Schedule
8:15-9:00 – Breakfast & Opening Session | Commonwealth Ballroom
9:00 am -10:15 am Break Out Sessions | Virginia Rooms A&B, C&D and SGA Chamber
Cultural Competency When Working with Student Athletes | Break out session | 9:00 am – 10:15 am
Overview
Student-athletes come from diverse cultural, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds, which influence how they perceive mental health and engage with available support systems. Cultural norms, stigma, and varying levels of trust in institutional resources can shape whether athletes seek help when experiencing psychological distress. At the same time, student-athletes navigate unique pressures and barriers including performance expectations, academic responsibilities, identity development, injury recovery, and public visibility. Balancing these competing demands can make it difficult for traditional mental health approaches to address the lived experiences of diverse student-athletes fully.
This presentation explores a culturally responsive framework for supporting the mental health and well-being of student-athletes by emphasizing the importance of meeting athletes where they are—both on and off the playing surface. Drawing on practical examples and applied strategies, the session highlights ways to create psychologically safe environments that normalize mental health conversations within athletic spaces. The goal is to equip generalist mental health providers with knowledge in working with this population to provide more culturally responsive and ethical care.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify unique aspects, barriers, and pressures for student-athlete mental health
- Discuss mental health symptomology that may show up differently in student-athletes.
- Address benefits to meeting student-athletes where they are both physically and mentally
- Explore ethical considerations that differ for working with student-athlete populations
- Equip generalist mental health providers with information and skills for culturally competent care of student-athletes.
Speakers
Vonchell Lewis, LCSW
Dr. Rachel Turk Olivadoti, LCP
Holding the Frame While Honoring Neurodiversity: Neuro-Affirming Practice in Interpersonal Process Group | Break out session | 9:00 - 10:15
Overview
Interpersonal process groups are a central modality within many university counseling centers (UCCs), offering students opportunities to explore relational patterns, practice vulnerability, and receive in-the-moment feedback. As increasing numbers of students who identify as neurodivergent engage in group therapy, clinicians are challenged to balance neuro-affirming care with the relational and structural demands of the group-as-a-whole. These tensions often emerge around communication styles, pacing, emotional expression, sensory needs, and expectations for participation. Without thoughtful attention, clinicians may unintentionally prioritize either individual accommodation or group cohesion in ways that undermine therapeutic goals.
This presentation explores how mental health clinicians can navigate these complexities while remaining grounded in both neuro-affirming practice and interpersonal process theory. Drawing from clinical experience in college counseling settings, the presenters will highlight common dilemmas that arise when neurodivergent clients participate in process groups, including moments when group agreements appear to conflict with individual access needs. Particular attention will be given to how clinicians conceptualize fairness, equity, and responsibility within the group context.
Participants will be invited to reflect on how their own assumptions about participation, insight, and relational competence shape clinical decision-making. The presentation will examine how clinicians decide whose needs take priority in moments of tension and how those decisions are communicated to the group. Emphasis will be placed on transparency, collaborative meaning- making, and the therapeutic use of rupture and repair.
This session aims to move beyond prescriptive accommodations and toward a nuanced framework that supports both neurodivergent clients and the integrity of interpersonal process work. Attendees will leave with conceptual tools and reflective questions to support ethical, inclusive, and effective group leadership within college counseling centers.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify common points of tension that arise when neurodivergent and neurotypical members participate together in interpersonal process groups.
- Apply neuro-affirming principles to group interventions while maintaining core group agreements and therapeutic structure.
- Analyze ethical and clinical decision-making processes when individual and collective group needs are in conflict.
- Reflect on how clinicians’ values, identities, and training influence the prioritization of client needs within group therapy.
Speakers
Sandy Grigsby, Ph.D., LCP, VCU
Kristi Vera, LCSW, VCU
Meeting Students Where They Are: Reimagining Campus Mental Health Through an Embedded Residential Counseling Model | Break out session | 9:00 am – 10:15 am
Overview
College counseling centers are experiencing unprecedented demand while many students still face barriers to engaging in traditional office-based services. This session introduces a residentially embedded counseling approach that expands access, promotes early intervention, and strengthens prevention by positioning clinicians within student living environments and offering support during the hours when distress often intensifies.
