Legacy of Care: Manzanita Counseling Center prepares for its next chapter

When Dorothy Wooldridge Gram addressed graduates of The University of New Mexico College of Education & Human Sciences in May 2023, she offered a simple piece of advice drawn from a lifetime spent teaching and counseling others.

"If you want to be happy in life, you must determine what your special gift is and then give it to others."

For Gram, a UNM Counselor Education alumna, that philosophy was more than advice. It was a guiding principle throughout her career as a teacher, counselor, and marriage and family therapist and one that would continue to shape her relationship with the university long after her own education was complete.

Today, her generosity is helping the College's Manzanita Counseling Center prepare for its next chapter, expanding a program that has provided no-cost counseling to the Albuquerque community while training generations of mental health professionals.

But the story of Manzanita is about more than additional counseling rooms or a philanthropic gift. It is a story of community, continuity and an enduring need for accessible mental health care.

A place for the community

For more than three decades, the Manzanita Counseling Center has served two interconnected purposes: providing counseling services to individuals, couples and families who might otherwise face barriers to care, and offering graduate students in UNM's Counselor Education program the supervised clinical experience essential to their professional development.

The center's services are provided at no cost, opening a door for people who may lack insurance, face financial hardship or struggle to find accessible mental health services elsewhere.

According to Ashley Martin-Cuellar, who directs the clinic, Manzanita's clients reflect the broader community and the challenges its members face.

"Our clients are the community," Martin-Cuellar said.

Referrals come from hospitals, community agencies and other providers, including organizations that cannot accommodate clients seeking free services.

The clinic provides short-term counseling for concerns ranging from anxiety, grief and relationship difficulties to significant life transitions and traumatic experiences. Its role, however, is not limited to the sessions that take place within its walls.

For clients whose needs require more intensive or longer-term treatment, Martin-Cuellar emphasizes the importance of helping them connect with appropriate services rather than simply turning them away.

"I never want anyone to feel like they're too much for us."

-Ashley Martin-Cuellar, Manzanita Clinic director

When appropriate, Manzanita can provide an initial point of contact, short-term support and coping skills while helping clients navigate referrals to longer-term care.

That approach reflects an understanding that access to counseling involves more than making an appointment. For someone already facing difficult circumstances, finding the right provider, navigating waiting lists and establishing a new therapeutic relationship can present challenges of their own.

At Manzanita, connecting people with care is part of caring for them.

Learning through service

The same commitment to relationships shapes the experience of students preparing to enter the counseling profession.

Clinical mental health counseling students complete their practicum at Manzanita, working directly with clients under the supervision of faculty, licensed counselors and advanced doctoral students. Doctoral students also participate in clinical training and supervision, developing the skills necessary to guide future practitioners.

The center's counseling rooms are equipped with observation and recording technology that allows supervisors to monitor sessions and provide guidance as students develop their clinical skills.

For Dean Kristopher M. Goodrich, those experiences are among the most consequential parts of a counselor's education. Students may remember many aspects of their academic preparation, he explained, but the opportunity to work directly with clients, receive intentional supervision and witness the impact of counseling often stays with them throughout their careers.

"There are many things our students will remember about their education, but those authentic clinical experiences are often what stay with them," Goodrich said. "Working directly with clients, receiving intentional supervision and seeing the difference counseling can make reinforces why they chose this profession in the first place."

The experience reinforces not only what students have learned, but why they chose the profession.

Martin-Cuellar has also worked to strengthen the sense of community surrounding the clinic itself.

Students who have completed their practicum now regularly return to Manzanita to visit, reconnect with colleagues and share their experiences as they move into internships. Some return to speak with current students about the transition from classroom and clinic-based preparation into professional settings.

Martin-Cuellar describes the clinic as increasingly becoming a hub for the Counselor Education program, a place where relationships continue beyond the semester in which students complete their clinical training. Those connections represent another form of continuity. Students arrive at Manzanita to learn how to counsel others. They leave to serve communities as emerging professionals, carrying their experiences, relationships and commitment to care into the next stages of their careers.

And sometimes, they come back.

A place that has grown with its purpose

The building that houses Manzanita has its own history of adapting to the College's changing needs.

Sarah Valles, academic operations officer for COEHS, first came to Manzanita in August 1999 as a UNM master's student and work-study employee.

At the time, the building housed both an early childhood education program and the counseling clinic. Valles remembers the activity of young children sharing the space with the College's clinical training programs.

