, driven by student outcomes to disseminate new knowledge and discovery of college and career readiness and persistence models, while simultaneously connecting this new knowledge to K-12 and higher education policy. The Center’s greatest contribution will be to produce multi-disciplinary practices and research that will improve equitable student postsecondary readiness and success—with implications for policy development.

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The Center will be specifically devoted to the study of systems and processes (e.g., counseling, advising, financial aid practices) that influence college and career readiness in K-12 settings as well as college persistence and completion.

Objectives/Goals:

• Promote a culture of relevant, advanced, multi-and inter-disciplinary approaches to understand, evaluate and strengthen postsecondary readiness and success opportunities for all students

• Strengthen linkages between research institutions, educational agencies, businesses and non-profit organizations committed to improving the cradle to career pipeline

• Encourage critical discussion of the social and cultural implications embedded in college and career readiness strategies, initiatives and programs

• Identify college and career readiness and success competencies and ensure they are aligned with measurable student outcome metrics

• Propagate professional development practices directly linked to improving student college and career readiness and success outcomes