Athens, Ga. – University of Georgia counseling professor Deryl Bailey has been named president-elect of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision, a division of the American Counseling Association.
He will serve as president of the national group from 2009-12.
Bailey, an associate professor in the College of Education’s department of counseling and human development services, developed a heralded program called the Empowered Youth Movement, which provides children and adolescents in grades K-12 with tutoring, guidance and social skills training while offering a supportive structure for their parents. The program conducts Saturday academies, Saturday workshops for parents, semester exam lock-ins and summer academies and closely monitors students’ progress in school.
Concerned about what he saw as chronic low expectations for African-American teens around the country, Bailey started Empowered Youth as a counselor in a North Carolina high school in 1989 and brought it to Athens in 2000. After starting here with just 13 members, it now serves more than 100 students a year, and they converge on Aderhold Hall at UGA every Saturday for the free study sessions.
Almost all of the participants are African-American, and the attendance list includes everyone from the children of UGA professors to kids in public housing, Bailey said. Taking at least some Advance College Project classes is part of the requirements for high school students in the program, Bailey said, and over the past four years 90 percent of the program’s seniors have gone on to college.
Bailey has received numerous awards for his work including the Don Dinkmeyer Social Interest Award (2009) from the ACA, The African-American Male Initiative Best Practices Leadership Award (2007) from the University System of Georgia, the Community Service Award (2007) from the Georgia chapter of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE), the Mary Smith-Arnold Anti-Oppression Award (2007) from the Counselors for Social Justice, a division of the ACA.
Bailey joined the UGA faculty in 1999. He received his Ph.D. in counselor education from the University of Virginia.
