by
Joseph Peters
| Nov 04, 2021
Announcer: Welcome to the Voice of Counseling, presented by the American Counseling Association. This program is hosted by Dr. S. Kent Butler. This week's episode is Bringing Family Back to Counseling and features Dr. Mark Pope.
Dr. S. Kent Butler: Welcome to the Voice of Counseling from the American Counseling Association. I'm Dr. S. Kent Butler. Joining us today is Dr. Mark Pope. Dr. Mark Pope is Thomas Jefferson fellow and Curators' Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the counseling and family therapy programs at the University of Missouri St. Louis, where he began in 1997. He is an American Counseling Association fellow and past president, the years 2003 to 2004 of ACA as well. And his specialty includes career counseling, addictions counseling, psychological testing and multicultural counseling, including LGBTQ+ counseling specialties. He has led this department to be nationally recognized as the number two counseling education program in the United States and a consistent ranking of number one of all doctoral programs at the University of Missouri St. Louis on that particular campus. Dr. Pope is widely considered to be the founder of and one of the leading authors in the field of cultural diversity issues in career counseling and career development, especially gay and lesbian career development. He is the author and editor of 11 books with four more currently in development.
Dr. Butler: Now I want you to all know that this man has retired and he is working on four more books right now, as we speak. 40 plus books chapters and 50 plus journal articles and scores of other publications dealing with career development and cultural diversity. Through his scholarly work and leadership he has been instrumental in bringing to the forefront counseling profession broadly and the career counseling field in particular, the special issues that lesbian and gay individuals face in American society.
Dr. Butler: In 2004, Dr. Pope was selected for the Out 100 as one of the major contributors to lesbian and gay culture in the US in that year. He received this recognition for being elected the first openly gay person to serve as president of a major mental health professional association exactly 30 years after the removal of homosexuality from the list of psychiatric disorders in the US Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association, repudiating once and for all the illness model used to limit the rights of gay and lesbian and bisexual individuals in the US and around the world. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my phenomenal guest, Dr. Mark Pope. How you doing, Mark?
Dr. Pope: Good, Kent. Nice to be here. Thank you so much for that kind introduction as well.
Dr. Butler: It's good to see you.
Dr. Pope: Good to see you.
Dr. Butler: Now Mark, there's some history there. You and I worked together from 2000 to 2007, 2008. You were my boss. And so, it's good to see you.
Dr. Pope: As I say, a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.
Dr. Butler: Somebody had to do it. You kind of, one of my mentors to get me to be a part of the American Counseling Association as well. You've done a lot and now you're retired and you're still doing a whole lot. What's been happening for you these days? What is life like for Mark Pope right now?
Dr. Pope: Well, I retired in September 2018, so just kind of right before the pandemic hit. I found as a person who works in the career area, the work of Donald Super was always really important for me and so his developmental stages and things like that. As you go through them, you go, oh yeah, that's that one. And you finally get to the end of all this, you kind of go, ah, so that's what he was talking about. But what I've found is that for me, is that I'm doing all the things that I want to do now.
Dr. Pope: And it's so great to be able to just do those things rather than all the other kind of stuff that goes with being a department chair or being so involved in everything under the sun, in the whole counseling profession. And now I'm really trying to put onto paper or electronically, my thoughts on issues. And so before I moved in the emeritus role, I made a list of 20 ideas for books and things like that, that I wanted to work on when I retired. And so I've been doing that.
Dr. Butler: Can you tell us a little bit about what we have in store for us? What are these four books going to kind of dictate and tell us about?
Dr. Pope: Well, they're kind of diverse in certain ways. The first one in certain ways a really important one is it's called The Handbook of Human Sexuality Counseling: A Sex Positive Approach. I'm doing that with one of our doctoral graduates, Angela Schubert. And it's the first book and ACA will be the publisher. And it's really the first book on human sexuality in general and human sexuality counseling that ACA has published.
