Dr. West-Olatunji | Counselor Education

Dr. Cirecie A. West-Olatunji, Assistant Professor

1204 Norman Hall
POB 117046
Gainesville, FL 32611-7046
Phone - 352-392-0731, Ext. 235
Fax - 352-846-2697
Email - cwestolatunji@coe.ufl.edu

Counselor Educator Receives National Community Service Award

Dr. Cirecie West-Olatunji will receive the Community Service Award from the Association of Black Psychologists at their 2007 convention in Houston, Texas. Dr. West-Olatunji was nominated for her international and national outreach efforts. She has assisted in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast disaster recovery efforts through her SAMHSA deployment, her coordination of counselor educators' outreach trips, and by spearheading a Florida Alternative Break (FAB) for seven counseling and psychology students from the College of Education in August 2006. More recently, this past summer Dr. West-Olatunji coordinated a tour and outreach trip to South Africa and Botswana that included 23 participants from throughout the U.S. Participants consisted of practitioners, counselor educators, and graduate counseling students who met with community mental health service providers in southern Africa and provided trainings, debriefings, and direct clinical services to HIV/AIDS survivors. During the trip, the team delivered approximately $6,000 worth of donated books to the University of Botswana library.

Background

Cirecie A. West-Olatunji, Ph.D. currently serves as Assistant Professor of Counselor Education at the University of Florida. Dr. West-Olatunji formerly held the position of Program Director/Assistant Professor of the Counseling program at Xavier University of Louisiana. Her teaching responsibilities currently include: Counseling in Community Settings and Multicultural Counseling & Development in addition to assigned individual and group supervision experiences. Her teaching philosophy: “Teaching is the ultimate form of the dissemination of research. As such, the classroom is a human laboratory in which student and instructor co-construct their learning experiences in a reciprocal fashion using critical thinking, self-reflection, and instructional techniques grounded in theory.”

Nationally, Dr. West-Olatunji has initiated several clinically-based research projects as co-director and co-founder of the University of New Orleans-Xavier University Joint Research Centers for Multiculturalism & Counseling. She is the co-author of, Future Vision, Present Work, a book focusing on diversity in early childhood as well as several journal articles and book chapters related to multicultural counseling and education.

Internationally, Dr. West-Olatunji has provided consultation and training to the Buraku Liberation Movement in Osaka, Hiroshima, Tottori, and Fukuoka cities in Japan in the area of culturally relevant anti-bias education for young children. She has also provided consultation in Singapore in the area of multicultural pediatric counseling. Cirecie West-Olatunji has served as an educational consultant to Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the creation of a children's television show ("Puzzle Place") focusing on diversity through KCET-TV in Los Angeles, CA.

Dr. West-Olatunji is a graduate of Dartmouth College and attended Teachers College of Columbia University where she pursued graduate studies in the area of Multicultural Counseling Psychology. Dr. West-Olatunji holds a doctorate degree in Counselor Education from the University Of New Orleans.

Dr. West-Olatunji is a licensed professional counselor as well as marriage and family therapist. She is also a state-approved (LA) domestic and family mediator.

Areas of Interest and Inquiry

My research is grounded in multicultural counseling theory that focuses on the role of cultural identity in the psychological, emotional, and educational development of marginalized students (Kambon, 1998; Hilliard, 1984; 2005). My research draws upon data from a nationally representative data set from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and from samples of teachers, children, and parents in pre-school and primary school settings.

My primary population of interest is young children, from birth to eight years of age. Of significant interest is the disproportional placement of low-income and ethnic minority children into special education. I explore the developmental and educational needs of young children in impoverished communities using the constructs: personal characteristics, parent proficiencies, schooling experiences, and at-school performance. For example, teachers are viewed as gatekeepers in the referral process for special education placement. As such, a teacher’s ability to assess student behaviors beyond mainstream cultural norms significantly impacts which student behaviors are identified as problematic (Neal, McCray, Webb-Johnson, Bridgest, 2003). Identification for special education during the early childhood years is of particular concern due to the confounding of developmental factors that influence non-normative behaviors and attitudes for this age group many of which are temporal or contextual in nature (Vacc, & Ritter, 2002).

Based on the findings, using public use and restricted data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten cohort group (ECLS-K), I then conduct qualitative clinical research, primarily in school communities to explore: the relationship between family income and IEP on record (West-Olatunji, 2003), the role of reflective teaching when infusing multicultural teaching pedagogy into early childhood instruction, effective parenting practices among the parents of at-risk youth, and at-risk student responses to their schooling experiences (West-Olatunji, 2000).

Over the past seven years, in partnership with both public and private schools and other non-profit agencies, I have worked with educators and parents to develop several community-based clinical research projects. These collaborative inquiries, which involved both professional counseling and evaluation of treatment effectiveness have addressed delinquency, teen pregnancy, addictions, gang activity, domestic violence, and sexual assault among young children and adolescents from a variety of communities. For example, in 1998 a local YWCA commissioned me to conduct a mental health counseling needs assessment using the community-as-client model (West-Olatunji, & Watson, 1999). I subsequently developed their multidisciplinary pediatric counseling clinic for pre-school children suffering from trauma related to sexual abuse, domestic violence, or natural disasters.

I have conducted invited inquiries for the federal Witness Assistance Program, Dillard University, a host of primary, middle, and charter schools, and faith-based organizations, such as churches, pastoral counseling programs, and Associated Catholic Charities. Preliminary results of these analyses suggest that the schooling environment and parental roles are key factors in the remediation of developmental and educational problems. The results of the analyses from the pediatric counseling initiative are consistent with current literature suggesting that early intervention with young children can prevent or decrease the amount of emotional and psychological distress experienced by adolescents. Most recently, former U. S. Surgeon General Thatcher (NIMH,______) suggested that the behavioral symptoms common among troubled youth have a foundation in their early childhood experiences. Thus, behavioral scientists need to focus more heavily on early childhood interventions.

Most recently, I received a CRIF grant from the College of Education to conduct an action research project with a purposeful sample of the pre-school teachers at Baby Gator Child Care Center to investigate their cultural competency in relation to assessment and intervention with special needs children in the classroom. I have also received the Tutt-Jones research grant from the African-American Success Foundation to conduct research with parents of successful African-American at-risk primary school children in Alachua County. In the near future, I intend to develop cross-national research with early childhood educators at Osaka Kyoiku University in Japan focusing on young children's attitudinal and behavioral responses to culturally relevant anti-bias instruction. It is also my intention to publish a book on the community-as-client model of collaborative community assessment, intervention, and evaluation.

To date, I have presented invited papers on my research findings in Japan, Singapore and Brazil (refereed paper). In Japan, I provided consultation and training to the Buraku Liberation Movement in Osaka, Hiroshima, Tottori, and Fukuoka cities in the area of culturally relevant anti-bias education for young children. In Singapore, I provided consultation to the Center for American Education in the area of multicultural brief and pediatric counseling. I have also provided consultation to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the creation of a children's television show ("Puzzle Place") focusing on diversity through KCET-TV in Los Angeles, CA. Nationally, I have presented papers at the American Educational Research Association, National Association for Multicultural Education, National Association for the Education of Young Children, and the American Counseling Association annual conferences. Additionally, I have two empirical manuscripts currently under review (accepted pending review) at referred journals, Multicultural Perspectives, and the Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development.