Award Background and Purpose

The Carol Bobby Pioneer Award for Visionary Leadership honors the momentous career of Dr. Bobby as a pioneer in the Counseling profession. As President and CEO of CACREP for 30 years, Dr. Bobby’s influence on Professional Counseling and the accreditation of counselor training programs was legendary, particularly related to the development, growth, and maturation of the formal quality assurance mechanism that has been instrumental in advancing counselor education. In addition to her professional influence, Dr. Bobby demonstrated a passionate commitment for supporting counselors-in-training. Dr. Bobby made it her mission to champion Counseling students by ensuring a unified academic pathway that is built on a strong professional identity, ethical practice, and real world experience. She regularly sought creative opportunities for students and practitioners to be engaged in advancing the profession, serving as a mentor to many leaders in the Counseling profession over her long career. As a reflection of her career defined by visionary leadership and commitment to students, the purpose of CACREP’s Carol Bobby Pioneer Award for Visionary Leadership is to celebrate a doctoral student in a CACREP-accredited counselor education and supervision program who embodies visionary leadership aligned with CACREP’s core values.

2023 Recipient

The 2023 recipient is Ms. Alexandra Reeves, a doctoral student at the University of the Cumberlands. Ms. Reeves exhibits academic excellence and was inducted into Chi Psi Omega Chapter of Chi Sigma Iota. Her faculty and peers experience her as being collaborative, committed to excellence and the highest ethical standards in everything she does. Her commitment to lifelong learning is demonstrated in earned certificates in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Trauma-Focused- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy Certificate (MBCT), and Infant Mental Health.

 

Ms. Reeves currently works as a Licensed Professional Mental Health Counselor for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs and serves as a supervisor. Her advocacy work for Professional Counselors has centered around promoting a greater role within the interdisciplinary landscape of the VA system; and supporting families of deployed service members. With clinical experience working in the VA and personal experience as a military spouse, she acutely understands and has developed expertise on the needs of military families and envisions attainable quality services to enhance their mental wellbeing. Her dissertation research is on wellness and postpartum depression symptoms in the spouses of deployed service members, and her hope is to use the findings from her study to inform resource allocation and counseling interventions to support military spouses.

Her leadership activities include service on the Chi Sigma Iota Leadership and Professional Advocacy committee where she is involved in advocacy efforts to protect professional counselor identity within the context of advancing the Counseling Compact; in working with legislators to increase awareness about the importance of CACREP accreditation as a requirement for professional credentialing particularly in states pursuing participation in the Counseling Compact.

Her clinical knowledge and professional commitment is clearly evident in her roles as leader, mentor, and co-educator. Her leadership and advocacy experience and engagement on behalf of the Counseling profession is exemplary. She is dedicated to advancing the counseling profession and strengthening standards and policies that reflect the needs of society.

 2021 Recipient

Ms Jacoby has a strong professional identity which she has established through a history of teaching, research, and leadership. She has taught college courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels at three different institutions. Rachel is an effective instructor because she is grounded in the solid foundation of her clinical experience. She is a scholar with two peer-reviewed publications in counseling journals, a third under review, five more projects that are ongoing, and a book chapter.

Ms. Jacoby is independently licensed in the State of Ohio as a Professional Clinical Counselor with Supervisory endorsement. She is a Nationally Certified Counselor, a Level-1 Certified Trauma Practitioner, and a Certified Family Life Educator. She currently owns her own business where she provides consultation services to counselors and provides counseling services to individuals aged 2-25 in a local private practice. Ms. Jacoby is the Founder and current President of the Association of Child and Adolescent Counseling-Ohio Division. She is the President-Elect of the National ACAC and has served in multiple roles in the Alpha Omega chapter of Chi Sigma Iota. She and her peers took third place in the ACA’s national annual ethics competition. She volunteered her time and expertise at conferences put on by ACA, AARC, the Ohio Counseling Conference, and NCACES.

Also, while in her doctoral program, Rachel was instrumental in helping the Counselor Education faculty prepare their CACREP self-study demonstrating organizational and critical evaluation skills. Added to her repertoire is invaluable insight into the CACREP-accreditation standards and the processes involved with maintaining accreditation.

2019 Recipient

The recipient of the Carol Bobby Pioneer Award for Visionary Leadership is Brandi Chamberlin, who is a recent doctoral graduate from the CACREP-accredited program at Liberty University. Ms. Chamberlin, while in her doctoral program, worked to enhance a strong counselor identity in herself, faculty, and graduate counseling students by advocating for the professional development of the counseling faculty. She is a member of ACA, AMHCA, AACC, ACES, CAPS, SACES, VCA, VACES, NCCA, and the Lynchburg Area Counselor’s Association. She served on the CACREP self-study team for the last 3 years and is a member of Chi Sigma Iota. She has given 10 professional presentations, has active research agendas in four areas; and served as a Conference Proposal Reviewer for the Virginia ACES, SACES, and the Central Virginia Counselor Development Symposium. Currently, Dr. Chamberlin serves the community in Lynchburg, Virginia in many ways. One example is her service as a Board Member for Patrick Henry Family Services, an agency which provides group homes, counseling, crisis housing, and foster family services. And a second example is, recognizing a need for affordable counselor professional development opportunities, she developed the Central Virginia Counselor Development Symposium which offers an all-day training symposium at a low cost ($30) to advance counseling. In her day to day work she has a contagious passion for counseling: motivating and inspiring others…just as Carol Bobby did for so many of us.