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.

James is a third year, full-time, doctoral student in a counselor education and supervision program. James identifies as a cisgender, white, male. He is providing weekly telehealth supervision to a master’s level internship student, Selena, who is enrolled in his Practicum course. Selena identifies as a Hispanic, female.

Selena has been receiving weekly supervision with James for the past 2 months and has planned to show a recording of a new client during their weekly scheduled supervision session. James asks Selena for verification that all informed consent documents and client's permission were obtained to record the session. Selena verifies that she has used the informed consent intern forms from her practicum site and has obtained permission from the client.  These forms disclosed that Selena was a student under supervision, but it did not specifically state what university Selena is enrolled in, or who her faculty supervisor was.

Selena shows the recording of the counseling session to James for review.  In the recording, Selena’s client, Henry, is discussing a recent affair that he had and how he plans on leaving his spouse in the near future.  James is visibly upset as he watches the recording with Selena. James begins to give Selena advice on how she needs to strongly encourage the client to tell their spouse about the affair.  Selena does not feel comfortable with this guidance from the supervisor but follows through with the recommendation due to feeling pressure from her supervisor. 

Fifteen minutes prior to their next scheduled supervision session, James informs Selena that his Doxy.me account has not been working properly and states that he will FaceTime her instead for supervision just this once, because he does not want to miss their weekly supervision. During this supervision session, James then focuses only on this case and continues to give advice on how Selena should be protecting the client’s spouse in this situation.  Selena is uncomfortable with this direction and the attention that James is giving to this case. She decides to consult with her site supervisor who encourages her to focus on the client’s perspective. In the next session with the client, he stated that he is apprehensive about how his spouse and in-laws will treat him if he discloses the affair.  In this meeting Selena finds out that James is the father-in-law of her client.  Selena is now unsure how to approach this situation.