Providence, RI -- Providence College and its graduate program in counseling have been awarded a federal grant of over $267,000 from the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) to help implement a comprehensive, developmental school counseling program for grades K-12 throughout the state -- the first national standards-based counseling program for Rhode Island school districts.

The grant is the third appropriation awarded to the College during the last two years through the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, or Perkins III. The College, which is the fiscal agent for the grants, has received more than $703,000 during that time to facilitate the Tech Prep School Counseling Project.

Dr. Thomas F. Flaherty, dean of graduate studies and director of the Graduate Program in Education at the College is the project administrator. Alexander Freda, director of the graduate counseling program, is the project coordinator.

The latest Perkins III grant will fund numerous project initiatives that will benefit both the state and the College. Among the benefits, the grant will:

• provide professional development training and related activities that will lead to and enhance the establishment of a comprehensive, developmental counseling program for grades K-12 in the state's 36 school districts;
• provide for a counselor-in-residence, Belinda J. Wilkerson, who is based at the College and who will oversee the training of counselors, among other responsibilities;
• facilitate a new partnership with the University of Massachusetts' (UMass) Center for School Counseling Outcome Research, which will enable RIDE, project leaders, and school counselors to analyze and report data on the impact of school counseling on student success and improvement; and
• fund the final year of the audit of the College's graduate counseling program.

Not only will the project benefit current graduate students in terms of an improved counselor preparation curriculum, but  it also impacts the state's public school counselors --approximately 80 percent of whom have received training through the College's graduate counseling program.

Approximately two-dozen counselors and school-based coordinators will be trained in the Rhode Island Model for Comprehensive K-12 School Counseling Programs.  The group members, in turn, will impart the training they have received to counselors in school districts throughout the state beginning in March. There are approximately 400 counselors in Rhode Island's public schools.

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