College of Education and Human Development

Dr. Fred Bemak Chosen to Receive American Counseling Association Award

Fred Bemak, EdD professor in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University was recently honored by the American Counseling Association as winner of the Gilbert and Kathleen Wrenn Award for a Humanitarian and Caring Person. The Wrenn Award honors an ACA member who gives to others without fanfare or expectation of reward other than the personal satisfaction of seeing other people made happier. The Award was presented at ACA's annual conference in New Orleans, LA.

Dr. Bemak is the founder and director of the Diversity Research Action Center. He has directed federal, state, and privately funded human services programs and has provided consultation, training, and research with culturally diverse populations and public and private human services organizations locally, nationally, and internationally. Dr. Bemak has published extensively in the fields of cross-cultural and multicultural psychology and counseling, social justice, working with at-risk youth, and immigrant and refugee mental health and psychosocial adjustment. He has recently coauthored a book with Dr. Rita Chi-Ying Chung which will soon be published through Sage Publications titled, Social Justice Counseling: The Next Steps Beyond Multiculturalism in Application, Theory, and Practice, another book with Rita Chi-Ying Chung and Paul Pedersen titled Counseling Refugees: A Psychosocial Approach to Innovative Multicultural Interventions and has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters in these areas. Dr. Bemak continues to present and offer training nationally and internationally, was recently the program evaluator for a six-country cross-border child trafficking program in Asia, consultant for several years with Save the Children, UK, in Burma, and currently is doing ongoing consultation and training with Invisible Children in Uganda. He is active in ACA and the American Psychological Association. Dr. Bemak also founded Counselors Without Borders to respond to worldwide disasters and has brought teams to provide counseling, training, and consultation following Hurricane Katrina, the San Diego wildfires, and the Haiti earthquake. Dr. Bemak has been a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil, a Fulbright Specialist in Scotland, a World Rehabilitation Fund International Fellow in India, a Kellogg International Fellow in Latin America and the Caribbean, and held faculty appointments at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and the University of Queensland in Australia.

Founded in 1952 and headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, the American Counseling Association is the world's largest private, not-for-profit organization for professional counselors. Dedicated to promoting public confidence and trust in the counseling profession, the American Counseling Association provides
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American Counseling Association is committed to equal opportunity leadership training, continuing education and advocacy services for its more than 42,000 members. For more information on the American Counseling Association, visit www.counseling.org.