Carruth Staff Training and Professional Values
Our staff is made up of professionals with a diversity of lived experiences, educational backgrounds, and professional affiliations (including social workers, counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists).
We abide by ethics codes that list sensitivity to diversity, an embrace of a multicultural approach, promotion of social justice, and protection of civil and human rights as core professional values. The American Psychological Association has comprehensive multicultural guidelines from which an appreciation is shown for intersectionality, individual social contexts, and recognizing the impact of “power, privilege, and oppression” on inequities across a number of social constructs and systems.
Our staff come from varied academic programs and training sites that include several diversity-focused training opportunities. Just a few examples across our staff include:
- Learning in programs with core competencies and evaluative components in multiculturalism
- Completing diversity/multicultural and Queer coursework and seminars
- Participation in diversity committees within the center and broader university.
- Training on issues related to marginalization because of race/ethnicity, ability, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, gender, and mental health
- Academic programs with specific emphasis on providing services to rural, underserved populations.
- Providing outreach to Appalachian student populations
- Facilitating seminars on religious/spiritual identities, working with undocumented students, etc.
- Participation on a research team with a focus on racial/ethnic minorities’ mental health and social justice issues
- Involvement in research focused on women and transgender individuals
- Teaching undergraduate courses with sections on feminist/multicultural counseling
- Training to work with the deaf and hard of hearing
Our staff regularly receives ongoing continuing education and participates in meetings/webinars on diversity-focused topics, including: intersectionality in training, lifting Black voices, racial trauma, racial justice, combating racism, building resiliency in athletes, becoming a trans-knowledgeable provider, safe-zone training, navigating Visa and other immigration challenges, multicultural supervision, working with clients who express discriminatory views, historical trauma and resilience, and many more.
Carruth Diversity Initiatives
We have developed diversity initiatives within Carruth to emphasize our commitment to diversity:
- Each summer, we develop a "Summer Learning Series" which offers every-other-week training on a variety of topics, many of them diversity-related. Prior examples of this include: Review of APA Multicultural Guidelines, Working with Student Veterans, Working with Students of Color, Working with International Students, Considerations for Black students at WVU, etc. CCCPS has also historically offered training as continuing education (CE) for staff and community on a variety of diversity topics.
- We have invited speakers with diverse backgrounds to communicate with our staff about community issues (e.g. inviting state representatives, inviting WVU Director of Diversity Initiatives and Community Engagement, offering Safe Zone training via the LGBTQ Center, etc.).
- For our interns, we offer a multicultural seminar three times a month and allow for development of an area of special emphasis that can be diversity focused. In years past, as a part of this special area of emphasis, interns have chosen to: co-coordinate the Diversity Committee, serve as liaisons to the LGBTQ+ center, organize the first Transgender Day of Remembrance in the state of West Virginia, have more clinical activity (groups, individual) with international students, etc.
- We are committed to advancing approaches intended to recruit and retain more diverse staff. We have a strong preference for candidates who can contribute, through their education and experience, to the diversity and excellence of the WVU community.
Our Diversity Statement
Diversity at WVU
In its continued commitment to its students, faculty, staff and community, West Virginia University has established a Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.