Alumna Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, president and CEO of AACTE, discusses the complex education ecosystem
In the 1980s, having a full-time school counselor in a school setting was an anomaly. Before coming to UNC Greensboro, Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy was a kindergarten teacher in Maryland. She was intrigued when a colleague came to her room to deliver lessons about making friends and identifying feelings.
“She introduced students to fundamental social-emotional lessons, and they were fully engaged with her in a way they hadn’t been in the academic lessons,” Holcomb-McCoy recalls. “That was when I realized there’s more to learning than reading and writing. The social-emotional aspect is crucial.”
The young teacher decided to earn her master’s degree in counseling from the University of Virginia and returned to the school system as a school counselor. Yearning for more connection between the education system and the counseling world, Holcomb-McCoy enrolled at UNCG to earn her doctorate in Counseling and Counselor Education.
That training set her on a path as a leader, educator, and researcher focused on ensuring that students and schools are structured to protect children from bias and barriers. This January, she became president and CEO of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), an organization that elevates education and educator preparation through research, professional practice, advocacy, and collaboration.
“The purpose of education is to develop an educated citizenry and to create spaces where students gain the knowledge and the skills necessary to achieve their dreams. Education is the foundation of our democracy,” Holcomb-McCoy says.
Social-emotional learning bolsters education
Holcomb-McCoy came to UNCG specifically to work with the late William Purkey, a UNCG professor of counselor education from 1976 to 2004, because of his work in positive psychology.
“While I was in the program, Purkey and the faculty convinced me that I needed to train school counselors. I wanted to open up a counseling practice in Maryland,”
She credits UNCG with helping her recognize that counseling and education go hand in hand. To be exceptional educators, she says educators must first understand and recognize the social-emotional needs of themselves and their students.
Holcomb-McCoy specifically learned Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory: an understanding that students are the center of a complex ecosystem that includes their families, their communities, and their schools. That context of the students’ full experience with these systems is key to helping them learn effectively.
“I worked with so many wonderful professors – including Nicholas Vacc, DiAnne Borders, and the late Jane Myers – and from Jane, I learned about the importance of overall wellness,” she says. “UNCG impacted my development as an educator. I learned that the purpose of schooling is to create spaces where students are accepted, they feel included, they’re learning, and they are exploring what life will be like.”
Her dissertation research included the development of an instrument to assess multicultural counseling competence of counselors based on the newly minted ACA Multicultural Counseling Competencies.
“I wanted to ensure that counselors could see, hear, appreciate, and affirm students from diverse backgrounds. The process of designing that assessment tool helped me think through what types of skills counselors need to connect with and effectively counsel students,” she says.
“I’ve been in education for over 30 years, and I’ve witnessed the power of education: it can inspire people to achieve their dreams, enhance our society, and help address some of the injustices in the world.”
– Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy
A higher ed calling
After she earned her doctorate at UNCG, Holcomb-McCoy went on to a career in higher education, including faculty positions with Brooklyn College, the University of Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University, where she rose to the position of vice provost for faculty. Prior to her new position with AACTE, Holcomb-McCoy was the Dean of the School of Education at American University.
“Throughout my time in higher education, it became clear to me that we must incorporate mental health and social-emotional learning into our discussions about how to instruct students,” she says. “You could have a spectacular mathematician who comes in to teach math at a high school, but if that teacher is unaware of a student in distress, then that teacher is probably not going to be effective.”
As a practicing counselor and educator, Holcomb-McCoy learned firsthand that school counselors are uniquely skilled and positioned to disrupt oppressive practices and bring people together by creating a more inclusive learning environment.
“Students bring their experiences into classrooms – a rough night with a parent, unemployment, cultural issues – all of these factors are playing out in students’ lives,” she says. “We must be willing to engage with our students in an affirming way – we see them, we hear them, we value them. For educators and counselors, self-awareness and social-emotional understanding are essential skills that enable us to listen to and learn from our students. It is crucial for educators to maintain that perspective.”
Pathways for education professionals
An essential element she brought to her myriad leadership roles is the creation of collaborations between higher ed, non-profits, and community groups. Her goal is to create pathways for students to become education professionals.
At Johns Hopkins University, she launched the Johns Hopkins School Counseling Fellows Program and the Faculty Diversity Initiative. At American University, she forged partnerships with District of Columbia Public Schools, Teach for America, Friendship Charter Schools, City Year, and Maya Angelou Schools to increase enrollments and to create new pathways to the teaching profession. In addition, Holcomb-McCoy founded the Teacher Pipeline Project, which generated more than $1 million in scholarships for D.C. school students aspiring to teach. She helped develop a dual-enrollment program in which high school students could take education courses for free and then continue to become teaching fellows with guaranteed jobs after graduation.
The path forward with AACTE
As the president and CEO of AACTE, Holcomb-McCoy hopes to build on her strong connections to create more pathways for students to enter careers in education. As a career educator, she’s been affiliated with AACTE for many years and says she depended on it for research about preparing educators and policy information that has impacted the field. She aims to foster more collaboration across K-12 districts, community colleges, four-year universities, non-profits, and other organizations in the education ecosystem, creating a pipeline for students to build careers.
“I’ve been in education for over 30 years, and I’ve witnessed the power of education: it can inspire people to achieve their dreams, enhance our society, and help address some of the injustices in the world,” she states. “I want to do now what I aimed to achieve in that first year I taught kindergarten. I want to improve the world through education.”
Story by Alice Manning Touchette
Photography courtesy of Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy
