The NBCC Foundation, an affiliate of the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC), recently selected Barry University doctoral student Homer Brown for the National Board for Certified Counselors Minority Fellowship Program (NBCC MFP). As an NBCC MFP Fellow, Brown will receive funding and training to support his education and facilitate his service to underserved minority populations.
Brown is currently a doctoral student in the marriage and family counseling program at Barry. His research area is African-American males and higher education. As an African-American male, he has firsthand experience with the challenges faced by African-American men in academia.
By receiving this fellowship, Brown will be able to explore successful strategies and practices of institutions and institutional agents at a historically black college that have proven successful in helping African-American men to matriculate. Brown plans to share these strategies and practices with administrators, counselors and other agents in all levels of academia to promote greater academic success for African-American male students in education.
The NBCC MFP will distribute a $20,000 educational award Brown and the 22 other doctoral-level counseling students selected to receive the fellowship.
The NBCC MFP is made possible by a grant awarded to NBCC by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in August 2012. The goal of the program is to strengthen the infrastructure that engages diverse individuals in counseling and increases the number of professional counselors providing effective, culturally competent services to underserved populations.
This is the third consecutive year a Barry University PhD Counseling student has been selected as an NBCC MFP Fellow.
The Foundation plans to open the next NBCC MFP application period in September 2015. To learn more about the NBCC MFP and its fellows, please visit www.nbccf.org.
To learn more about Barry University’s PhD Counseling program, visit: http://www.barry.edu/counseling-phd/.