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Abstract
Counseling Psychology and related fields have made efforts to meet the mental health needs of the constantly changing United States population. Of the applied domains in psychology, counseling psychology has provided leadership in developing multicultural training (Morrow, Rakhsha, & Castaneda, 2001). In many graduate programs in counseling psychology and related fields, diversity training consists of a single diversity course. Often, there is little accountability for monitoring the quality of these courses; documentation of the experiences of students in these courses; and most importantly the experiences of those teaching diversity courses. The literature on the experiences of faculty of color in the academy is a growing body of literature; yet it is limited with regard to the experiences of faculty of color who teach diversity courses. The sample for this study consisted of fourteen African American faculty in counseling psychology and counseling programs in Traditionally White Institutions in the southern and northern regions of the United States. The sample consisted of nine Counseling Psychologists and five Counselor Educators. There were eight female and six male participants. The sample participated in a semi-structured individual interview and completed a research packet that contained a racial identity scale and a demographic sheet. From the qualitative analysis, several themes emerged from the data. An overwhelming majority of participants envision their primary goal in teaching their diversity course was to be an agent for social justice. Most of the participants responded that in order to enact this agenda they incorporated coping strategies that allowed them to stay the course. In addition, there were common themes that presented both positive and negative experiences as a result of this mission.