Participants will examine how visible, relationship-based support in residence halls can reduce stigma, increase approachability, and engage students who might otherwise avoid counseling. Embedded counselors provide a continuum of care ranging from brief consultations and short-term therapy to crisis support, outreach, and connection to additional campus resources, allowing needs to be addressed before they escalate.
Attendees will also consider how evening availability aligns services with peak periods of loneliness, interpersonal conflict, academic stress, and acute emotional distress, enhancing institutional capacity for stabilization and prevention. The model’s integration within a broader residential well-being network further supports coordinated, community-level responses to student concerns.
This session emphasizes transferable insights and practical considerations that institutions can use to expand reach, improve engagement, and move toward more proactive, community-based mental health care. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how embedded counseling can complement traditional services, strengthen campus partnerships, and support a more preventative approach to student well-being.
Learning Outcomes
- Explain the rationale and benefits of embedding clinicians within residential communities to improve access and early intervention.
- Analyze how proximity and evening availability address peak periods of student distress and reduce barriers to care.
- Evaluate key implementation factors and the applicability of an embedded counseling model within their own campus context.
- Describe how embedded services can complement traditional counseling center operations and expand institutional capacity.
- Identify opportunities for cross-department collaboration to support a coordinated, preventative approach to student well-being.
Speakers
Paul Angelucci, M.A., Resident in Counseling, Embedded Counselor, Residential Well-Being Program, Cook Counseling Center, Virginia Tech
10:30 am - 11:45 am Break Out Sessions | Virginia Rooms A&B, C&D and SGA Chamber
Developing an ADHD Psychological Testing Service in a University Counseling Center | Break out session | 10:30 am – 11:45 am
Overview
Many students on college campus struggle with concerns related to executive functioning problems. These difficulties can affect their academic and personal lives in many ways, interfering with their ability to learn their course content, complete their work, and perform on exams to the best of their ability. These difficulties can be caused by several different factors, including anxiety, depression, trauma, and neurodevelopmental disorders such as Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
Accurate diagnosis is critical to determine appropriate treatment interventions and academic accommodations in order to best support students in their academic success and eventual graduation. However, many students lack access to the psychological testing services needed to determine the appropriate diagnosis due to financial hardship, difficulty with travel, or other reasons. Without access to these services, students are often unable to have adequate support in terms of treatment or accommodations.
This presentation will review the building and implementation of an ADHD psychological testing service at a public university counseling center that is provided free of cost to enrolled students. We will review the initial development of the service, start-up costs and projected ongoing cost, incorporation into the larger clinical system, managing demand, documentation workflow, incorporating trainees into the service, and collaboration with campus partners to meet the larger need on campus.
Learning Outcomes
- Attendees will be able to discuss the benefits of offering integrated psychological testing services for students.
- Attendees will be able to identify strategies for managing demand for psychological testing services.
- Attendees will be able to identify campus partners who they may be able to collaborate with to provide comprehensive ADHD services to students.
Speakers
Dr. Diana Davis, Psy. D. Senior Psychologist Coordinator, Testing Services, GMU CAPS
Jessica M. Hively, MSN, RN, PMHNP-BC, Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner GMU CAPS
Katharine Walker, LPC, ATR-BC, Clinical Case Manager GMU CAPS
Building a Grief-Sensitive Campus: Developing a culturally conscious bereavement services program at Hampton University | Break out session | 10:30 am – 11:45 am
Overview
Experiencing significant loss is a life-defining moment for anyone, but its impacts can be particularly disruptive for college students. Many students are isolated from family support, balancing academic, professional, and social demands, and may be encountering grief for the first time. These challenges are further shaped by racial, ethnic, and religious identities, meaning that no two students’ grief experiences and support needs are the same. Despite the high prevalence of loss among college students—estimated between 40–60%—few colleges and universities have implemented holistic systems of grief support. Even fewer have considered the unique needs of Black and Brown student populations in the context of grief.
This presentation will highlight the progress of Hampton University’s Bereavement Services Program over the past two years in establishing protocols for responding to student loss, developing both clinical and non-clinical opportunities to receive support, and cultivating a grief-sensitive campus climate through outreach education. A particular emphasis will be placed on expanding conversations about grief to include non-death losses, incorporating activity-based and peer-support models of care, and developing academic policies and protocols that both support students and create clear expectations for faculty and staff. Attendees will gain insight into building a comprehensive campus grief support system, therapeutic approaches that have proven effective within an HBCU environment, and practical guidance for adapting these programmatic elements at other institutions.