When the early learning program eventually relocated, the building underwent an extensive interior reconstruction. Much of the existing interior was removed, creating an opportunity to redesign the counseling clinic with dedicated counseling rooms, observation spaces and offices.

"They literally took the building down to its four outer walls and the beams running through the middle, and completely redesigned the interior," Valles recalled. "That gave them the opportunity to create dedicated counseling rooms and observation areas designed specifically for the clinic."

Valles remembers the transformation vividly.

That history offers a useful perspective on Manzanita's latest planned improvements. The facility has changed over time, but its connection to the College's educational mission and the communities it serves has remained.

Today, the center is preparing to expand from three counseling rooms to six, increasing its capacity to accommodate graduate students and clients.

The plans also include a more private interior waiting area, providing clients with greater discretion when arriving for appointments. New counseling rooms will incorporate observation and recording technology to support clinical supervision and student learning.

For Martin-Cuellar, the additional space addresses practical challenges that become particularly apparent when practicum classes are full and students and clients must coordinate schedules around a limited number of rooms.

The expansion creates room for the next generation of counselors to learn while supporting the clinic's ability to serve more people.

A gift rooted in a lifetime of service

For Gram, the connection between education, counseling and community service was deeply personal.

After earning her bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California in 1963, she spent nearly a decade teaching in Los Angeles before coming to New Mexico to pursue a master's degree in counseling at UNM.

She subsequently worked as a counselor consultant for Albuquerque Public Schools and later returned to California, where her career included work as an educational psychologist, marriage and family therapist and advocate for young people.

Her professional accomplishments included recognition for her work in teen suicide prevention, but those who knew her remember more than her résumé.

Goodrich recalls a woman whose humor, energy and candor were as memorable as her commitment to helping others. Gram was outgoing, outspoken and quick to laugh, someone who brought warmth and personality into the spaces she occupied.

"Dorothy had this wonderful energy about her. She was outgoing, funny and outspoken, and she genuinely loved being around people," Goodrich recalled. "But beneath all that humor was someone who believed deeply in helping others. She understood that giving people access to opportunities, education and support could change their lives."

Valles remembers meeting Gram around the time of her 2023 convocation address and discovering a woman whose compassion and lively sense of humor made an immediate impression.

At that ceremony, Gram addressed graduates entering what she called the "people business," professions centered on improving the lives of others.

She urged them to give people the benefit of the doubt, treat others with kindness and respect, and recognize the lasting influence of human relationships.

Recalling something a teacher had told her as a child, Gram shared a memory that had remained with her for decades: "Dorothy, you are made of good material."

The encouragement helped shape her confidence and her understanding of what educators and counselors can offer the people they serve.

Her message was that even seemingly small interactions can leave a lasting impression.

Gram died in 2024, but her commitment to counseling education continues through the Dorothy Gram Counselor Education Scholarship Fund, which supports the UNM Counselor Education program and Manzanita Counseling Center.

Her gift is helping make the clinic's planned improvements possible, extending her belief in the importance of human relationships to future counselors and the people they will serve.

"Dorothy was an educator and a true servant leader," Goodrich said in a tribute following her death. "Our college honors her legacy and her lasting contributions."

Making room for what comes next

As Manzanita prepares for its next chapter, Martin-Cuellar is thinking beyond the physical expansion.

She envisions a clinic that continues to deepen its relationships with community organizations, strengthen pathways to longer-term services and broaden opportunities for students to develop specialized counseling skills.

One possibility involves expanding partnerships with community providers willing to reserve pro bonoappointments for clients who need ongoing or specialized care.

Such arrangements could help bridge the transition between the short-term services available at Manzanita and the longer-term support some clients need. They could also create opportunities for counseling students moving into internships to maintain continuity with clients when appropriate.

Martin-Cuellar also sees opportunities to develop additional group counseling services and strengthen training related to children and families, particularly as demand for specialized mental health services continues.

Her vision is of a center that serves not only as a place where counseling happens, but as a point of connection among people seeking care, students preparing to provide it and the community organizations working alongside them.

It is an ambitious vision, but one rooted in the same purpose that has sustained Manzanita for decades.

The people who enter the clinic change. Students become counselors. Clients find support and move forward. Faculty members and clinical directors carry the work into new generations.

The need for accessible care remains. And as Manzanita prepares to welcome more clients and train more counselors, Gram's words to the graduates of 2023 offer a fitting expression of the work ahead. "Nothing is more satisfying than the reward of knowing how much you have helped another person grow and develop positively."

At Manzanita, that work continues.