UW News: Northern Arapaho student looks to spread counseling

Education helped lift University of Wyoming doctoral student Avis Garcia from a family history of poverty and alcohol abuse to become a licensed addiction therapist who has helped hundreds of people on her native Wind River Indian Reservation and elsewhere in Wyoming.

Now, Garcia wants to help train others to become counselors so they can join the fight against substance abuse. She will receive significant help to achieve that goal from the national organization that certifies professional counselors.

Garcia is among 22 people from around the country selected for the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) Minority Fellowship Program. She is in Greensboro, N.C., this week to receive the honor from the NBCC, which aims to increase the number of professional counselors providing “effective, culturally competent services” to underserved minority populations.

Garcia, a member of the Northern Arapaho tribe, just finished her first year in the UW College of Education’s doctoral program in counselor education and supervision. She returned to UW, where she earned a master’s degree in counselor education in 2001, after working for more than a decade as an addiction counselor on the Wind River reservation, for the Wyoming Department of Corrections and for Southwest Counseling Service in Rock Springs.