How College Access Programs Can Partner with Schools: What Professional School Counselors Want You to Know
Go Alliance continued its 2018 webinar series on how college access programs can partner, support, and more closely align with school counselors to better serve students.
This webinar featured a panel of three professonal school counselors with extensive experience in helping low-income, first-in-the-family students plan for and apply to education beyond high school, including working with college access programs. The panel provided an overview of the professonal school counselor role, how and why the profession is no longer considered ”guidance counseling,” and shared their advice about what makes a successful college access program-school counselor partnership.
Panelists
Mindy Willard 
is the School
Counseling and Transitions Coordinator for the Madison
Metropolitan School District in Madison, WI. Prior to this role
she was a K-8 counselor in the Phoenix area for 11 years and a
high school counselor for 2 years in the Milwaukee area. She
served as the President of the Arizona School Counselors
Association in 2014-2015 and was the ASCA National School
Counselor of the Year for 2013.
Dawn Mann, 
Program Manager for
Career Guidance and School Counseling at the Georgia Department
of Education, is 17-year Cobb County veteran school
counselor. Mann is a two-time graduate of Mississippi State
University, received her Education Specialist degree from Lincoln
Memorial University, and is currently enrolled in the Education
Leadership doctoral program through Samford University.
Dawn was a 2017 ASCA National School Counselor of the Year
Finalist.
Dianne Acuña Thompson 
has been an
educator for 23 years. She holds a bachelors degree in
education, masters degrees in school counseling and education
administration, and a specialist degree in curriculum and
instruction. Dianne has counseling experience across the
life span having worked at the collegiate, elementary and high
school level. Dianne has dedicated most of her career to
supporting students through the school counseling
profession.