The theme of the Great Lakes Conference 2003, Counseling Psychology: Building Bridges - Making a World of Difference, highlights counseling psychology’s contributions to Multicultural Counseling, Diversity, Globalization, and Social Justice. Successfully bridging differences within the world today is one of the most important challenges facing humankind. The culture of beliefs, values, and social practices we are born into, and the personal/group dimensions of human experience that we share (ability/disability, age, culture, gender, ethnicity, race, religion, relationship status, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status) all serve as prominent reference points and important influences over how we view ourselves and each other, and how we enter into helping relationships.

A great deal of professional work still needs to be done to help bridge differences and develop more effective interventions in the world today. This Conference is intended to help address this need by facilitating connections, discussions and dialogue on this important theme among counseling psychology students, faculty, and practitioners. We would like to continue in the Great Lakes’ tradition of comfortable informality with an emphasis on graduate student development and invite you to join us.

The Great Lakes Conference 2003 Program

For more information about the Department of Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology at Western Michigan University, please visit www.wmich.edu/cecp/.