Social Justice Award in Counseling Psychology

The Social Justice Award in Counseling Psychology is given to encourage and reward social justice work that has a significant impact on practice, research, and scholarship in counseling psychology. This award honors sustained commitment to the specialty, to community involvement, to recognizing diversity, and to demonstrating evidence of achieving community or organizational change that supports disenfranchised, disempowered, less privileged, or oppressed groups and has a larger impact on practice, research, and scholarship in the field. The Award was originally funded by the editors of the Handbook of Social Justice in Counseling Psychology; it is now funded by the Society/Division 17. Announcement of the Award winner is made at the annual APA convention. The procedures to be followed in the nomination of candidates, selection of an Award winner, and presentation of the Award are detailed below.

Award Amount: $1,000

CRITERIA:

1. The Social Justice Award in Counseling Psychology is given to encourage and reward social justice work that has a significant impact on practice, research, and scholarship in counseling psychology. Recipients of this award shall have demonstrated sustained commitment to the specialty, to community involvement, to recognizing diversity, and to demonstrating evidence of achieving community or organizational change that supports disenfranchised, disempowered, less privileged, or oppressed groups and has a larger impact on practice, research, and scholarship in the field. The award may be given to an individual or to a small group whose collaborative work meets the spirit of the award (in which case the lead nominee must meet all criteria listed).
2. Age, specialty area of doctoral training and years since the doctorate shall not be considered.
3. Preference for the Award should be given to persons whose principal professional identification is as a Counseling Psychologist and who are members of the Society/Division 17; however, this is not an exclusion criteria and persons who do not primarily identify as Counseling Psychologist and/or are not members of the Society/Division 17 may be considered. 
4. No voting members of the Executive Board of the Society/Division 17 shall be eligible to be nominated for the Social Justice Award in Counseling Psychology during the time they serve on the Board.
5. Though the Award ordinarily will be voted annually, the Executive Board may elect not to make an Award in any given year.

PROCEDURES:

1. A Call for Nominations for the Social Justice Award in Counseling Psychology will appear in the Fall issue of the Society/Division 17 Newsletter or the currently used publication medium. 
2. Nominations for the Award are to be in the form of a letter that makes the nomination (from self or other) and describes how the nominee meets the criteria for the award. In total, the nomination packet should include (a) no more than three letters, one of which should be the letter of nomination (from self or other) and no more than two additional letters of support from psychologists; all letters should discuss the significance of the nominee’s contributions relevant to social justice in counseling psychology; (b) a copy of the nominee’s vita. 
3. The Chair of the Awards and Recognition Committee (or the Chair’s designee) will be responsible for collecting nominations and for obtaining evaluations of the nominations from the Committee. Each reviewer will rate and then rank the nominee and send both ratings and rankings to the Chair (or the Chair’s designee) who will then compute mean ratings. Based on these mean ratings the Chair will submit a rank ordered list of nominees to the Society/Division 17 Executive Board prior to the mid-year meeting of that group.
4. Election of the Award winner will be decided by written or verbal ballot at the mid-year meeting by majority vote of the voting members of the Executive Board of Society/Division 17 who are present. The Award winner will be notified by the President following this mid-year meeting but no public announcement of the winner will be made until the Society/Division’s business meeting at the APA Convention.
5. The Chair of the Awards and Recognition Committee will provide the winner’s name and contact information, social security number, and the name of the award won to the Society/Division 17 treasurer by June 1st. The treasurer will prepare the check and give it to the Society/Division 17 President for presentation at the Annual Business Meeting in August.
6. After the APA Convention, an announcement of the winner will be published in the fall issue of the Society/Division 17 Newsletter or currently used publication medium, and The Counseling Psychologist.