Stephanie Burns

Stephanie T. Burns, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at Western Michigan University in the Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology Department where she is the Coordinator of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program.

Dr. Burns is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Ohio and Michigan; a National Certified Counselor (NCC); and the chapter advisor for the Mu Beta Chapter of Chi Sigma Iota. She was co-chair of the Chi Sigma Iota Professional Advocacy Committee for six years and was the inaugural Edwin L. Herr Fellow for Excellence in Counseling Leadership and Scholarship.

Dr. Burns has published two chapters in edited books, 20 peer-reviewed journal articles, one peer-reviewed practice brief, one encyclopedia entry and presented at state, regional and national counseling association conferences, provided CEU training workshops, and has served on local, state and national counseling association committees.

Her research areas of interest include stress responses, guilt and shame responses, mental health assessment and diagnosis of adolescents and adults, student learning outcomes, counselor professional identity, ethical decision making in the counseling profession, the psychometrics of career interest inventories, adult career development, neurofeedback, counseling outcomes, program evaluation and supervision.

Her counseling honors have included four local, two university, and twelve national awards. Her latest award was the 2018 Emerging Scholar Award from WMU's College of Education and Human Development. Dr. Burns' 2017 journal article, "Evaluating Independently Licensed Counselors’ Articulation of Professional Identity Using Structural Coding" won The Professional Counselor's 2017 Research category of the Outstanding Scholar Award. The winners of this award are selected each year from the articles published in that year’s volume by the editorial board committee. Winners cannot self-apply and are selected based on the following criteria: scholarly style, innovative and inventive material, and relevance to the counseling profession. The winner receives a certificate of recognition and an honorarium. Dr. Burns also recently received notice that in 2017 her article "Education Level, Occupational Classification, and Perceptions of Differences for Blacks in the US" in The Journal of Employment Counseling one of their top 20 downloaded articles.