04/23/2024
Going to brag for a minute about the great staff we have at the Center for Student Counseling…. Many of whom were honored for their hard work at the Student Leader Awards last night.
Congratulations to Drake Turner for winning both Graudate Student Employee of the Year and the Spirit of the Mastodon awards. Drake has been fantastic in helping to open the center and he truly exemplifies all that is best about our students here at PFW- he is committed, reliable, passionate, and full of life energy! And he’s a darn good therapist to boot!
Our Director, Gia Casaburo was honored with the Student Supervisor of the Year award. She has taken on more and more over the past year and is one of the most welcoming, compassionate, and caring leaders/supervisors I have ever seen. We are so lucky to have her supervising our counselors at the center!
I was surprised to be awarded the Service to Students award, and very honored to be nominated and thought of in this way. I love PFW and our students, and have been pleased to see the Center for Student Counseling flourish so greatly in its first year. I always get nervous in unexpected speaking situations so I didn’t say anything on stage (normalizing for anyone else who gets weird in those moments), but if I had thought about it, I would have said how impressed I was with everyone nominated, how grateful I am to work with such amazing faculty, staff, and student leaders, and how excited I am to see how we can continue to grow wellness services for everyone on campus!
Also congratulations to our related unit, the Disability Access Center who won the DEI Forward award, Carolyn Pang, graduate student in Counselor Education who won the Student Organization Member of the Year award, to Active Minds President Gwenna Lahmann who won the Building Block award, and to one of our Center’s biggest supporters, Dr. Brett Wilkinson, who received the Student’s Choice for Teaching Excellence award! It was wonderful to see so much celebration of those doing mental health and wellness work.
Thank you to the SGA, Student Life office, and everyone who put so much effort into recognizing the fantastic people doing amazing things on our campus!