ACA Graduate Student Ethics Awards for Doctoral 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.

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.

Anna is a 30-year-old, fourth year, full-time doctoral student nearing completion of a CACREP-accredited counselor education and supervision program and is co-teaching an online (asynchronous) master’s level counseling theories and techniques course as a part of her doctoral internship.  Several weeks into the semester, one of Anna’s students in the theories course, Jinny Gomez, asks if she can meet with Anna to discuss something that is going on with her in her clinical practicum experience.  Anna schedules a virtual appointment with Jinny in order to listen to and support her as a student.  During the meeting, Jinny tells Anna that she is really enjoying the theories course and learning a lot but is concerned with the way that things are going in her practicum course.  Jinny goes on to tell Anna that her clinical site-supervisor has been sharing increasingly personal information during their supervision time.  Jinny indicated that at first it seemed fine because the supervisor would share in ways that related to Jinny’s experiences and some of what she was going through in her clinical work with clients.  Jinny went on to share that during the past few supervision sessions, the supervisor has openly discussed intimate details surrounding the hardships in her marriage, her parenting struggles, and her own traumatic experiences.  Jinny shared that during the most recent supervision session, the supervisor became emotional and started to cry when sharing upsetting personal details.  Jinny states that at first, she thought that this was just the supervisor’s way of connecting in supervision, she has become increasingly uncomfortable and not sure what to do.  While listening and showing empathy to her student over the course of the hourlong meeting, Anna made the connection that Jinny’s supervisor was Dr. Sanchez, who is also a faculty member in Anna’s doctoral program department and is the chair for her doctoral committee.  Jinny asks Anna for help to decide what to do because when she tried to talk to her Practicum instructor, she felt like the instructor minimized her concern and did not offer enough support or direction.  Anna is worried about how she should respond, as she is generally a student who does not cause problems or complain about anything, and as she is near completion of the doctoral program and does not want to jeopardize the completion or extend it by becoming involved in the issue.  Anna now feels like she is in a position to have to do something, but also unclear about what she should do, as she also does not want to get over-involved or put her relationship with Dr. Sanchez at risk.