Education: Challenges & Perspectives – Workshop 2B: Current Issues in Asian American Student Counseling

David Cheng:

Ok, good afternoon. I am David Cheng. You probably know me from this morning. I promised you this morning that this afternoon you have the chance to ask questions and whatever issues that you are interested in. You can bring it up and then we can talk about it. This afternoon we have a very interesting panel with our four panelists here. Looking at the backgrounds of the four panelists I think that we will go in the order of Doctor Vicenzo Milione, from the Italian American Institute. He is the Director of the Research and Education at Calandra Italian American Institute under the aegis of Queens College. Doctor Milione is responsible for social science research on Italian Americans, as well as conducting institutional research on his faculty, staff and students.

When I was reading his file I was wondering why Dr. Milione would be talking about counseling issues of Asian students, but I think that you are going to hear from him and will know why that it is very important that we hear from him because he is going to give us totally new perspective of how they study Italian American students and why counseling is so important for the students right now. Am I correct? Okay, this is Dr. Milione.

Vincenzo Milione:

Thank you. Actually the counseling part we didn’t talk about because you are the expert. What I am going to tell you to do is by understanding what is happening with the Asian American community, and once you see that you can see what has happened with the Italian American, you will see a lot of parallels. Not only that, there is also a lot of parallels in the Asian American community and the way the Asian American community is developing itself within CUNY as well and the role of counseling and mentoring will play to that. Again I am very pleased to have done this with my assistant [Ella Palazoli] who is our coordinator for [practice] and statistics.

Why Asian Americans and Italian Americans? Because I like Dr. Tam, and we get along well. But also if we go back in history we see that there is a lot of inter-relationship between the Italian and the Asian cultures at that time, going back as we know from Marco Polo, probably even prior to that. Again the Little Italy’s in Chinatowns. Isn’t that amazing that every Chinatown has a Little Italy? But it is there, you know. Let me see now, how many people live in Flushing here? How many people live in Ridgewood? Anybody? I see somebody. Little Village.

Okay, I am just trying to bring out something if you happened to live there. But I am also starting to see a lot of integration between the Asian American community now and the Italian communities. Again that is something for sociologists to pursue further later on, but there seems to be a lot of commonalities. I also have a special interest in this because, Marco Polo when he came back and brought all these great things and told people about it, and they could have called him a million things, they called him Dr. Milione. I am Dr. Milione.

Let’s go on to the next one. We at the Italian Institute do studies on Italian Americans, as you have heard. So why Asians? Because in every aspect the CUNY Italian Americans have the unique status of being one of the protected groups and one of the affirmative action groups. So very importantly we understand how our youth in the nearly part of the CUNY open admissions was doing and how the other groups were doing. After that and throughout the years I was able to accumulate data about the Asian Americans.

Again we talk about Asians, but we also know Asians are very diverse, includes Asian and Pacific Islanders. And that is the main categorical data that I have at this point because that is the way CUNY maintains its statistics. Next one. There are different ways to look at the Asian and the Asian Americans. And one way is either you could look at it from ethnicity or you could look at it from race. And the studies that I did focused mostly on looking at ethnicity. So it is pretty much, pretty close to looking at Asians as race. You probably know more about some of the problems that go into grouping people. Whatever cases in the U.S…. and again I don’t have much time here.

So I am going to the number. We are talking about the Italian Americans, probably 6% of the population, fourth largest ethnic group in this country. And the Asians are growing rapidly, about half as much as the Italian Americans, but they are growing quite a bit as you can see. Then we see that there are growths in the youths. That is what we are talking about, youth growths. These are the Asian Americans youths that we are trying to deal with and we try to understand what is going on. Next one. Just generally, we are looking into 1990 data. Unfortunately detailed demographic data is still not available. Hopefully it will be available any day in terms of what is called the [“Pum’s Data”]. So, a lot of what is available right now is since 1980 and 1990.

Next slide please. One of the things that I want to talk about is education attainment. If you look at New York City and we see the population that has some college and above. Let me explain these charts first of all, these are the different groups that we are looking at here, American Indian, Asian, Black, Hispanic, Italian American, most of my composites would be between these two groups and these are the white non-Italian Americans. What we are seeing is that for Italian Americans between 1980 and 1990, the green is 1980, there was a very big change in terms of college attainment. It was a very small change among the Asian community, we are in the census data, that is probably not even going to change. But that is probably due to a lot of the Asian immigration was post World War, had deal with a lot of the brain drain and that was a very scholarly, professional labor pool that came over. We look over the population but we still see that the Asian community on the whole pretty much has some college and above.

