2025 Innovations in Counseling Awards
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The National Board for Certified Counselors, Inc. and Affiliates is pleased to announce the 2025 nomination period for the Innovation in Counseling Award. NBCC strives to recognize individuals who exemplify professional excellence in counseling and whose contributions toward expanding access to mental health services, strengthening the profession, and promoting equity in health and education have significantly impacted and advanced counseling and counselors domestically and globally.
Nominations for the Innovations in Counseling Awards will be accepted in three subcategories: Research Innovations in Counseling Practice and Counselor Education; Counselor Education Program Community Engagement; and Practice and Clinical Service.
Nominators can submit multiple nominations; however, they must complete a separate application for each nominee. The nomination packet limit is 20 pages for all uploaded documents. Nomination packets that total more than 20 pages will be disqualified.
The deadline for nominations is Oct. 13, 2024, at 11:59 pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). Awardees will be notified by the end of December 2024.
Research Innovations in Counseling Practice and Counselor Education
Qualified nominees are researchers and/or counseling programs or research teams who have engaged in innovative, transformative research recognized by peers, colleagues, or the professional community as having potential for long-range impacts on mental health services, counselor preparation, or clinical practice in spaces where counselors serve.
Nomination Requirements
- Nominators cannot self-nominate.
- Nominators must be an NCC or CCMHC in good standing.
- Nominees must have made significant contributions through transformative research.
Counselor Education Program Community Engagement
A qualified nominee is a counselor education program that integrates community engagement throughout the curriculum (e.g., service learning, action or program evaluation research for community partners, student projects with community engagement) with evidence of reciprocity and accountability.
Nomination Requirements
- Nominators can self-nominate or be nominated by another individual.
- Nominees must be a CACREP-accredited counselor education program.
- Nominees must have robust integration of community engagement opportunities with the best candidates evidencing community engagement integration in classes, course assignments, research, and faculty scholarship.
Practice and Clinical Service
Qualified nominees are counselors who initiated innovative services that improved their clients’ lives in meaningful ways and/or strengthen or expand counselors’ capacity to provide impactful services to clients. Nominees can have provided innovative services for their own clients or services that have been replicated and have transformed clinical practice for the profession.
Nomination Requirements
- Nominators cannot self-nominate.
- Nominees must be an NCC or CCMHC in good standing.
- Nominees must have made service contributions to the counseling profession for 5 or more years.