Learning Outcomes
- Examine the prevalence and impact of grief and loss among college students, by evaluating clinical and survey data collected at Hampton University.
- Describe key components of a campus-based bereavement support program, including protocols for responding to student loss, modalities of care, and strategies for creating a grief-sensitive campus climate.
- Identify the key cultural considerations when providing grief support for POC student populations.
- Integrate culturally conscious perspectives of grief and holistic models of student grief support into existing systems within student counseling centers and broader campus communities.
Speakers
Monica Cooper, Lead Grief Clinician, Hampton University Bereavement Services Program
Collin Drown, Program Support Assistant, Hampton University Bereavement Services Program
Training Without Burning Out: Supervisory Practices that Support Trainee Wellness, Risk Management, and Fair Evaluation | Break out session | 10:30 am – 11:45 am
Overview
Training is a central component of many university counseling centers, and opportunities to supervise trainees, participate in training committees, and offer seminars are often cited by staff as key reasons they remain in these settings. As counseling center work continues to evolve, it is increasingly important to identify strategies that support both trainees and the staff responsible for training them. This presentation will explore ways to strengthen training environments while supporting the development and well-being of both trainees and supervisors.
Students seeking services at university counseling centers are presenting with increasingly complex concerns, including prior mental health treatment histories and ongoing risk factors (CCMH, 2025). In addition, the current sociopolitical climate may intensify existing mental health challenges for many students. At the same time, trainees are developing their theoretical orientations and therapeutic approaches while learning to assess and respond to high-risk concerns such as suicidality, self-harm, homicidality, substance misuse, psychosis, disordered eating, and complex trauma. Supervisors must guide trainees in navigating these clinical challenges while also supporting their growth at developmentally appropriate levels.
Training programs are increasingly examining how to support trainees in prioritizing their own well-being while providing care to students with complex needs (Bistricky, Klein, Pascuzzi, Oliver, Gimenez-Zapiola, & Thomas Schanding Jr., 2025). These demands also affect supervisors, making attention to supervisor wellness an important component of sustainable training programs. In addition, supervision requires ongoing evaluation of trainee competencies and the provision of clear, supportive, and developmentally appropriate feedback (APA, 2025). Balancing honest evaluation with trainee development in the context of complex clinical work can present challenges for supervisors.
In response to these dynamics, this presentation will highlight strategies for supporting trainees working with higher-risk clients, promoting wellness among both supervisors and trainees, and conducting developmentally appropriate and transparent trainee evaluations.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify key challenges associated with supervising trainees working with higher-acuity clients in college counseling center settings.
- Examine supervisory and programmatic practices that promote both supervisor and trainee wellness and reduce burnout within training environments.
- Apply developmentally informed and competency-based approaches to the evaluation of trainees in counseling center settings.
Speakers
Rachel L. Koch, Psy.D. Assistant Director for Training University of Richmond CAPS
Alexandra M. Minieri, Ph.D. Associate Director, Training Services George Mason University, Counseling and Psychological Services
Alexandra Pappas-Bourdage, PhD. Associate Director and Director of Training William and Mary, Counseling Center
12:00-1:30 – Lunch & Round Table Discussions | Commonwealth Ballroom
1:45 pm – 2:30 pm Break Out Sessions | Virginia Rooms A&B, C&D and SGA Chamber
Elevate the Everyday! Create a Well-Being Committee for Your Team | Break out session | 1:45 pm – 2:30 pm
Overview
College counseling center professionals regularly support students experiencing significant emotional distress while also managing demanding clinical, outreach, and administrative responsibilities. As student mental health needs continue to increase across campuses, counseling center staff may face elevated risks for burnout, compassion fatigue, and emotional exhaustion. Supporting staff well-being is therefore an important component of maintaining a sustainable and effective counseling center. Developing intentional structures that promote connection, reflection, and workplace support can help foster a healthier and more resilient professional environment.
One approach to supporting staff well-being is the creation of a departmental Well-Being Committee. A Well-Being Committee can provide a structured space for staff to collaborate on initiatives that promote connection, recognition, and healthy workplace practices. These committees can also help normalize conversations about stress, work life balance, and professional sustainability while encouraging shared responsibility for maintaining a supportive workplace culture.
