Graduate Student Ethics Awards for Master’s Degree Students

• A counseling or counselor education program may have one team of master’s degree students and one team of doctoral degree students in the competition.
• Master’s degree and doctoral 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 master's 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 master’s 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.

Lila is a Limited Licensed Professional Counselor who, for the past five months has been working in federally-assisted, outpatient mental health and substance abuse counseling agency. For the past month, Lila has been counseling Stephen, a 56-year-old, White male, who has been living with HIV for the past two years. To date, she has had four sessions with Stephen. Stephen started seeing Lila because one month prior to his first session with her, he completed a brief stint in rehab for his cocaine and methamphetamine use disorders. So far, Lila has felt very positive about the progress Stephen has made. He has maintained his sobriety, he has complied with his HIV medications and his viral load is undetectable, and he actively engages in therapeutic work. Lila feels a lot of empathy for Stephen because she has been sober for over five years, but she has started to notice that when Stephen talks about his urges to use, she has felt her own old cravings reemerge. Lila has not discussed this issue in supervision because she has not disclosed her personal addiction history with her supervisor due to fear that it would impact her ability to get her full license.

In a recent session, Stephen shared with Lila that he just started a new relationship with a woman. He expressed that when he has sex with her, it triggers him to want to use coke and meth again. Hearing this, Lila became concerned and asked Stephen if he had disclosed his HIV-status to the new girlfriend. Stephen defensively replied, “That’s none of your business! She doesn’t need to know anyway.” Because it was toward the end of the session, Lila did not pursue the discussion any further. She also realized that she never told Stephen that she may have to report that. In her next session with Stephen, before Lila could bring up the HIV disclosure issue, Stephen stated he was struggling with feelings of guilt about something he did just before he decided to stop using drugs. Lila listened non-judgmentally as Stephen disclosed that about two and a half months ago, to get money to buy drugs, he broke into several houses in the area. In one of the break-ins, the owner unexpectedly walked in on Stephen. Out of fear, Stephen attacked the man who ended up in the hospital in a coma. Stephen was able to get away and was never caught by the police. Lila recalled seeing this story on the local news and remembered that the victim was still in a coma in the hospital. In that moment, Lila felt her strongest urge to drink that she has felt in years, and thought to herself, “I have no idea what to do.”