Foundations of Decolonized Counseling Practices

Presenter:

Edil Torres Rivera, PhD, LPC, ACS

Learning Objectives:

Identify how colonialism has affected people, communities, and the environment, using ideas from thinkers like Fanon, Memmi, and Freire.
Describe how liberation counseling can help raise awareness, support healing, and create more just and peaceful communities.
Explain how decolonizing education and ways of thinking can challenge unfair systems and expand how we understand knowledge and learning.

CE Credit: 1 NBCC Hours; 0 CRCC Hours; 1 WA Hours; 0 APT Hours; 0 NAADAC Hours; 1 NY Hours; 0 Ethics Hours

Edil Torres Rivera, PhD, LPC, ACS

Edil Torres Rivera, PhD, LPC, ACS has a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology with a concentration in multicultural counseling from the University of Connecticut, Storrs. He is a professor of counseling and the director of the Latinx Cluster initiative at Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas. Edil Torres Rivera is native Puerto Rican with a career of over 25 years in counseling. This includes 12 years in the United States Army. He served as 72nd president of the American Counseling Association.

Edil's research interests are in multicultural counseling, group work, chaos theory, liberation psychology (decolonial approaches), indigenous counseling, Puerto Rican studies, identity development, and gang/prison-related behavior. Specifically, his primary research focuses on complexity and how indigenous healing techniques are a necessary ingredient when working with ethnic minority populations in the United States. Edil has additional interests in studying the implications of social injustice and oppression in counseling and psychotherapy with ethnic minorities in the United States.

His community work includes consultation services to the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Council in Nevada, visiting professor to the Universidad del Valle, Guatemala, and he was the director of the Graduate School of Education’s School Counseling Program in Singapore.