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.

Caila, a Black cisgender female full-time counselor education doctoral student, is providing supervision to master’s internship students. Additionally, she is scheduled to take her general exams at the end of the semester. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the university is offering a majority of classes either in online or hybrid formats and has left that decision to the faculty. The program’s faculty has agreed that supervision can be done remotely and has secured appropriate ways to communicate and share recordings. Caila has provided all of her supervision to Kyle, a Caucasian cisgender male, and her other two supervisees, via technology due to the fact that she is a higher at-risk individual.

Around the time of midterms Caila receives notice that she has been exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19; therefore, she is required to quarantine for 2 weeks. Caila lives alone and is several hours away from any of her family members. She is struggling to find support from people who can bring her groceries and needed supplies. She is feeling isolated and is having trouble concentrating due to the stress of quarantine and fears that she will develop the virus. She feels helpless in keeping up with requirements for her doctoral program since she cannot leave her home and has to conduct all of her courses, supervision, and meetings remotely. She has informed her faculty supervisor, Dr. Charles Smith, about her quarantine, but not her fears and difficulty in focusing.

During quarantine, Caila receives a text from one of her friends, another doctoral student in the program. Her friend heard from one of her supervisees that Kyle recently met with Dr. Smith. Kyle supposedly told Dr. Smith that he is struggling with Caila as his clinical supervisor. His complaints is that he has never met Caila in person and that her feedback is aggressive and too critical without any direction, but does not provide any specific examples. Dr. Smith offers to help Kyle with some of his cases and Kyle allows him access to his recordings.  Neither Dr. Smith nor Kyle report this meeting to Caila.  However, due to her own access to Kyle’s recordings, Caila is able to see who else has access to the recordings.