Next one, if we look at high school only, this is gotten at least high school degree and further. We see very little change among the Asian community as well as very little change among Italian American community, such that 1 out of 3 of the Italians have at least a high school education and 1 out of 5 of the Asians have at least a high school education. Next one, less than high school, not achieving a high school degree. This is where we start to begin to see a lot of changes going on within the Asian community in 1980 and 1990, and then we need to look at the 2000. I made some estimates here. But less than high school, there isn’t too much change here. But for the Italian American community we dropped quite a bit, either people get a high school degree or go on to college; this was between 1980 and 1990. With the Asian American community even though we are talking about youth, there is a lot of Asian Americans that aren’t going back to school. So that is also probably why our “high school only” did not change that much.

Next, in 1990, we have situations where a lot of the principals and educators began to say we have problems in our school, we have a lot of Italian Americans youth that are dropping out, we need to address this. So we start to look at that. Unfortunately we didn’t have the racial data because they didn’t classify the race. So using the census data and the Board of Education data I was able to make some estimate of what the Italian American high school dropout rate was and then compared it to the other groups. One thing was that we found the Italian Americans in 1980, which is the red bars here, to be the third highest high school dropout rate within the NYC Board of Education. Within that process in that area is again where the counseling comes in.

By the year 2000 the high school dropout rate decreased quite a bit. A lot of that has to do with the realities of the Italian American community. We could talk about it later in the discussion and some of the activities that went on there. Next one, Just to see that trend over 1990 to 2000, in this case the overall NYC board of high school drop out rate starting from when we first collected them in 1978, which is unbelievable at that time: one out of two, almost one out of two did not finish high school. Now, again some of this is due to the way they handled the data, the dropout rate decreased. In this case, we have the green as Italian Americans, and blue is Asians. And you could see, very much similar; they are very much similar in terms of high school students in terms of completion.

So such that the Asian Americans in the 1980’s, it was one out of seven, in 1990 it was one out of nine dropping out. We compare it to the Italian American students in 1980, it was one out of five, and a lot of this counseling and outreach programs which I had been introduced to this, reduced that to one out of ten. Next one. Just a closer look here, but the things to keep in mind is that these drop out rates did not stay the same thing, things happened through out the year. At one point the Asian Americans, the green now reach the low point, but 1997 appears to be going up and again, maybe Dr. Cheng can tell you more about what is going on in that area and why are they going up. Again from the Italian Americans community we feel good from what we heard, but we also we see some changes.

Next one, actually I just want to make some points here. Again this shows that it reflects post World War II in Asian immigrations, scholars and professionals, but that is changing in there, that’s the whole thing. Next one, I did look at the undergraduate student bodies just to make my point, just read quickly, “Asian Americans and Italian Americans, more than any other groups, are the more traditional 18 to 22 year old college students”. And that comes out. Next, this is an indicator that shows that this would be the incident of the more traditional college students, you see Asian Americans, Italian Americans stand out, in public as well as in private schools. I am trying to go fast, I am sorry. But I am taking it easy on the quiz, okay?

Next one, here one of the interesting things, and again to get to the results there are a lot of data I have to look at, but just to look at the elite Ivy League schools. How do we get them? Well, [we went to] Cambridge, Cambridge has Harvard and MIT. We see what is there? What is there is a [leftover] scholar labor pool. They are doing great in the Ivy Leagues, okay? So there is no problem there. Next chart. But it is different than CUNY. At CUNY, the faculty there are going through the same experience that the Italian Americans went through in the 1970’s. At that time CUNY became open admissions school, intended for the minorities. Over night 25% of CUNY was Italian. Less than 4% of its faculty was Italian. There was a big gap there between that mentoring process and that delivery process.

It shows you that Asians all across the country here. Next one. This is the CUNY here, actually, this is over 1978-2001 what that faculty and staff hiring has been at the City University of New York. The green line is Asian, the blue line is Italian, this purple/red line or whatever it is, is affirmative action: Black, Hispanics and anything else. And this is white non-Italian, there has been some change you see, there hasn’t been much change. Affirmative action has gone up a bit but it could be doing better. As far as Italian Americans and Asians we are in the same boat, I think. So again, more of these need to be done there. Part of that is you don’t deal with the elite and Ivy League schools. You don’t have that extreme scholarship that you are looking for. You look, when you do, you have more diversity, that is what I am trying to get. You don’t look just for the physicists, mathematicians, engineers; you need history teachers, you need counselors you need arts people. That’s what is happening in CUNY.

Conclusions: “High school completion trends indicate younger generation Asian Americans are changing.” I think we all agree with that. “Asian American students in high school and post secondary schools require additional outreach and counseling to adapt to these new population changes.” Finally, “Additional visibility, mentoring, and diversity of Asian American faculty and staff is needed.”