Dr. Butler: Let me stop you right there and tell you that there's a phenomenal book that you put together with Joe and Angela Coker and Joe Pangelinan about how people can utilize different types of activities and interventions in multicultural class. And so that was a great book, a new addition to what people can utilize in their classroom. You are active. You're not just that person who's on the center stage and saying to people, "Hey, do this or do that," and have no work to show for themselves. You have been putting things out there continuously and now you're moving into this book with Angela Schubert. That's phenomenal. Tell me a little bit more about.
Dr. Pope: As you know, I'm kind of a doer. I like to get things done and move things forward and plan and all those kind of things.
Dr. Butler: Excellent. Excellent.
Dr. Pope: It's been good.
Dr. Butler: The other three books, tell me a little bit about those.
Dr. Pope: Okay. The other one is another one that I'm working on is a book on theories of career development. And it's kind of like theories of career development in their own words. What it does is it takes the best article, chapter, whatever that was written by career development theorists and then collects all of those into a compendium of what Donald Super wrote and what John Krumboltz were and what Anne Roe wrote and all of those kinds of people in one place. And so that will be I think, a really important contribution to career development literature.
Dr. Butler: Nice. What was the thing that led you to that? What made you say, "Wow, this is really important for the literature?"
Dr. Pope: Well, most of the books in theories of career development that are out there on the market in terms of textbooks are books that are what other people write about those original authors, original theorists in the whole career development area. And I thought, why not have those people tell their own story? Have the original theorists tell their own story in a compiled book. And as you know, I've really been involved in history of the profession and writing a lot in that area. And I wanted to kind of get all of these things together because those theorists, like many of the original counseling theorists, many of them are no longer with us at this point. And so I wanted to kind of bring all of that together in one place as well.
Dr. Butler: Nice, nice. You definitely are, like you said, a doer. You've been putting forward a lot. Your agenda, not agenda, that's probably the wrong word, I don't want it to sound negative. But when you were president of ACA, what were some of the highlights of your year? What were some of the things that you had on your docket that you wanted to get accomplished? And how have you seen that flourish since your presidency?
Dr. Pope: I think one of the things that I wanted to do was elevate the American Counseling Association to a higher level in terms of the public, the general public out there who's a consumer of the services that our members provide in the counseling area, all the different areas of counseling. And so I made a really big push to kind of help people understand how they can go out and really put themselves in front. Market the profession even better. That was one of my really important goals.
Dr. Butler: That's phenomenal. And I remember your opening day. I don't know what you would even call it, opening session was for the keynotes and all those different things. And I remember you coming out, your platform prior to becoming president was to talk about gay and lesbian issues and things along those lines. And you came out with Mario. Can you tell us a little bit about Mario and why you wanted to bring him onto the stage with you as you started off the American Counseling Association conference that year?
Dr. Pope: Thank you, Kent. It's nice to talk about the person I love. Mario Carlos is my husband and we have been together for 26 years and at the opening ceremony, one of the things that was really important to me as the first openly gay president of any of the major mental health associations, but specifically of the American Counseling Association, was to show that level of acceptance and normality. And so we tried to normalize all of these kinds of issues. During the opening session, I introduced him, brought him up on the stage, I gave him a hug and a kiss and to a tremendous round of applause.
Dr. Butler: Well received. Very well received.
Dr. Pope: And I didn't hear anything at all negative from anybody about it.
Dr. Butler: The counseling community was able to embrace that.
Dr. Butler: Yeah. And so from that point forward, you also have been the leader of other organizations. Can you talk about some of the other highlights of your career?
Dr. Pope: Yeah. I'm a past president of the National Career Development Association, which is one of the associations that was the founding associations of the American Counseling Association. And then I also helped found three other divisions of the American Counseling Association, including Counselors for Social Justice. And, oh, I'm sorry. There's a new organizational affiliate called Association for Counseling Sexology and Sexual Wellness. And it ties into the book that we're doing. And and then I was one of the very original, original founders of what we call ALGBTIC or now it's called SAGE. But that's the LGBT+ division within the American Counseling Association. And I was the third male co-chair of that group back in 1976 and through 78. And then I maintained all the connections with it and helped move that group forward to division status and to its position. Now it's the second largest division within the American Counseling Association.
Dr. Butler: Yeah. Excellent. On a national level, Mark Pope is doing his thing. Let's transition it back to what it was like for you as a assistant professor, professor, department chair in a program where, like you said, it is second ranks, is nationally first ranks for the doctoral program. What was it about mentoring young folks in the profession that took off for you? And why you were so adamant about making sure that the program was doing what it said it was going to do?
Dr. Pope: Well, I was actually living in San Francisco and my partner during that time, we'd been together 13 years, he passed away. And that was a difficult time but it also out of difficult times come opportunities. And I had wanted to be in academic situation, move into an academic career and I started applying for jobs. And because of his illness, he passed away of HIV. Because of his illness, we couldn't really move out of the San Francisco Bay area. There wasn't much known about that during that time and the healthcare service was really good there. Anyway, I applied around, I applied to three places. I was interviewed at all three places and I really chose to come to University of Missouri St. Louis. And it was a really important place for me because I'm from Missouri originally, I was actually born in St. Louis but raised down in the rural area.
Dr. Pope: My kind of tagline is, I was born a poor gay Cherokee boy in rural Southeast Missouri. And coming in, one of the reasons I think that I was hired, was offered the position was because I had been involved in ACA and NCDA and everything and they wanted to move to CACREP. They'd been talking about being a CACREP accredited program for many, many years from what I hear. And so I was brought in to really head that and we were able to accomplish that and everything. And I came in as an associate professor actually because of my publication. And so I've never been an assistant professor.
Dr. Pope: This was really my first full-time academic position but because of my work in the profession, my publications and everything, they said, "No, come in at the associate professor level."
Dr. Butler: Did they bring you in with tenure as well?
Dr. Pope: No. No. They said, "I'll give you three years credit for tenure." And so then I would come up for tenure in two and a half years.
Dr. Butler: Wow. That's a powerful narrative right there because I think that that kind of showcases that there are different ways into the academy, so to speak.
Dr. Pope: There are. And my role as a mentor for other faculty members and for our students in the program, doctoral and Master's students was to help them form a strong professional identity as counselor, as somebody, as professional counselors, somebody who will go out in the field and do really extraordinary work.
Dr. Butler: Let me ask you a question with that. There's a lot of African American males or there are people of color who, and you identify as such, who don't have that luxury of going into the academy to get tenure, to get promoted and things along those lines. How would you encourage them or empower them to kind of use their gifts to be able to come in and kind of be able to negotiate so to speak, their rightful place in the academy?
Dr. Pope: Yeah. Well, as you know, Kent, I come from a Native American background as well. And what I found was I had to work harder. I had to be committed. I had to do all of those kinds of things so that then I could use that as a bargaining chip for helping other people in this process. That I could get into positions where I could be chair of the department or president of American Counseling Association and then I could raise the next generation up, help to raise the next generation up to that. And I think really it's part of that though is for new people coming in is they just, they have to really come in with a vision of what it is that they want to do and they have to follow through.
Dr. Pope: As you know, you have to follow through and do the work and take on the kind of some of the grunt jobs. You know that we are called on by our institutions and pulled in so many different ways when you come into academia or really anything because you are the only person of color that's maybe on the faculty or in the college or in the university. That means you have lots of opportunities but that means that you're going to get pulled in so many different directions you may not be able to stay focused.
Dr. Butler: Where you need to.
Dr. Pope: Accomplish the things that you really need to accomplish like tenuring and things like that. And it's really so important to, as you know, at the University of Missouri St. Louis, we have senior mentors that help people through this process and everything like that. But I think part of it is just, you have to stay focused, keep your vision, be able to say no, appropriately no to the right situations, in the right situations and say yes to the right situations as well.
Dr. Butler: Okay. When you think about that and you think about some of the folks that you have mentored into the profession, especially those who like myself, I think about Angela Coker, I think about Joe Pangelinan, I think about folks like Erica Nash at that point in time, but now Erika Cameron who kind of were under your leadership and then there's been others too since I've left the university who you helped to kind of lead them in a way where they can become a little bit more self confident maybe, a little bit more in a way that what you just talked about in a sense, stand on their own merits to be able to be seen.
Dr. Butler: But we all know that that's in the academy sometimes people of color, people who physically appear as a person of color, have a harder way to go. On top of working hard, you have to also showcase that you are working harder than probably someone who may not be having to deal with those same types of issues. What were some of your messages to those individuals about getting through, knowing that there were some hardships that they have to deal with?
Dr. Pope: Yeah. I think most importantly is you got to say, like I mentioned earlier, you got to say no to the right things and yes to the right things. I think that's really important. Two, you got to have people who are going to protect you within the institution.
Dr. Butler: I'm glad you said that because I'm going to remind you of something that happened when I was working at the university. You called me into your office one day. And hopefully you remember this, I hope it was significant enough, Mark, that you remember this but a student or two maybe have come into your office. I think I was teaching in group counseling at the time. And they said to you, "We trust what Dr. Butler is teaching us or saying to us." And I remember looking at you and I said, "Well, what was your response to them?" You remember that conversation?
Dr. Pope: Just a bit around the edges probably. What did I say, by the way?
Dr. Butler: Well, you said, "Well, Dr. Butler is a professor here at the university and of course you should."
Dr. Pope: Highly qualified.
Dr. Butler: You stood behind me so to speak.
Dr. Butler: Because there was nothing but challenges because for many in Missouri, especially I was the very first African American male some of them had seen throughout their whole educational experience in there. And I remember asking you specifically, "Okay, they came to you and they said that and you're sharing this with me. What was your response to them?" And you had my back.
Dr. Butler: I guess that's what I'm saying.
Dr. Pope: Yeah. Well, yeah. I believe so strongly in supporting, I think of you all, all of my faculty. I really am a really big supporter of my faculty. I care deeply about the people that I work with and I care deeply about the students as well. That's really important. But I saw that as a really important role was really to support and really protect especially our new faculty of color in particular and all the different kind of cultural adversity. We've had gay and lesbian faculty we've had a lot of different kinds of faculty and it's really important to me to be supportive of the faculty and defend them and support them and do it in an authentic, honest way.
Dr. Butler: Right. And to the point where not only saying it to the students but also informing the faculty of what was going on as well, because I remember my first two years working as a assistant professor, I was ready to get out. I was not get out of the profession but I was ready to get out of Missouri. I loved going into my classes and teaching and things along those lines but there were challenges of course, that were coming down the pipe. And so I think that our faculty, I think this should be across the board. When I came to the university, it was, we have a social justice focus. And so can you talk a little bit about what programs should be doing? How do programs who may not really have a social justice focus understand what that is? And maybe we can carry this into our break. We got a break in a few minutes but starting off with maybe you sharing what was it about the faculty and what was it about that mission that made it come to life and actually really see it work through fruition to do there?
Dr. Pope: Well, it all begins with a hiring process. My attitude has always been in a role of chair or any leadership position is you hire really good faculty. You give them the resources they need and you get out of their way. And I think that's really such a really strong internal belief that I have in terms of my style of leadership in academia. Kind of truly the bottom line. And when you hire those people, you hire them with issues of cultural diversity, social justice, openness to new ideas. You hire them with all those things in mind because you got to have a representative faculty in order to get a really good representative student group as well. Students. You got to have it.
Dr. Pope: If they can't see themselves reflected in the faculty, they're not going to think they can get there. Whether it's at the Master's level or the doctoral level. And as you know, we've had such a strong, strong focus, especially at the doctoral level on social justice issues and things like that. But again, it's hiring the right kind of faculty with the right kind of values and beliefs and attitudes that make all the difference in the world. And then again, just kind of hire good people, support them and get out of their way.
