Graduate Student Ethics Awards for Doctoral Degree Students

• A counseling or counselor education program may have one team of doctoral degree students and one team of master's degree students in the competition.
• Doctoral degree and master's degree teams will be judged separately. Teams must be made up of students in the same level of a degree program. This is not a mixed-level competition.
• Counseling or counselor education programs with separate and distinct campuses may have a doctoral degree team representing each campus. Separate and distinct campuses are considered those that have stand-alone programs.
• A single counseling or counselor education program that has multiple satellite campuses is not eligible for multiple doctoral degree team submissions. (These campuses would have one dedicated representative in an accreditation process, representing the multiple satellite campuses.)

• Teams are limited to having either a minimum of three students or a maximum of four students.

• Each team must have a faculty member who will serve as an administrative contact person for the counseling or counselor education program.
• The role of the faculty contact person is to represent the team’s counseling or counselor education program only.
• Faculty members should not act as consultants in the awards competition.
• The faculty member’s email address must be their own, not that of a student.

The team essays will be scored in terms of five rubrics:

1. Identification of the Dilemma: The team clearly identified the ethical dilemma(s) including conflicting factors, dimensions and variables included in the professional quandary. The dilemma was described in relationship to ethical standards, laws and professional ideas or aspirations.
2. Proposed Ethical Action: The team proposed action it would take including having: (a) clearly articulated professional interventions; (b) persuasive justification for proposed action; and (c) a description of the professionally recognized decision-making model or process used to arrive at decisions.
3. Use of the ACA Code of Ethics: The team cited appropriate sections of the ACA Code of Ethics (2014) and, if appropriate, other ethical guidelines considered in rendering their arguments. In addition, the team provided a clear rationale regarding selected sections of the 2014 ACA Code of Ethics and any other ethical guidelines cited.
4. Use of the Proposed Model: The steps of the group's decision-making model were clearly followed and skillfully applied to the case.
5. Overall: A thorough yet concise paper addressing details of the case and (a) the case study included proper citation of sources throughout the paper using the Publication manual of the American Psychological Association 7^th edition for the reference list; (b) the paper was well organized and written, and information was presented clearly and concisely; (c) the paper cited the appropriate scholarly literature relevant to solving the ethical dilemma; and (d) the paper is no longer than 10 pages.

Amari is a second year, full-time, doctoral student in a counselor education and supervision program. In addition to being a doctoral student, Amani has two part-time jobs. She teaches as an adjunct instructor at a local university in a master’s level counselor education program. Additionally, she is also employed part-time as a counselor at a local private practice and holds a license as a Professional Counselor in the state she practices in. 

She is using her adjunct teaching experience as part of her doctoral program internship requirement to gain exposure to being a counselor educator and has a faculty supervisor in her doctoral program. She is currently the instructor and faculty supervisor for a practicum class at her adjunct job. On the first day of class, she notices one of her students, Zola, is a former client of hers from 2 years ago and now has a different last name. Amari feels conflicted about how to handle the situation, as she will now be responsible for evaluating a former client’s clinical skills, as her instructor. Other students have also arrived for the first day of class and Amari does not want to draw any unwanted attention to the situation and decides to proceed as planned with teaching.

A few weeks later, during in-class supervision, Zola shares that a client she is seeing disclosed she is getting an abortion in a state that just overturned Roe Vs Wade. Furthermore, Zola’s client discloses to her that she is HIV positive and has been engaging in unprotected sex, with partners who are unaware of her status. The client stated she is still exploring any in-state options available but is also considering going out of state to have an abortion and requested she continue counseling with Zola via telehealth for support, both before and after the procedure. During in-class supervision, Zola asks how she should best help the client and what she should document, as she feels conflicted about how best to help the client while also adhering to her professional responsibility. Amari encourages Zola to not get too involved in the client’s decision-making process and states, “I can see how your client may want you to tell them what to do as I'm sure you might have wanted your own counselor to at times.” Amari laughed at her own statement and carried on with class. 

The following day, Amari was asked to meet with the program director of the University for which she is an adjunct. The program director shared that she received an email from Zola, requesting to switch classes. Zola disclosed in the email that she was a former client of Amari’s and felt that her confidentiality was violated in class the night prior. Amari left the meeting with her program director and sent an email to Zola expressing her frustration at her for communicating with the faculty member, instead of with her directly. Amari spends time reflecting on her role as a doctoral student, professional counselor and counselor educator and is unclear on how she could have proceeded differently.