Assistant Professor Karen Marsh, Department of Psychology in the College of Education and Human Service Professions, has authored a book entitled Career Counseling: Helping Clients Chart a Course Through Work and Life.
Marsh wrote the book for beginning counselors. "I've felt that there was a need for a book that was informative and helpful in framing the 'big picture' for counselors in training, but also based on personal reflection on this important lifetime journey," Marsh says.
The book is partly a memoir of her experiences, but also an academic textbook that delves into practical areas that encourage counselors who are early into their careers to reflect on a variety of practical concerns: the role of the self of the counselor, the history of career counseling, interviewing, instruments, theories, and practice with case studies.
Marsh hopes that her book will provide counselors with the tools they will need. "This book is written as a guidepost with the counselor in training in mind. It is my hope that it can be used to encourage self-reflection and spark thinking on conceptualizing clients' tasks of organizing life and career, developing and maintaining balance and discovering strategies that will work well for them. Though this process is often thought of as a task to be accomplished during young adulthood, that is a fantasy vision found only in academic storybooks because career and life development are found in many of life's stages.".
Marsh has taught both graduate and undergraduate classes at the University of Minnesota Duluth, Department of Psychology, for the past seventeen years, in the University of Wisconsin, Superior Counseling Program, and for the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, a master's degree in counseling from Governor's State University in University Park, Illinois, and a doctoral degree in clinical psychology from Argosy University in Minneapolis-St. Paul. She is a Licensed Psychologist in the State of Minnesota. Besides teaching, she has done educational consulting, been in clinical practice, and worked in the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA).