Ian Lértora Ph.D., LPC, NCC, CSC, Level II Certified Humanistic Sandtray Therpaist

What are your current research interests?

I came to Texas Tech as a counselor, teacher, and researcher looking to find my way in academia as a relational scholar whose research centers on providing a rich context to relationships between mental health, education, and diversity in key locations (e.g. classrooms, counseling environments, geographic regions) and structures (e.g. universities, school districts, mental health providers), while showing a clear connection to the communities that I collaborate with and serve. For example, in my publication “The Lived Experiences of International Students in a CACREP Counseling Program,” a CACREP program (location) and university (structure) are examined in relation to the lived experiences (rich context) of international students working towards becoming counselors (mental health, education, diversity). My research agenda is situated in three specific research strands which are: international student transitions to education in the U.S.; understanding and applying Relational Cultural theory to various aspects of counseling and counselor education; and innovative experiential techniques for counseling and counselor education.

What types of outreach and engagement have you been involved with? 

Since arriving to Texas Tech in the Fall of 2016, I have been active in the areas of community engaged service in my service to the program, college, university, surrounding community, and the counseling profession. As a counselor educator, it is imperative that we dedicate service time within the field of counseling, supervision, and counselor education to highlight a strong identity as a counseling professional. Many of my community engaged service activities are in efforts to have my research agenda, counseling, and teaching impact Texas Tech and its surrounding community. 

On the program level I have been advising our program chair on international student regulations. Consequently, we have been able to ensure that our international students have the correct course offering to keep them in VISA compliance. I have also been able to advocate for international students by finding campus employment, which is the only employment international students are eligible for.

At the college level I served as an advisor for the marketing department, sometimes helping with generating ideas for new marketing campaigns. I have also supported teacher prep program by providing career transitional support to teacher candidates when they go into their student-teacher placements and as they search for employment after college. On one occasion, I helped the teacher candidates process a recent completed suicide at a junior high where they were student teaching. Additionally, I served on an ad hoc committee that worked on defining engaged scholarship, teaching, and service as it would apply to the College of Education, which culminated in presenting our findings to the Office of the Provost. I also served on another ad hoc committee regarding merit pay evaluation for faculty. 

On the university level, I have worked with the Office of International Affairs on multiple grant submissions and participated in international student orientations. Additionally, I have served as an advisor for international student life to help them adjust programming to address the transitional needs of international students. This partnership led to working with Deans of the College of Engineering to guide data collection regarding their study abroad requirement. 

In our surrounding community I have collaborated with our program partner, Family Counseling Services, to advise them in being one of our internship sites for students, and now I serve on their board of directors. I also serve on the advisory board for Lubbock I.S.D.'s career and college readiness committee, which has led to community presentations to provide free continuing education for certified school counselors. Additionally, our Counselor Education program student-led conference, under the direction of Dr. aretha marbley, provides free continuing education units for mental health professionals in our community which I present at annually. I, and other program faculty assist with helping the students troubleshoot the complexities of putting on a conference.

Additionally, I connected with an assistant professor (Dr. Dan Kelly) to support him in starting the Journal of Foster Care. Our collaborative efforts have since shifted over to direct social emotional service interventions for at-risk (e.g., low income, foster care) student populations in Lubbock I.S.D. K-12 education and has been piloted at Priority Intervention Academy and Dunbar college preparatory academy and will be conducted at Mathews Alternative High School in the 2021-22 academic year. Our intervention combined engineering, computational thinking, cognitive behavioral principals, and a relational cultural pedagogical approach to help students learn how to program and re-program their own behavioral responses while programing and reprogramming robots. This collaborative effort has led to research, service and teaching opportunities within Lubbock I.S.D. that are important to the advancement of social emotional education and learning as well as mental health awareness. 

In 2019 I collaborated with the Director of the Burkhart center for Autism to develop a mentorship program that utilized our Chi Sigma Iota honor society members to serve as mentors to Texas Tech's college students who are on the autism spectrum. My efforts in collaboration and connection culminated in the Burkhart Center hiring 2 of our students to join the Burkhart staff. Our PhD student provides direct counseling services to TTU students who are on the spectrum, while our masters' student gives counselors a voice on the multidisciplinary teams that monitor the wrap around services that the Burkhart students receive. Being able to place counselors in spaces they have not previously been in has been one of my proudest accomplishments. 

Why did you choose this field?

The crux of my teaching approach is a multi-tier reflective process of being in the students' seat and asking, “how do I want to be taught?” This question has provided me insight on how to develop, implement, and guide learning experiences that engage students as invested collaborators in their learning process. I incorporate written reflections, experiential activities, pre-post activity discussions, small/large group discussion, and mid-term teaching evaluations to give students multiple methods of expressing their educational understanding and needs. This affords me the opportunity to make data-informed decisions to adjust my educational delivery on a weekly basis to enhance the learning process for our students. My primary values in the classroom are flexibility, adaptability, and allowing for both teacher and student to learn alike. I treat students as partners in the process of developing skills and qualities that create lifelong learners

Using my qualitative research skills I analyzed my past student comments to create a needs assessment to gauge student expectations for the semester as well as their understanding of where they feel they are at in their journeys to become counselors. I use the same research skills to analyze the needs assessment, class notes, written reflections, mid-term teaching evaluations, syllabus, assignments, and end of semester reflections to make the course more experiential and collaborative. Weekly I gather and thematically analyze students' reflections, as well as my notes, in order to make data informed decisions about my instructional delivery and selection of experiential activities. This multitier reflective process is one pillar of my educational delivery. 