This workshop will introduce participants to the purpose, benefits, and operations of a Well-Being Committee within a college counseling center or similar department. The presenter will outline practical steps for developing a committee, including identifying committee goals, recruiting members, and establishing sustainable meeting structures. The session will also highlight how committees can create meaningful initiatives that support staff well-being while remaining realistic within the demands of counseling center work.
Participants will learn practical methods for encouraging community and collaboration within their departments, regardless of team size. Examples of initiatives that can be implemented through a Well-Being Committee will be shared, including opportunities for staff connection, recognition efforts, reflective practices, and other low cost strategies that support workplace morale. The presenter will also discuss how well-being practices can be incorporated into daily routines within the counseling center environment.
In addition, the workshop will address common challenges that may arise when implementing well-being initiatives, such as limited time, varying levels of staff engagement, and competing professional responsibilities. Strategies for navigating these challenges and maintaining momentum over time will be discussed.
Participants will engage in brief discussion and reflection activities designed to help them consider the needs and culture of their own departments. Attendees will be encouraged to identify potential first steps for establishing or strengthening a Well-Being Committee at their institution.
By the end of the session, participants will have a clearer understanding of how a Well-Being Committee can support staff well-being and will leave with practical ideas and strategies that can be adapted to promote collaboration, community, and sustainable well-being practices within their own counseling centers.
Learning Outcomes
- Learn about the purpose, benefits, and operations of a Well-Being Committee.
- Acquire practical methods to encourage community and collaboration within departments, regardless of team size.
- Gain insights into promoting well-being practices into daily routines and how to manage the challenges.
Speakers
Adam Moore, MSW, LCSW Coordinator of Clinical Case Management Services, George Mason University
Collective Care for Stress and Trauma: Virginia Tech’s Implementation of the Community Resiliency Model to Heal Ourselves and Our Campus | 1:45 pm – 2:30 pm
Overview
How can we expand our bandwidth in managing personal dysregulation during activating sessions in trying times while also empowering our college communities? The Community Resiliency Model (CRM) provides a list of shareable concepts and skills that can function within existing programmatic infrastructure. CRM helps us make sense of our dysregulation and collectively find our way forward in the important work we do through its science-backed offerings. CRM skills can become potent non-clinical tools for entire college communities to conceptualize and regulate our flight/fight/freeze/tend-and-befriend responses. We work, advocate, listen, and learn best when our stress responses are dialed back. This model emphasizes the idiosyncratic nature of individual trauma and stress responses and highlights the efficacy of collective effort in regulating these responses.
Through a collective effort to regulate our nervous systems, we generate a campus culture rooted in building resilience and a shared language which embodies trauma-informed preventative care. CRM offers techniques that can work across cultures, silos, and identities, and it is compelling to campuses due to its neurobiological theory base. This model also highlights a shared interconnected reality: we all have a stress response and developing skills to read and regulate our own stress response is a great first step towards helping others. CRM has brought its trauma-informed framework around the world after natural disasters, war, and sociopolitical conflict in over 70 countries and 40 states.
Increasingly, institutions of higher education are utilizing CRM in non-clinical spaces to expand our resiliency for holding emotion, improving co-regulation, and responding to activating events. However, we clinicians can also benefit from nervous system regulation as we go about our busy days. We need it now more than ever to help us reset back into our body’s sense of wellbeing so that we can continue caring for ourselves and others.
This session will give a brief overview of the Community Resiliency Model and provide numerous methods for college counseling centers to use the skills themselves amid client conversations, sessions, advocacy, critical incident response, and other high-stress moments. Methods for infusing CRM into non-clinical support networks within college campuses with the aim of building a culture of preventative mental health care will also be discussed. Presenters will elaborate on how CRM is infused within Virginia Tech across clinical and non-clinical support networks. Personal examples, demonstrations, and opportunities to practice nervous system regulation will also be offered during this session.
Learning Outcomes
- Participants will learn four actionable skills to co-regulate their nervous systems during dysregulation
- Participants will learn more about the shared language used within the CRM framework to conceptualize trauma and resilience, including the three zones of regulation
- Participants will be able to name three resources to help get them through activating times
- Participants will learn the impact of a shared language around resilience in fostering a culture of preventative mental health care
Speakers
Erica Coates, LCSW, Embedded Counselor for College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Arohan Rimal, Resident in Counseling, Embedded Counselor for Residential Wellbeing, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
The Complexity Embedded in the Fear of Failure among Black College Students, Workshop/Presentation, Clinical Staff (including trainees/interns) | 1:45 pm – 2:30 pm
Overview
Within university counseling center settings, it is common for clinical discussions with students to involve themes related to internalized expectations for success, academic performance, and the pressure to remain committed to matriculation and graduation. These concerns are often conceptualized through familiar frameworks such as perfectionism or maladaptive performance anxiety. While these frameworks can be useful, they may be insufficient when applied to Black college students without careful consideration of the broader cultural, historical, and sociopolitical contexts shaping students’ lived reality.
