President's Letter: NDSCA Works for You

Happy New Year! As we kick off 2024, I thank you for another exceptional year for the North Dakota School Counselor Association. Our association worked tirelessly during the beginning of 2023 to protect our role as school counselors and the prior legislation that provided the requirements for elementary school counselors in every school. We saw the leadership transition of our longest-serving President April Foth, who moved to past president, and the election of Treasurer Angel Lindseth to the role of president-elect. Courtney Quist has joined our executive board as the new treasurer.

We introduced a new representative position, the K–12 Representative, and NDSCA elected co-representatives Steven Quinlivan and Linda Dockter for this position. Misty Galvin was elected as the new Middle School Representative. We have been blessed with several new committee chairs: Robin Lang, Jessica Gilsrud, Franchesca Fraire, Kacee Miller and Jill Vollmers.

NDSCA has instituted several new benefits for our members this year including listening meetings for each of the represented areas, an additional undergraduate scholarship, a brand-new graduate scholarship, incentives for ACE certification and new benefits for the North Dakota school counselor of the year. All of this excitement and I haven’t even touched on our upcoming conference on February 10! Read about that event in the next article.

The theme for this month’s newsletter is “Connecting with Careers.” I have been fortunate as a K–12 school counselor to be a part of and work with a great group of experts in this area, the CTE career development counselors and advisors across our state. We have also had the amazing commitment from our educational leaders to fund vital resources like the RUReady.ND.gov program and the Golden Path Solutions program to help provide career exploration and work-based learning that offer our students opportunities I could not even imagine as a high school student.

As we move into the second semester with registration, ACT testing, Choice Ready reports and graduations, take the opportunity to reflect on how much we do every year to help all students on their journey to connect with their future careers. Thank you for all you do for your students and your community!

Contact Jared Bollom, NDSCA president, at jared.bollom@gmail.com.