Dr. Butler: Get out of their way. That's such an important statement. And perhaps we'll take our break on that but I think that message resonates with me because in so many cases, I think, especially when we think about social justice and I think maybe after the break we can kind of really hit in on what social justice really means. There are people who want to be social justice in their advocacy but really they hinder people sometimes and they don't know how to get out of the way. And so perhaps we can talk a little bit about that as we move forward.
Dr. Butler: Right now we're listening to Dr. Mark Pope. Talking with him and his career, his phenomenal career as a career counselor, a career professor and now emeritus. And so after the break we'll talk more with Mark. This is the Voice of Counseling. I'm Dr. S. Kent Butler. And we'll be back after a moment.
Narrator: Counselors help positively impact lives by providing support, wellness, treatment. We're working to change lives. We are creating a world where every person has access to the quality professional counseling and mental health services needed to thrive.
Dr. Butler: We're back. This is the Voice of Counseling from the American Counseling Association, and our guest today is Dr. Mark Pope. Mark, another brilliant book that you put out into the atmosphere has to do with social justice issues. Can you kind of talk a little bit about that book and what was the impetus behind you putting that book forward?
Dr. Pope: Well, as we talked a little bit about, we have a strong social justice focus within our entire department and our doctoral students in particular, have that strong social justice focus in their work. And they carry that on after graduation into their work. Three of those doctoral students and I put together a book on infusing social justice activities, experiential activities into the curriculum of counseling. And it's a really important book. The other three editors of the book along with myself were Maria Gonzalez, Erika Nash Cameron and Joe Pangelinan. And those three doctoral graduates of our program right and I did this book. Taylor and Francis has published it and it's the only book that we are aware of that really addresses issues of social justice into the counselor education curriculum.
Dr. Butler: And not just one course, it's something that can be infused into any course that's going on in the counseling education program. That's really cool. I edited a book recently as well. That is an introduction to counseling book but I also wanted to make sure that there were people throughout the entire book that were bringing in social justice, not only just to multicultural class but that they can use in techniques, that they can use in the intro course, that they can use in a career course, in all those different spaces.
Dr. Butler: And so I'm proud of the fact that you and others are taking up this mantle because for so long counseling was seen as this I don't know if it's monolithic or whatever but it was like, you only sort of did one thing. And that was to go in and counsel someone and let them go. But the truth of the matter is you had to look at their different intersectionalities. You have to look at what the disparities were in their careers and their lives and things along those lines and then also pay attention to their worldviews and how they're impacted by just life in general. Your book lends to that. What are some of the things that you hope people take from that? Not just students but even counselor educators who are using the book, what are your hopes for them?
Dr. Pope: I think probably the most important thing is how their own worldview many times and especially in the past, many times really unconscious affects the way that they approach the whole process of counseling. And that if they will kind of understand and take a look first within themselves and understand their own worldview, then they're more open to other people's way of looking at the world as well. And that kind of inner work is really some of the critical pieces of the puzzle if you're going to be an effective counselor, educator, human being. And so I think that's really an important piece of this for me. The unconscious worldview is a killer in a classroom and in a counseling session.
Dr. Butler: Right. Right. And it's the elephant that's in the room that nobody wants to address but everybody knows is there. And if we can't open the door to these difficult dialogues then we're really not doing much for the individuals. We talked about doing the social justice piece in the counseling space, what are some of the things that you would tell counselors to be able to do outside of that space? How do they help to ensure that the disparities that they see happening for their clients are also being addressed? How do you become an advocate in that way?
Dr. Pope: Well, back in, I guess when she was president of American Counseling Association, maybe a couple of years or a few years before me, Judy Lewis, was one of the people who put together the advocacy competencies for the counseling profession. And in that and then she and her co-authors and editors of the book, they put together this book about how to take the advocacy competencies and apply them to various spheres, including counseling session, including academia teaching and including to the society in general. Advocacy is not just for the client or just for the profession but also it's for to the society in general.
