Dr. Harry Daniels, Professor
Department Chair
1215 Norman Hall
POB 117046
Gainesville, FL 32611-7046
Phone - 352-392-0731, Ext. 226
Fax - 352-846-2697
Email - harryd@coe.ufl.edu
Background
I began my career as an educator teaching social studies (8th grade American History) in an inner-city middle school in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Within the first three years of that experience, I realized that my interests had shifted away from teaching history and toward a genuine curiosity about the reasons why my students behaved as they did. This curiosity led me to have many conversations with the school counselor in the building and those conversations led me to change my career direction and pursue certification as a school counselor. I had the good fortune to work as a school counselor in a large high school in Iowa, one with an innovative and dynamic administrator. This experience provided the opportunity to work with other counselors to create and implement innovative counseling programs that responded to the needs of students and their parents. More than anything else, this experience allowed me to see the many ways that school counselors can influence the emotional climate of a school. Wanting to extend that influence beyond the school in which I worked, I decided to pursue a doctorate in counselor education, with the goal of returning to my community and working as an administrator of counseling programs.
The decision to pursue the doctorate was life changing, largely because of the research courses that I was required to take. Interesting, the courses that I most feared became the most exciting and significant courses in my program of studies. Simply stated, I was bitten by the research bug, and I enjoyed the experience because it provided the means for me to pursue my own curiosities. Thus, early in my doctoral program I knew that I wanted to be in a position to do research and contribute to the conversations that inform our profession and its practices. My current position as chairperson of this department seems like an ideal opportunity to pursue these goals.
My approach to my work as a counselor educator has gone through a number of changes, but fundamentally I have adopted the scientist-practitioner model as a guide, believing that counselor educators need to be skilled in both domains. Within this framework, I am interested in knowing how people construct their reality, particularly through the use of imaginative language, and the strategies that they use to regulate their emotional responses to life events.
Areas of Interest and Inquiry
Interestingly, the questions that guide my current research interests are very similar to the ones that influenced me to leave the classroom and become a counselor. Specifically, I want to know more about the strategies the parents and tachers use to influence childrens' emotion regulation abilities. I am also curious about the relationship between students' emotion regulation abilities and their school achievement. Finally, I am interested in knowing more about the lives of children of the working poor, especially their school experiences
I am a member of the American Counseling Association (ACA), the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision division of ACA, Counselors for Social Justice, and am a site team leader for the Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP). I also hold the Approved Supervisor status with the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
