Social Justice Statement

​My commitment to diversity and social justice means that I strive to attend to issues of power, privilege, and oppression in courses, research, and professional service. In these efforts, I am guided by feminist and multicultural principles summarized by Goodman et al. (2004) as a useful compass for social justice work in counseling psychology. These principles are:

1. Ongoing self-examination, including vigilance regarding power dynamics and the assumptions and values underlying our views, goals, and commitments.
2. Sharing power, including transparency about power differences, engaging in collaborative processes when appropriate, and fostering the power of marginalized individuals and groups.
3. Amplifying and attending to the voices and experiences of groups and individuals with relatively less power.
4. Consciousness raising by attending to how individual or group difficulties may be shaped by political, societal, institutional, interpersonal, and other contextual power dynamics.
5. Focusing on people’s strengths and engaging these strengths to address challenges, including working toward social change.
6. Promoting self-determination with the people I work with by developing tools that are informed by the needs and experiences of the constituent communities.

I acknowledge that the vision and principles articulated above are not achieved completely by any individual or training experience. Rather, this vision and the principles guide our program and field's shared responsibility for ongoing efforts to enact our commitment to diversity and social justice in our professional work.