Dr. Butler: Right. It's very difficult to help a client work through whatever issues that they're going through and then send them back into a broken society that is not going to help them to maintain what you bring them to counseling to do in the first place.
Dr. Pope: Yeah. You look at issues of, well especially LGBT+ issues, the issue of being able to conceal your sexual orientation back in the 1960s and earlier were really big, important issues. And it was against the law in fact for two people of the same to gender to even maybe touch in public or kiss or certainly have sex. That was all really taboo. And so people end up many times or end up having criminal records because of that.
Dr. Butler: Because of who they loved.
Dr. Pope: That's right. And the advocacy piece of that is helping to go out and change those kinds of laws so that we could then move forward, so that our clients and our profession and our society can move forward. But that's the heavy lifting that you've got to do. And it's just not in that counseling session one on one or one on family or one or group, it's all of those things and more.
Dr. Pope: That we Have a responsibility for.
Dr. Butler: Exactly right. Well, thank you for that. Mark, at ACA conferences, you were very instrumental in making sure that not only did your former students get together and hang out, even your current faculty members that were there were able to come in and hang out and you even pulled in people who were former faculty members to come in and hang out because family is really important to you. I remember when I was working with you that you would go back home, you would say, "I'm going down South to take care of family members." Your mom, I remember you doing that. Family is a part of who you are and you brought that to your counseling profession and you brought that to your counseling faculty. Can you talk a little bit about that? What was it about family or what is it about family that is the mainstay in your life?
Dr. Pope: I had a mother who raised four sons and I was the eldest of four sons. And who raised four sons really by herself. My parents were divorced when I was five years old and my youngest brother was just born. And so she worked, she was a teacher. She taught at one room country schools during the regular school term and took correspondence courses and went to summer school to get her college degree. It took her 12 years over that time to get her college degree. But she could still teach during that time because it was a different time. And she was always there for me, even when I was coming out and things like that. Myself, she was there for me. She would support.
Dr. Pope: When she came to visit me and my partner in San Francisco when he was really ill, I mentioned earlier with HIV and he was really ill. This is my previous partner. And she came there and she had a dream while she was there and she was in a rowboat and the water was really splashing around all over the place. And she saw her sons were out there in the water and she pulled her first son into the boat and her second son into the boat and her third son into the boat and her fourth son into the boat. And then she pulled her fifth son into the boat and that fifth son represented my partner at that point in time. They were so close. She loved him so much. She was there when he passed away and to be there and take care of him and me during that time and our lives.
Dr. Pope: And that's what family means to me. That's the power of family in my life and I think and I hope in so many people's lives because to have that acceptance and that love, that unconditional love is so important. And I miss her. She passed away a few years ago.
Dr. Butler: Mark, thank you because that's one of the things that you carry, your vulnerability. To be able to share the deepest part of the things that are going on for you with the world and still be able to maintain and to move forward. You have a strength about you in terms of your integrity to do the right thing and to try to make sure that those around you are thriving and moving forward as well. Even in times of pain and suffering that you may be going through, you've seen, you're not immune to it. Nobody's immune to pain and suffering but you are able to kind of bring a different life to it so that people can know that. And I guess it's going back to maybe normalizing all of this.
Dr. Butler: You started off talking about bringing normality to your relationships and people recognizing that and understanding that. But I think also not hiding behind it so that it's open and that if you're going to be talking about it and you're willing to talk about it, then maybe other people will listen and understand what this is all about. This is no grand performance. This is life. This is what people deal with and what they go through. That's what social justice is.
Dr. Pope: It is. It is. Thank you. You're very kind. Obviously I think one of the powers of counseling, especially for men in our society is the ability then to learn to be much more in touch with your interior self, the feelings that you have and self. We know this is not easy.
Dr. Butler: Yeah, not easy.
Dr. Pope: We're not raised in many ways to be like that. Whether it's not necessarily just family but it's the society, the messages that we receive, all of those kind of things is this is the way that men are supposed to be.