I strive to assist students in understanding the importance of being invested in their education, to be a lifelong learner, a problem solver, an advocate for the counseling field, and to work effectively in groups to accomplish goals greater than we can individually. My students gain these insights and skills through innovative experiential lessons that require authentic participation and discussions. “His innovative training methods drastically improved the overall learning of the entire class.” By creating and maintaining a warm, accepting, growth-fostering classroom environment, multiple opportunities are provided to experience growth, learning, and supervision, all of which is captured in my current research.

How do you define good teaching?

I believe the foundation of good teaching come from a continual reflective process of placing ourselves in the students' seat and asking, “how do I want to be taught?” This question has provided me insight on how to develop, implement, and guide learning experiences that engage students as invested collaborators in their learning process. Incorporating  written reflections, experiential activities, pre-post activity discussions, small/large group discussion, and mid-term teaching evaluations gives students multiple methods of expressing their educational understanding and needs. This affords instructors the opportunity to make data-informed decisions to adjust educational delivery on a weekly basis to enhance the learning process for our students. Primary values related to good teaching in the classroom are flexibility, adaptability, and allowing for both teacher and student to learn alike. An instructor should view students as partners in the process of developing skills and qualities that create lifelong learners.

Using our research skills we can analyze past student comments to create a needs assessment to gauge student expectations for the semester as well as their understanding of where they feel they are at in their journeys to become counselors. The same research skills to analyze the needs assessment, class notes, written reflections, mid-term teaching evaluations, syllabus, assignments, and end of semester reflections to make the course more experiential and collaborative. Weekly I gather and thematically analyze students' reflections, as well as my notes, in order to make data informed decisions about my instructional delivery and selection of experiential activities. This multitier reflective process is one pillar of my educational delivery. 

A good teacher should strive to assist students in understanding the importance of being invested in their education, to be a lifelong learner, a problem solver, an advocate for the counseling field, and to work effectively in groups to accomplish goals greater than we can individually. By creating and maintaining a warm, accepting, growth-fostering classroom environment, multiple opportunities can eb provided to experience growth, learning, and supervision, all of which can be captured in our research.

What is your proudest professional accomplishment?

I have two accomplishments I am the proudest of and are essentially a tie. The first is relating to my collaborations with Texas Tech University colleagues in the department of Agricultural Education and Communications and the Office of International Affairs (OIA) led to the U.S. Department of State awarding Texas Tech the Mandela Washington Fellows grant in 2017. In 2018, I worked with OIA to put together a new team that was awarded the grant again in 2019 and 2020. In 2019 IREX, the agency that manages the Department of State grant, named my role as a counselor as a best practice for all future grant submission, which points to my advocacy efforts for increasing the awareness and delivery of mental health service for international populations. 

The second accomplishment that I am proudest of came through a collaboration between the College of Education, Human Development and Family Sciences, and our community partner Family Counseling Services (FCS, a community mental health clinic). The grant provided 5 of our counseling students, in their practicum and internship classes, the opportunity to work with FCS as paid counselors-in-training. Historically our student interns, and many interns across the nation, provide services to people in need for free, while incurring numerous personal costs. This is a major issue within our profession, and receiving this grant paid our students from January 1st, 2019 until May 2020. 

How do you integrate research and outreach into teaching?

My teaching style mirrors the open-ended counseling process and is predicated on developing strong rapport with my students, so they commonly leave evaluation comments like, “He really cares about us and challenges us to reach our full potential.” To this end, I use many innovative techniques, some of which are collaboratively developed with my students, to place students in the role of counselor so they “feel well prepared for whatever could happen in a session going forward.” Furthermore, the classroom environment that is co-created with the students serves as another place where the diversity of all students and faculty is respected, appreciated, and celebrated. My growth and development as an educator with 15 years' experience culminated in “Using Relational Cultural Theory as a Pedagogical Approach to Counselor Education,” as evidenced in my publication in the Journal of Creativity in Mental Health. 

I use my qualitative research skills to thematically analyze positive, negative and constructive comments on teaching evaluations from our students and peers evaluators and incorporate the findings into my planning of my next semester. I also collect data weekly relating to skills development, professionalism, student feedback, and counseling dispositions that I use to make personalized data informed decisions every week to enhance learning, counseling, and supervisory   experiences of each individual in my class. Additionally, I thematically analyze  students' written reflections, that are returned with copious comments and a grade   in 2 days, as well as my own reflective notes, to make data informed decisions about my instructional delivery and selection of experiential activities. This multi- tier reflective process is the cornerstone of my educational delivery and gives our students a voice in how they want to be educated. All the information is shared directly with the students to contribute to the collaborative environment that I create for, and with, our students.

More About Ian Lértora 

Dr. Ian M. Lértora, is an assistant professor in Counselor Education at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. Before becoming a professor Ian was an elementary school teacher and high school basketball coach in title 1 inner city school within Houston I.S.D. for 6 years, and in Huntsville I.S.D. for 2 years. He pursued his master's in counseling and PhD in counselor education after coming to realization that the best way to help create effective change was through educating future mental health and school-based professionals. Ian has worked in various settings as a professional counselor over the past 9 years that include trauma-focused play therapy in elementary school settings, community counseling with families/couples, college counseling, and career counseling. His areas of research are social emotional development in teachers and students, college student transitions, international student transitions, and developing innovative and interactive teaching strategies for counselors and counselor educators. Recently, Ian has published an article introducing a Relational Cultural pedagogical approach to counselor education, which serves as a starting point for his next area of research interest.