Moving forward.

This will be my last issue as editor of Professional School Counseling. For the past two and one-half years it has been an honor to serve as editor of this fine journal. It is now my time to transition out of this role and pass the leadership reins over to the next leadership team. I am pleased to tell you that Dr. Rick Auger has agreed to move from associate editor to editor. We are fortunate to have such a highly qualified counselor educator commit his time and talents to serve the profession in this manner. Having worked with Rick in his role as associate editor, I feel fortunate to be able to step down knowing that the journal is in such capable hands. In addition, Dr. Amy Milsom, a counselor educator at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a long-time editorial board member, has agreed to become our next associate editor. Amy brings a wide range of talents and expertise to this position. She is a gifted writer and will make an outstanding associate editor for our journal. As I have discovered over the past several years, being editor of this journal is both rewarding and extremely challenging. I am confident that the many people who have helped mc with the journal will now join both Rick and Amy in moving our work forward. Working together we can achieve important things for our profession.

Professional School Counseling has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years. We regularly receive many high-quality submissions, which enables us to be increasingly selective and further enhance the journal's reputation. We have several special issues nearing completion, and reactions to the new "Extended Discussion" section of the journal have been positive. Our new online submission and review procedures are helping us streamline the review process, shorten turnaround times, and improve the quality of the articles we publish. Members and subscribers can now earn CEU credits by reading the journal, and we expect to soon be listed on the leading citations' index, along with other high-quality journals.

Obviously, these improvements in the journal and our solid current situation have only been possible because of the hard work and leadership provided by a number of people. I particularly want to single out the work of Kathleen Rakestraw and the dedicated ASCA staff who have helped me each step of the way. Without Kathleen's assistance, insight, and direction, I would not have been nearly as successful in my role as editor. Together, we have been able to implement a plan to handle the extensive amount of work required to publish the journal. Now, our turnaround time on submitted manuscripts and acceptance rates compares most favorably to leading journals in other fields. This would not have been possible without Kathleen's efforts and the timely services of other ASCA staff members.

No journal can be successful without an effective editorial board. We are fortunate to have many counselor educators and professional school counselors volunteer to review manuscripts. This is a difficult job to do. It takes a considerable amount of time to thoroughly review a manuscript. I want to thank each of you who have taken this role seriously and completed rigorous reviews for the journal. In particular, I have come to greatly appreciate the unique perspective that practicing counselors bring to the review process. Our new online submission and review process also opens up possibilities for greater interaction and feedback among editors, reviewers, and prospective authors. Again, thank you for putting me in a position where I could be successful.

Moving Forward

I believe professional school counseling has the potential to be one of the most important forces that empowers an increasingly diverse spectrum of youth to have the capacity to fully participate in the benefits and responsibilities of our evolving pluralistic democracy. Our field has great potential to be of enormous benefit to the increasingly diverse groups of people that rely on public school education to help their children create personally valued and desired futures. It is an exciting time to be in the field of professional school counseling. The journal can play a dynamic role in this process. It can be the conduit through which high-quality research and theory help professional school counselors improve the services they provide to all students in their district and an invaluable resource we can use to negotiate with policymakers for needed resources to implement effective programs and practices. I would like to share some thoughts on issues to keep in mind as we move forward.

As editor, I have been continually impressed with the wide range of talented professionals who are engaged in the kind of scholarship that leads to publication in Professional School Counseling. However, it seems to me that, at times, our efforts are somewhat scattered, and we do not keep to the kind of focus needed to move the profession ahead. I am not suggesting we need to move in oppressive lockstep fashion with each other. But, it does seem to me that we don't stay focused enough on the kinds of research projects that will generate answers to questions of critical importance to the profession. For example, what are the effective components and ways to intervene to help low-income and underachieving students maximize their potential at the elementary, middle, and high school levels? What are the optimal ratios of professional school counselors to students that are needed if we are to enhance the academic achievement, personal/social growth, and career development of all students? The "Extended Discussion" section is intended to generate a coherent conversation about such critical issues. I hope you have seen from the first two discussions that we don't need to be in agreement in our conclusions or the methods we use to investigate the issue. How ever, we do need to discuss these issues with each other and stay focused so we can begin to make headway in resolving the serious problems facing K12 students.

I think one of the best ways to ensure that the needed systematic inquiry into such critical problems takes place would be for research partnerships to be formed across the country. These partnerships could link the unique talents and skills of counselor educators, practicing professional school counselors, and ASCA. Practicing counselors need help with an abundance of issues. Most counselor educators have publication requirements for promotion and tenure. ASCA has information needs that have to be filled if it is going to be able to effectively advocate for the profession in Washington. Local data speak volumes to school boards and elected representatives. Personally, I hope that as ASCA's National School Counseling Research Center evolves it will be a catalyst to nurture and sustain effective research partnerships around the country.

I would recommend that we refrain from writing articles that lecture from a safe distance on what a practicing counselor "should" do. Instead, we need to challenge ourselves to try out our ideas in practice. The profession is in short supply of good empirical studies (either quantitative or qualitative) that take the time to systematically observe what counselors do and how students benefit from these efforts. We need applied evaluation studies that use existing school data that policymakers really care about (e.g., grades, suspension rates, dropouts, test scores, post-secondary education entrance, and graduation rates). My impression is that many counselors see positive gains in the work they do, but it almost always goes unpublished. I would hope that research partnerships would lead to more of this work being published. Working together we can be creative in designing treatment/control group cohort designs that add methodological rigor to our work without making the project undoable within the very real constraints of the public school setting.

In conclusion, I would like to say that now is the time for us to dig in and do the kind of high-quality research that professional school counseling needs and deserves. I am encouraging those of you who have some research interests and skills to step forward and do the kind of process and outcome research that we need. I hope our efforts are up to the task and worthy of the honorable legacy given to us by past leaders in our field. Again, I want to thank you for all of your help in my time as editor of Professional School Counseling. I look forward to seeing you at the ASCA conference this summer in Chicago. I would welcome the opportunity to talk with you about these issues.

Richard T. Lapan, Ph.D., is a professor with the Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Pyschology, University of Missouri at Columbia. E-mail: [e-mail]