Our team at the Hampton University Counseling Center has in-depth experience with navigating the clinical complexities of this particular presenting concern. Drawing from our clinical experiences, we assert that the internalized expectation for success among Black college students often involves multifaceted meanings that extend beyond individual achievement. Student’s expectations are often intertwined with familial roles and responsibility, cultural community expectations, and collective aspirations related to social mobility, justice, and access to power and resources. Without attending to these influences, clinicians may unintentionally misinterpret observed behaviors and symptomology, adopt overly narrow conceptualizations of presenting concerns, and overly rely on interventions that are poorly aligned with students’ goals for change.
In this presentation, we will discuss how sociocultural context shapes the experience of fear of failure for Black college students, as well as guidelines for integrating such considerations into culturally responsive assessment, case conceptualization, and intervention. Through this discussion, clinicians will gain tools to deepen their understanding of the intersection between cultural identity, institutional context, and mental health among Black college students. We intend to support clinicians’ ability to cultivate more attuned treatment and therapeutic engagement with Black students across various higher educational settings.
Learning Outcomes
Identify key sociocultural factors that contribute to the experience of fear of failure among Black college students, including family expectations, community responsibility, and narratives surrounding social mobility and success.
- Consider how the historical and institutional context of higher education systems—along with historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs)—can shape students’ internalized expectations for achievement.
- Recognize ways that culturally embedded pressures for success may be misinterpreted in clinical settings as maladaptive perfectionism, resistance, or generalized anxiety when sociocultural context is not considered.
- Explore strategies to integrate cultural considerations to assessment, case conceptualization, and intervention when working with Black college students experiencing fear of failure and academic performance concerns.
Speakers
Briana Williams, Ph.D. LCP, Lead Mental Health Clinician, Hampton University Counseling Center
Monica Cooper, Eds. LPC, Lead Grief Clinician, Hampton University Counseling Center
2:30 pm – 3:00 pm - Afternoon Refreshment Break | Commonwealth Ballroom
3:15 pm – 4:30 pm Break Out Sessions | Virginia Rooms A&B, C&D and SGA Chamber
I Did My Research”: Social Media Authority, Misinformation, and Power Struggles in College Counseling | Break out session | 3:15 pm – 4:30 pm
Overview
College counseling clinicians increasingly encounter students who arrive with strong convictions shaped by social media content framed as research, education, or “evidence-based” guidance. Influencers without professional training often present confident, simplified narratives about supplements, eating practices, nervous system regulation, diagnosis, and mental health, positioning themselves as authorities while encouraging skepticism toward clinicians, medicine, and institutions. As a result, therapy can become a site of epistemic conflict rather than collaborative exploration.
This presentation examines how social media functions as an alternative authority system for many college students and how this shift may impact clinical work. Particular attention is given to moments when clients and clinicians prioritize being right over being curious, creating power struggles around expertise, credibility, and control. These dynamics often show up as resistance to psychoeducation, dismissal of professional recommendations, or challenges to clinical boundaries for students. Clinicians may feel pulled into debates, correction, or efforts to limit client’s social media consumption, inadvertently reinforcing the very dynamics they hope to soften.
This session explores how misinformation about supplements, eating, and wellness becomes emotionally and relationally meaningful for students. The presentation will highlight how developmental factors, mistrust of institutions, identity formation, and algorithmic reinforcement contribute to the certainty with which these beliefs are held. Participants will also be invited to reflect on their own responses to being questioned or positioned as “wrong,” including countertransference related to authority and expertise.
Rather than focusing on proving accuracy, this presentation focuses on how to work with students’ relationship to social media, rather than feeling pulled to work against it. The presentation emphasizes interventions that address the function of certainty, restore epistemic humility, and shift therapy away from adversarial dynamics.
Learning Outcomes
- Describe how college students conceptualize social media as a legitimate source of research and expertise.
