WCA is excited to welcome our keynote for our 2024 conference, Dr. S. Kent Butler.
S. Kent Butler, Jr. holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology, with a concentration in Counseling Psychology, from the University of Connecticut. He is a Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC), and Nationally Certified School Counselor (NCSC). Dr. Butler is a Past President of the American Counseling Association (2021-2022), is an ACA Fellow, and hosted an ACA’s weekly vodcast, “The Voice of Counseling”. Dr. Butler formerly served the University of Central Florida as the Chief Equity, Inclusion and Diversity Officer and is a National Association of Chief Diversity Officer in Higher Education Fellow (2020-2021). In March of 2020, he was selected as a Fellow within the National Association of Chief Diversity Officers in Higher Education’s Chief Diversity Officer Fellows Program (NADOHE-CDOFP). He is a 2020 – 2021 cohort (C-7) member. The professional leadership program mentors new and early career Chief Diversity Officers. Dr. Butler is a Professor of Counselor Education at the University of Central Florida and has served as a Faculty Fellow for Inclusive Excellence within the Office of the Provost.
Dr. Butler presently serves as faculty advisor to CHI SIGMA IOTA International Honor Society (CSI), the Counselor Education Doctoral Student Organization (CEDSO), Project for Haiti Knights, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He served as the Principal Investigator, for The High-Risk Delinquent and Dependent Child Educational Research Project: Situational Environmental Circumstances Mentoring Program (SEC), which was a partnership between the University of Central Florida and several Florida universities. This grant opportunity has transitioned into the UCF Young Knights Mentoring Project a program that supports students at Hungerford Elementary School in Eatonville, FL.
Also on the national level, Dr. Butler has served the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development (AMCD) as the 2011 – 2012 President and ACA Governing Council Representative (2015 – 2018). He is a proud member of AMCD’s Multicultural Counseling Competencies Revisions Committee which produced the Multicultural Social Justice Counseling Competencies (MSJCC). His research and academic interests lie in the areas of Multicultural and International Counseling, Social Justice, Mentoring, Counseling work as it relates specifically to African American males, Group Counseling, School Counseling, and Multicultural Supervision.
Dr. Butler has recently co-authored two books, with one being published this spring. Click here for more information about the texts.