Biography

Roger L. Worthington received his doctorate from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1995. He is currently the Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Missouri (MU). He is the principal investigator of a $100,000 Ford Foundation Difficult Dialogues Initiative grant. He was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the newly formed National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, serves on the Editorial Board of the newly established Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, is a member of the APA Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation, and is the Division 17 coordinator for the 2011 National Multicultural Conference and Summit.

Roger is a licensed psychologist and an associate professor of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology, where he has taught courses on counseling & interpersonal skills, ethics and law for professional psychology, research design, measurement, and human diversity. He has published numerous articles, book chapters, and an encyclopedia volume on issues of human diversity in counseling and education. He has won numerous awards for service and teaching excellence.

Statement

After many years as a member of Society of Counseling Psychology (SCP), I am pleased and excited to have been nominated for the role of Vice President for Diversity and Public Interest. I feel that my numerous roles and activities in service to our profession have prepared me well to serve in this role. Diversity in society can be viewed as both burgeoning and under threat. Even as the population rapidly becomes more diverse and cultural shifts toward inclusion make important leaps forward, significant resistance to the goals and values of diversity continue to surface, including but not limited to challenges to affirmative action in hiring and higher education admissions and scholarships. These conflicting themes of growth and deficit, promise and challenge produce incongruity between societal demands for competencies to function effectively in the global multicultural marketplace while at the same time political, economic and legal constraints continue to hinder our efforts to be responsive. My agenda in this role is straightforward: (a) work collaboratively with my colleagues on the Executive Board to integrate diversity into all aspects of SCP operations; (b) maintain and strengthen partnerships across SCP sections and APA divisions to promote the advancement of diversity throughout the APA; and (c) increase opportunities for counseling psychologists to engage in interdisciplinary efforts to promote diversity in education, the workplace, and throughout society.

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