- Identify how misinformation and influencer authority shape epistemic trust, therapeutic alliance, and resistance in clinical work.
- Recognize power struggles that arise when clinicians and clients hold competing claims to knowledge about health, eating, supplements, and mental health.
- Apply clinical strategies that de-escalate right–wrong dynamics while maintaining ethical responsibility and professional boundaries.
Speakers
Sandy Grigsby, Ph.D., LCP, VCU
Christina McFarland, Psy.D., LCP, VCU
Treating Black Women with Eating Disorders | Break out session | 3:15 pm – 4:30 pm
Overview
Eating disorders are often framed as conditions that primarily affect thin, affluent White women, which has contributed to the under recognition and undertreatment of Black women experiencing disordered eating. This session discusses the historical and contemporary context of eating disorders among Black Women with an aim to increase clinician awareness and provide practical strategies for identifying and treating eating disorders in Black women. The presentation begins with an overview of prevalence data and highlights the historical underrepresentation of Black women in eating disorder research and treatment settings. Cultural factors that influence eating behaviors and body image will be discussed, including cultural beauty standards, norms surrounding body size, intergenerational messages about food, and the role of chronic stress and trauma.
Attendees will also learn to recognize the unique and atypical presentations of eating disorders that may not align with traditional diagnostic expectations present within this population. These may include binge eating without compensatory behaviors, subthreshold symptoms, emotional eating related to stress, or symptoms that are minimized because they are normalized within cultural contexts. Practical guidance will be provided for assessing eating disorders using culturally responsive and bias-aware approaches. Finally, the session will address barriers to treatment, including stigma, medical mistrust, and access disparities, and discuss strategies for fostering inclusive, supportive therapeutic environments that improve engagement and care for Black women experiencing eating disorders.
Learning Outcomes
- Recognize the prevalence and underrepresentation of eating disorders in Black women.
- Identify cultural factors influencing eating behaviors and body image in Black women.
- Recognize unique presentations and atypical symptoms of eating disorders in Black women.
- Learn to assess eating disorders in Black women with culturally sensitive approaches.
- Understand barriers to treatment and how to foster an inclusive, supportive therapeutic environment.
Speakers
Kristina Jean-Baptiste, M.S, Doctoral Psychology Intern, University of Richmond
Charlynn Small, Ph.D., LCP, CEDS-C, Assistant Director of Health Promotion, University of Richmond
The Connection Hub: Exploration of a transition program that supports the mental health of First-Generation College Students | Break out session | 3:15 pm – 4:30 pm
Overview
Unspoken norms, expectations, and cultural knowledge shape the higher education landscape, making it difficult to navigate for those without prior exposure. For many students, parents and family members serve as the primary sources of information about college and the processes involved in accessing and succeeding in higher education. First-generation college students—those whose parents have not attended or graduated from a four-year college or university—often enter higher education without this familial guidance.
As a result, first-generation college students often have limited access to informal knowledge and social capital that can ease their transition to college. Much of the effort in supporting first-generation college students has focused on identifying academic achievement gaps and retention disparities between first-generation students and their peers. Consequently, many institutional programs and interventions have been designed from a deficit-oriented perspective, emphasizing remediation and the development of social capital to help students adapt to higher education norms.
In the proposed presentation, we will discuss the First-Generation College student population at Marymount University, focusing on the challenges and assets they bring to Marymount. We will discuss several ways we initiate support measures for First-Generation College Student populations to support their mental health and emotional well-being. We will present perspectives that center on learning experiences that facilitate peer-led engagement and discussion. In doing so, it creates opportunities to challenge and offer new ideas for how college counseling centers/spaces can develop direct programming to support these students’ needs beyond academics. The basis of programming interventions will be the 2025-26 pilot of The Connection Hub, in partnership with the agency The Steve Fund.
Learning Outcomes
- Recognize the prevalence and underrepresentation of eating disorders in Black women.
- Identify cultural factors influencing eating behaviors and body image in Black women.
- Recognize unique presentations and atypical symptoms of eating disorders in Black women.
- Learn to assess eating disorders in Black women with culturally sensitive approaches.
- Understand barriers to treatment and how to foster an inclusive, supportive therapeutic environment.
Speakers
Allana Taylor, EdD, MSW, LCSW, Marymount University
Imani Fraser, MA, Resident in Counseling, ATR-P Marymount University
