College of Education and Human Development
Southern Association of Counselor Educators and Supervisors (SACES) Honors Bemak and Chung
March 22, 2011
For 2010 the SACES Social Advocacy Award belongs to two outstanding contributors: Dr. Fred Bemak and Dr. Rita Chi-Ying Chung of George Mason University.
Drs. Bemak and Chung are Professors in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University. Each has a distinct, rich history of social advocacy locally, nationally, and internationally. They have published extensively in the fields of cross-cultural and multicultural psychology and counseling, working with at-risk youth, and immigrant and refugee mental health and psychosocial adjustment. They co-authored a book entitled Social Justice Counseling: The Next Steps Beyond Multiculturalism in Application, Theory, and Practice in Counseling and Psychotherapy as well as a text with Dr. Paul Pedersen entitled Counseling Refugees: A Psychosocial Approach to Innovative Multicultural Interventions. Drs. Bemak and Chung have authored numerous journal articles and book chapters in these areas, approximately 150 collective works.
Dr. Bemak is Founder and Director of the Diversity Research and Action Center. The Center, established in 2005, focuses on issues of cultural diversity and provides research, training, consultation, and program evaluation with a wide range of national and international experts. Dr. Bemak has directed federal, state, and privately funded human services programs, and had done consultation, training, and research with culturally diverse populations and public and private human services organizations locally, nationally, and internationally (35 countries and counting).
Dr. Bemak also founded Counselors without Borders. Counselors without Borders (www.counselorswithoutborders.org) is committed to providing culturally responsive humanitarian counseling in post-disaster emergency situations. Recent activities of Bemak and Chung involve work related to the California wildfires, Hurricanes Katrina, Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma), the Tsunami in Thailand, and the Haiti earthquake.
For the past few years Drs. Bemak and Chung have worked as consultants for Save the Children, UK, assisting with issues of child protection and trafficking in Burma (Myanmar).
Dr. Chung is also currently analyzing data collected on inter ethnic race relations with African American and Asian Americans and will be working on a larger study of inter ethnic group relations with African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latino Americans. She has consulted throughout Asia, the South Pacific, Latin America and Europe. Given her work on child trafficking Dr. Chung was invited to present at the United Nations in New York on cultural perspectives on children trafficking, human rights and social justice.
We congratulate Drs. Bemak and Chung for their worldwide social advocacy efforts!