The goals of this exploratory study were to: (a) compare counselor educators’ ideal ratings of importance with their perceptions of the institutions’ importance ratings on tasks related to scholarship, teaching, service, and supervision and (b) expand the understanding of the importance that counselor education faculty members assign to those same tasks. Group differences based on characteristics of gender, ethnicity, tenure status, program type, type of institution, and type of college or university in ideal importance ratings for scholarship, teaching, service and supervision tasks were also examined in this study. Participants in this study were counselor education faculty members working in CACREP-accredited counseling graduate programs (N=169). All participants completed the Counselor Education Task Importance Instrument (CETII) that was designed for this study to assess participant's ideal and perceived institutional importance of tasks related to scholarship, teaching, service, and supervision. Paired ttests on all CETII items resulted in statistically significant differences between participants’ ideal importance ratings and their perceived institutional importance ratings in scholarship, teaching, service, and supervision tasks. Multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) resulted in statistically significant differences for participants’ ideal importance ratings for variables gender, type of program, type of institution, and type of college or university. Results for the MANOVA demonstrated nonsignificant statistical differences between ideal ratings for variations in the ethnicity and tenure status of participants. Faculty members in counselor education can use the findings from this study to establish priorities for their work in higher education and advocate for a professional counseling identity that is distinct from other disciplines in the social sciences. Administrators in higher education who have responsibility for establishing and maintaining tenure and promotion criteria for counselor education can utilize the same findings to create benchmarks that encourage equity for the advancement of counseling faculty members. Results from comparing ideal and perceived institutional importance ratings suggest that counselor educators have conflicting priorities for their professional counseling and their academic careers. Future research can compare actual institutional ratings to participants' ideal and perceived institutional ratings on the CETII in order to clarify counselor educators' multiple identities as practitioner, researcher, and educator.

abstract: Every year, potential graduate students hunt through websites and promotional materials searching for the perfect program to fit their needs. The search requires time and patience, especially for those future scholars who seek a doctoral program in Education Policy Studies (EPS) with a focus on interacting with the policymaking process. The primary objective of this project was to explore the promotional materials of EPS doctoral programs in order to better understand how these programs promote formalized training for students to engage with education policy and the policymaking process. I selected the top 10 EPS programs in the nation along with my own institution (Arizona State University) as the sample for this study. By reviewing their websites, I found that programs provide a comparable training description for similar careers as well as upholding similar goals in the subfield of EPS. Ultimately, the program materials revealed that while these programs advertise significant formalized training in research methods and scholarly pursuits, opportunities to actively engage with policymaking were missing from the materials. Instead, it is more likely that such opportunities occur in informal settings such as apprenticeships and working at research centers. This study provides a detailed discussion of how programs promote training opportunities to students, the types of careers that programs claim to prepare students for, and the important role that faculty projects and additional resources play in the student experience related to engagement with policy and the policymaking process. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2014