Known for Counselor and author Name Mark Pope | Role Author | |
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Born April 23, 1952 (age 72) ( 1952-04-23 ) Saint Louis, Missouri Books Professional Counseling 101: Building a Strong Professional Identity | ||
Mark Pope, Ed.D. (born April 23, 1952 in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA) is professor and chair of the Department of Counseling and Family Therapy at the University of Missouri – Saint Louis (1997–), where he is a colleague to the social theorist Robert Rocco Cottone. He was president of the American Counseling Association (2003–2004), National Career Development Association (1998–1999), Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues in Counseling (1976–1978), and Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues (Division 44 of the American Psychological Association) (2011–2012), and founder and first chair of the Professional Counseling Fund (2004–2006). Dr. Pope is widely considered to be one of the founders of and leading authors in the field of cultural diversity issues in career counseling and career development, especially gay and lesbian career development. His major publications have included writings in counseling with sexual minorities and international students, the history of and public policy issues in counseling, and professional identity. He also served as editor of The Career Development Quarterly (2004–2008), the preeminent journal in career counseling and development.
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Early life and education
Pope was raised in Fisk, Missouri, a small town of less than 500 people in rural and agricultural southeast Missouri, in a family of teachers and preachers. He founded the student council at Fisk-Rombauer High School and was elected as its first president in 1968. He was valedictorian of his graduating class and elected state vice-president of the Beta Clubs of Missouri; however, he was also quite well thought of by his classmates and was voted the “most talented” and “most likely to succeed” as well as class vice-president in his senior year.
Dr. Pope attended the University of Missouri – Columbia (A.B., political science and sociology, 1973; M.Ed., counseling and personnel services, 1974) and the University of San Francisco (Ed.D., counseling and educational psychology, 1989). He was elected student body vice-president at the University of Missouri – Columbia in 1971 and president of the graduate student council at the University of San Francisco in 1986.
Counselor training and writing career
Founding his high school student council and his other early achievements portended other firsts both inside and outside the counseling profession including founding the Missouri Student Lobby (now Associated Students of the University of Missouri), the third student lobby in the US; founding the first gay and lesbian peer counseling program in the US (part of Beckman House, the LGBT community center in Chicago); founding the Graduate Student Council at the University of San Francisco during this doctoral studies and serving as its first president; founding the first multicultural career counseling agency in the US (Career Decisions International, in San Francisco); founding the counseling services section of the American Indian AIDS Institute/Native American AIDS Project in San Francisco; being elected as the first openly gay president of the American Counseling Association; and founding the Professional Counseling Fund, the first federal political action committee for professional counselors. Dr. Pope is author of numerous books, including Professional Counseling 101: Building a Strong Professional Identity, book chapters (35+), professional journal articles (30+), and over 100 international, national, regional, state, and local presentations. His many presentations include keynote addresses in China, Australia, Canada, and the US as well as consultancies in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and throughout the US with companies including Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Pacific Bell, the Internal Revenue Service.
His other major contribution has been to the literature on the training of counselors and includes seven books on teaching career counseling classes (Experiential Activities for Teaching Career Counseling Classes and for Facilitating Career Groups (3 volumes) and the Career Counseling Casebook (2 editions)); on teaching multicultural counseling classes (Experiential Activities for Teaching Multicultural Counseling Competence, 2010), and on teaching classes on counseling sexual minorities (Casebook for Counseling Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Persons and Their Families, 2012). (See “Books” below.)
Dr. Pope is a fellow of several major professional societies including the American Counseling Association, American Psychological Association, National Career Development Association, Society of Counseling Psychology, Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic and Racial Minorities, and Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues.
Awards
He has been the recipient of a number of major awards in the mental health professions including the human rights awards from the American Counseling Association and the state professional counseling associations of both California and Missouri, and culminating with receiving the Eminent Career Award of the National Career Development Association in 2008, the highest award in career counseling and development in the US.
In 2004, Dr. Pope was selected for the OUT 100 as one of the major contributors to lesbian and gay culture in the US in that year He received this recognition for being elected as the first openly gay person to serve as president of a major mental health professional association exactly 30 years after the removal of "homosexuality" from the list of psychiatric disorders in the US (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association), repudiating once and for all the illness model used to limit the rights of gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals in the US and around the world.