Dr. Pope: And I just learned that it was really critical for me to be in touch with my emotions because that's what made me truly human.
Dr. Pope: That's what made me truly, it's like almost reclaiming your power.
Dr. Butler: Right. And then to have a supportive parent on top of that to showcase that I'm going to be here for you and that's what you're trying to be for others. I'm going to be here for you through the worst of it, through the best of it so that you always know that you have somebody in your corner.
Dr. Pope: Really a safe place to come to. When all the world is coming at you, you got to have those people that you know are going to be there and support you and love you and care about you. That's what makes all the other stuff possible I think
Dr. Butler: You probably were mad at me when I came to your office that day and told you I was leaving the University of Missouri St. Louis. You knew I had a little bit of a history there towards the end that I just needed to find a new space for me but you opened the door for me to be able to leave. And so I appreciate you being mad at me. And I appreciate you also days was in that when I was gone at another university, always calling me and saying, "Hey, we're getting together. We got this." I left the University of Missouri St. Louis but I never left the University of Missouri St. Louis. How's that? Because you kept me as a part of the family.
Dr. Pope: Thank you. Very kind. That's one of the things that, as you mentioned earlier, one of the traditions that I instituted was every year at the ACA conference, we would have a gathering of our current student, Master's and doctoral, alumni of our program, faculty, current faculty, as well as former faculty of our program were all invited and we would get together at a bar. And my thing was, I would always buy the first round.
Dr. Butler: I didn't drink.
Dr. Pope: I know. Well, you got something to drink.
Dr. Butler: We're going to change that up a little bit. You got to maybe buy shrimp.
Dr. Pope: First hamburger or something?
Dr. Butler: No, I don't even eat hamburgers. I need shrimp, Mark. I need seafood.
Dr. Pope: Well, shrimp cocktail. I heard that's a possibility for you. And so I see that as something again, it gets them to come and really commune together, if you will, all those people. And they see the connections that they have with the faculty that are there, the students, the alumni who have gone off and now come back. All of those kind of things are so important. And by the way, I still do those things. Whenever we have at the next ACA conference and we're live, we'll have another one.
Dr. Butler: Right. Right. Right. Just really quickly, when you retired from University of Missouri St. Louis, they put on a phenomenal going away party for you. I just wanted to mention that. I saw the pictures and how well you were received but I want to lead into else because we have a few more seconds left. And I want to ask you, because I ask past presidents this question who have been a part of the podcast so far, what's your legacy, Mark? What are you leaving the profession in your eyes?
Dr. Pope: Broadly speaking, a refound focus on our humanity, I think. It's about all the different, many, many different cultures that of which are our world is composed. It's about the individuals that are in there, never forgetting the person in all of that. When I did my consulting work, I did some consulting work when I was in San Francisco down in Silicon Valley, it was all about bringing humanity back into a corporation. And as you know, corporations are not always the most humane places in the world. But bringing humanity, a focus on the person and the individual and their treatment back into the company, whether it's Apple computers or Hewlett Packard or even IBM, the behemoth IBM. And I think that's within the profession, it's to remind us because to remind us of our focus on humanity and people and we're in this, so many of us, most of us to help people. That's why we call it a helping profession. The relationship is the key and all of that.
Dr. Pope: And I just think that, here you get your first openly gay present of our association and it took to 2003 for that to happen but damn it it happened. And now we've had several other openly gay and lesbian presidents of the American Counseling Association, as well as a whole bunch of African American presidents of the association. It just kind of opened the door in many ways for us to regain that sense of culture and diversity and humanity.
Dr. Butler: That's excellent. Well thank you, Mark.
Dr. Butler: Thank you for being one of the counseling leaders in our community. I appreciate you. I thank you for your time today. This is the Voice of Counseling from the American Counseling Association. We had a phenomenal time with our guests today, Dr. Mark Pope and I thank you all for listening and we'll see you next time.
Dr. Pope: Thank you, Kent. I love you.
Dr. Butler: Love you too, man.
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