The consulting faculty spends much of their time listening patiently and carefully.
What CSU advisors want and need is that the administration listens to them.
“Counselors want to provide our students with quality services in a healthy work environment. The advisors enjoy working with the students. It’s very rewarding, but the environment we work in can lead to undue stress, exhaustion and burnout,” said Susan Chen, San Francisco State University Counselor, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Chair of the CFA Advisory Committee.
Chen, who speaks Mandarin Chinese, was hired on a permanent basis in 2010 to fill an urgent need as almost a third of the university’s students are Asian Pacific Islander and Desi-American (APIDA). She works with CFA members, fellow counselors, other faculty, students and staff to advocate for more counselors across CSU’s 23 locations. CSU needs to hire more counselors to reduce counselor workloads and increase student access to necessary psychological services. Campuses also need to hire more advisors who identify as Black, Chicanx/Latinx, Indigenous, Asia Pacific Islanders, and Desi-American and/or LGBTQIA+.
For example, after the death of a black student at Cal Poly Humboldt in 2017, the black student community has not had access to available counseling services because there are no black counselors on staff, Chen said. In order to foster a sense of cohesion and security, black consultants from San Francisco State and CSU Northridge had to be recruited.
“We believe all levels of administration, including the CSU Chancellery, can learn from the consultants’ unique insights into current mental health needs and emerging crises. Advisors can offer best practices for improving the mental health and wellbeing of students and the campus community from the perspective of frontline professionals. Counselors also certainly understand what it takes to work more effectively and efficiently, the impact on morale among counselors, what helps make the counseling agency a healthy place to work, and the myriad of ways in which job losses as tenure track Counselor has been for a period of at least seven years. This would have a negative impact on the stability of the CSU counseling centers,” Chen said. “Finally, beyond salary issues, why has it been so difficult to hire and retain Black, Indigenous and Colored (BIPOC) applicants when hiring consultants who meet racial, ethnic, language, sexual… and sexual aspects reflect “Gender diversity on our campus?”
Counselors provide direct services to students in the form of short one-on-one counseling sessions, as well as crisis counseling, groups, referrals to other resources, public relations and presentations, supervision for interns and unlicensed counselors, and counseling for faculty, staff, and administrators.
The goal is to build student performance and resilience by meeting student-clients where they are with their problems and working with them to address and achieve their goals. Advisors play an important role in retaining diverse students and helping them graduate.
“I feel so touched by the students. “It is a great privilege to witness so much pain, suffering, depression and anxiety that social and cultural stigma may have made it difficult for them to share with others,” Chen said. “At SF State, our advisors mentor many first-generation BIPOC students and students from marginalized communities. Each person has their own unique challenges or has been impacted by suffering such as oppression, trauma and bullying. We offer students a confidential, safe space to share their feelings and thoughts with a psychologist who can give them the guidance they deserve. We hear about their struggles as well as their successes as they work towards personal growth.”
COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted students’ need for mental health services. New evidence suggests the pandemic will have serious long-term mental health implications.
“Everyone fights. I believe that everyone in this world deserves time and space to pay attention.”
– Susan Chen
“As consultants, we are trained to deal with uncertainty and to tolerate the unknown. COVID was the epitome of uncertainty. As the world dealt with COVID and everything shut down, counselors had to quickly switch and offer virtual services while paying attention to the physical and emotional safety of our students,” Chen said. “Students could now access services from the comfort and convenience of their homes, but home could also be a difficult and stressful place with compromised security and privacy. For example, students attended their virtual counseling sessions from places like their car, a bathroom, a closet, or walked around outside so their family didn’t know they were having a counseling session. Students still report suffering from the tremendous isolation experienced during the pandemic and coming onto campus has created major social fears of being around people again, and some students are struggling to adjust to these to get used to change.”
Part of the solution to increasing access to mental health is stable and permanent positions for counselors. A tenure track position is a position that offers permanence and job security and allows counselors to build a career not only by working in the counseling center but also by forging lasting, trusting connections with departments across campus and at the common one participate in governance.
For example, if the campus knows its advisors well, they are more likely to refer and consult with students who are of concern to them. However, most CSU counseling centers employ counselors on fixed-term, one-year contracts, and a great deal of time is often spent on repeated or failed counseling searches. Permanent positions – such as tenure track positions – stand out and attract qualified applicants from diverse backgrounds from around the world.
“Some CSU counseling centers are trying to find ways to serve more students by contracting with TimelyMD or other outside and unknown providers, which may seem like a good idea at first. However, we would like to advocate putting valuable resources into building stable and healthy advisory bodies with diverse advisors who really know our campus inside out, who are passionate about working with our students and who reflect the intersectional identities of our students”, said Chen.
“It takes so much strength for some students to finally seek support – at this critical moment, they are looking for empathy, connection and support, not being referred to outside services. I understand the reality of budget constraints, but wonder how many more students we could serve if we had more human capacity and weren’t so understaffed – don’t our predominantly BIPOC students across CSU deserve better?”
Public health advocacy
Chen has been a consultant at San Francisco State University for over 12 years. This is her third career after working in nutrition and public health, including homeless health and HIV programs. Chen recalls wanting a career that would allow her to work closely with people while also promoting social justice.
“The field of counseling and psychology is fascinating and has allowed me to better understand myself and the importance of approaching this work with cultural humility and in a culturally appealing way.” Working in clinical counseling has given me I’ve found meaningful work that I love,” Chen said.
Outside of consulting, her activism and community organizing also includes previous work with LGBTQ and Asian communities, women of color, Cuban solidarity groups and in more recent years Justice for Palestine. “For me, activism and solidarity work are the source of great feelings of love and connection with others. There is nothing better than that feeling and the beautiful and noble people I have met who are doing this work over the long term. Injustice affects a person’s ability to live and thrive and cannot be ignored,” she said.
Participation in CFA’s social justice activism came naturally.
Meeting other fellow Consultants has been incredibly helpful and over the years the CFA’s Advisory Board and network of Representative Representatives has grown. They meet primarily on a monthly and more frequent basis to network, share best practices, and provide support and advocacy on important issues that arise in our efforts to improve working conditions for counselors, said Chen, who also serves on the CFA San Francisco board of directors , served on the CFA’s Council for Affirmative Action (now Council for Racial & Social Justice) and co-chaired the CFA Caucus for Asian and Pacific Islanders (now APIDA).
“The opportunity to spend valuable time meeting other CFA members and working together on our committees has resulted in alliances, connections, and multiple lifelong friendships, which counteracts the challenges presented by counselors and other educators who are isolated under difficult circumstances conditions and with little support.” Chen mused. “Being involved in the union gives you valuable information about teachers’ rights, connects you with allies, and has numerous learning opportunities because CFA shares a variety of resources.”
Chen is grateful to those who listen to counselors’ voices and participate in the movement for social justice and access to quality mental health services.
“Everyone fights. I believe that everyone in this world deserves time and space to pay attention.”
