Dr. Derron Hilts Publishes Two Articles on School Counseling

Dr. Derron Hilts, assistant professor and chair of school counseling at Niagara University, recently published two articles in professional journals.

Dr. Hilts co-authored "A comparative analysis of Recognized ASCA Model Program (RAMP) designation, student-to-counselor ratios, racial/ethnic composition, and student outcomes," in the Journal of Education, the oldest educational publication in the country.

The article discussed the results of a study of RAMP and non-RAMP schools in the state of Georgia to determine if the designation is associated with better student outcomes. The authors found that RAMP designation was positively associated with students' English Language Arts and math achievement, but not chronic absenteeism or discipline. Interaction effects showed that lower student-to-school counselor ratios enhanced the academic benefits of RAMP designation, while racial/ethnic composition influenced student outcomes independently of RAMP status.

Dr. Yanhong Liu, associate professor in the School of Education at Syracuse University, and Dr. Xiuyan Guo, a psychometrician at Pearson VUE, co-authored the paper with Dr. Hilts.

In the second article, "The educator-counselor school counseling supervision model," Dr. Hilts and his co-author, Dr. Ian Levy, assistant professor of school counseling at Rutgers University, introduce a model that provides research-informed andragogical and supervisory strategies to support emerging school counselors as they navigate and make sense of their professional identity, clarify role-appropriate responsibilities, and traverse systemic challenges. By outlining the roles, focus areas, and corresponding school counseling contexts that supervisors can target to foster a unified educator-counselor identity, the ECSCSM can help mitigate the internal conflict school counselors experience in determining whether to primarily identify as counselors or as educators. The article was published in the Journal of Counseling and Development, the flagship journal of the American Counseling Association.

For more information on Niagara University's school counseling program, visit https://www.niagara.edu/programs/school-counseling/.