A St. Joseph woman will soon retire from her position with the National Board for Certified Counselors Foundation board of trustees. Dr. Karen Hauser has been with the NBCC Foundation for six years and recently stepped down as chair of the foundation. She and fellow board member Dr. Sue Fort White are each nearing completion of their final board terms.
Dr. Hauser recently retired as CEO and Executive Director of Catholic Charities of Northern Kansas.
She continues to be heavily involved in the St Joe community. Dr. Hauser was an art teacher before she became a counselor, and both aspects of her identity have blended to give her a unique perspective in her chosen field.
Since Drs. Fort White and Hauser joined the board in 2011, the Foundation has grown exponentially from the initial 10 annual donor-funded scholarships for military and rural master’s counseling students. During the six years that they have served as trustees, these original scholarship awards increased from $3,000 per awardee to $8,000, and the Foundation also now administers up to 113 federally-funded doctoral- and master’s-level awards through the Minority Fellowship Program each year.
The work of the Foundation has also expanded to include a program for Capacity Building initiatives, as well as the annual Bridging the Gap Symposium, the third of which will take place this May. These efforts, once managed by a single full-time employee when Executive Director Sherry Allen was hired in 2011, are now directed by eight full-time staff members, three contract employees, several graduate assistants and interns, and over 200 volunteers.
The NBCC Foundation is the nonprofit affiliate of the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC), based in Greensboro, North Carolina. NBCC is the nation’s premier professional certification board devoted to credentialing counselors who meet standards for the general and specialty practices of professional counseling. Currently, there are more than 60,000 National Certified Counselors (NCCs) in the United States and more than 50 countries. The Foundation’s mission is to leverage the power of counseling by strategically focusing resources for positive change.