Counselor Education Doctoral Program Faculty Members’ Refereed Article Publications

Publishing articles in refereed journal is important for both counselor educators and their preparation programs (e.g., Carper & Williams, 2004; Mayrath, 2008; McGrail, Rickard, & Jones, 2006; Stewart, Roberts, & Roy, 2007; Wagner, Lail, Viglietta, & Bums, 2007). Counselor educators' evaluation (e.g., promotion, tenure) is significantly based on their scholarly productivity (Lambie, Sias, Davis, Lawson, & Akos, 2008; Magnuson et al., 2003; Ramsey, Cavallaro, Kiselica, & Zila, 2002; Seipel, 2003). Tenure-earning faculty members often "encounter a publish-or-perish mentality within the counselor education profession" (Davis, Levitt, McGlothlin, & Hill, 2006, p. 148). For counselor education programs, faculty members' scholarly productivity is primarily quantified by their number of peer-reviewed publications and is a significant measure of programmatic standing and reputation (Carper & Williams, 2004; Matson et al., 2005). Therefore, scholarly productivity is an important indicator of programmatic ranking (e.g., U.S. News & World Report) and a counselor educator's achievement. From a historical perspective, the emphasis on faculty scholarly productivity has changed over the past 30 years. Before the 1980s, "teaching and the quality of research weighed heavily in tenure and promotion decisions, ... however, university administrators decided that performance could best be gauged on the basis of the number of articles published per year by each individual faculty member" (Baveye, 2010, p. 202). Additionally, during the 1980s, universities began focusing more on "their status relative to other institutions" and employed more "research-orientated criteria in the hiring and rewarding of faculty, including institutions that espoused a teaching mission" (Youn & Price, 2009, p. 205). Park and Gordon (1996) found that even in programs where it was stated that quality of research productivity was more important than quantity, the strongest predictor of earning tenure was the number of articles published in refereed journals during the tenure process. Moreover, many universities now assess tenure-earning faculty earlier or even before they are hired, "sizing up young scholars years before tenure time and showing them the door if it looks as if they won't eventually measure up ... all the pressure to publish has had a trickledown effect on graduate students" (Wilson, 2001, p. A12). Grant funding is significant to academics and their universities and is influenced by faculty scholarly productivity. The National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the U.S. Department of Education offer financial resources to support research that often leads to peer-reviewed publications. Additionally, grant funding promotes programmatic ranking and faculty members' reputation (Ali, Bhattacharyya, & Olejniczak, 2010). Faculty members' increased scholarly productivity (journal publications and citations) positively affects the number of grant dollars they are awarded (Ali et al., 2010). Consequently, publishing articles in refereed journals may put counselor educators in a better position to be awarded grant funding as compared with faculty members with limited publications. Doctoral students in counselor education aspiring to attain tenure-earning faculty positions are encouraged to publish articles in refereed journals (Lambie, Hayes, Griffith, Limberg, & Mullen, 2013; Lambie & Vaccaro, 2011; Magnuson, Norem, & Lonneman-Doroff, 2009). The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP; 2009) specify that a competent counselor education doctoral student "demonstrates professional writing skills necessary for journal and newsletter publication" (p. 57). Therefore, doctoral students necessitate effective research and scholarly writing mentorship to develop the skills and aptitudes to be successful in the promotion and tenure process as counselor educators (Borders et al. …