One more chart please, now this a special speech program. As an Italian American I came here five years old, and ended up going on to college, first year in college, one of my best friends, was Chinese. Like the [inaudiable] just talked about, then we competed in physics, [we were both physics majors] [inaudible] both parents were engineers; both became vice president at [hospital]. They did well, three kids. He got married. He got his first kid, I got mine; he got his second kid, I got mine. But it was kind of fun throughout the years. The kids called him Uncle [Dave], [inaudible]. But Andy went through that Asian American experience from 1979. And [inaudible] went through high school, she was getting frustrated because she wasn’t a typical Asian. [inaudible] got into trouble sometimes. Finished high school didn’t do that bad. Then didn’t want to go to college, but wasn’t that bad in grades. I went to Emery. It was pretty good; I like to party. Left Emery and came back to Long Island, then went to Stony Brook. Then he started to bring back traditional values, education, Asian immigrants in this country. Then he started to graduate from Stony Brook and got a job. Unfortunately, god took him. Thank you.

David Cheng:

Thank you for the presentation. I think that it is so important. I think that we can learn from the example of having statistics especially in CUNY to show that there is a need for outreach and the things we can do with Asian students. I think we really thank you, Dr. Milione, for that wonderful presentation. As I said though I would like to try to give the participants a chance to ask questions and talk. I would like to perhaps ask the panelists to go around and introduce themselves and talk for about five minutes addressing the current issues of Asian students in counseling, and then we will open the floor to questions and discussions. Ok, so Irene, can we start with you?

Irene Chung:

I am Irene Chung. Currently I teach at Hunter College for social work. I also have a private practice and I work with a lot of Asian American college students. So I like to share with you some of my experience. I am going to try to be brief. This is my personal experience. I think for Asian American college students college life tends to be a bigger transition for them than maybe other ethnic groups. I see some Asian students here so maybe you can let me know afterwards whether you agree with me or not.

The reason why I say that is that when I hear about Asian students’ childhood and adolescence, their lives during those periods are very much tied to their families. They tend to live a more sheltered and structured life. By sheltered I don’t mean it in a negative way. I mean they stay close to their families a lot. I think that during those periods their lives are more planned out and predictable. In other words, the family decides for you, where you’re going to go from A to B and you just follow what the family’s plans are for you. In some ways I think it is nice because you have structure and guidance, unlike other ethnic groups who go through adolescence, they can become rebellious trying to figure out their identity and be different from their parents. A lot of times I think that the Asian American adolescents are governed by the cultural value of fulfilling obligations to your family members. So pursuing academic excellence which is which is culturally valued is like a way of bringing honor to the family.

So everything is pretty clear-cut up to the entrance to college. I think college life in a way opens the door for new independence, for romantic relationships, and explorations of new identity. Unfortunately those are the areas that Asian Americans tend not to be very familiar with. When they look back for support they don’t necessarily get the sanctions from their families to seek romantic relationships, to be more independent. And again I don’t mean to say that Asians students have to be independent, but I think that once you are in college you have more opportunities to be on your own. So the separation tends to create a lot of stress for Asian students.

On an interpersonal level I think that again because the cultural values tends to put a lot of emphasis on owning your responsibility, on being modest and not “aggressive”, they put many Asian students in a very disadvantaged position. I have a lot of Asian social work students who are in a field that they are not really familiar with from a cultural perspective. They are expected to be aggressive in the classroom, to talk about their needs, to talk about their feelings, and they are not doing well, so to speak. Again that is a new area for Asian students, for the first time in their lives, almost, to feel “I cannot do that well compared to my classmates.”

The issue of not getting recognition after you put in a lot of hard work in college is common and different from being in school as an adolescent. I think we all learn and are used to work hard and get good grades. But in a lot of college majors, especially in social sciences, it doesn’t work that way. Unless you have that kind of personality sometimes or you acquire the vocabulary and the learning style, you have something to catch up to. And that is hard for a lot of Asian students; they may feel for the first time disappointed in themselves.

I think in a way Asian students tend to have very high expectations for themselves. I would say maybe they have developed what we call “a harsh superego”. They are not very forgiving about things they didn’t do well. So a lot of times people tend to internalize these disappointments, the setbacks, and yet they are not very good about communicating all these feelings. So you have a lot of pent-up disappointment, resentment, and anger turned against yourself. And I think that it is not a coincidence that you see a lot of Asian students with increased incidents of suicidal ideation, suicidal attempt, and completed suicides.

Just one more thing about romantic relationships, I think that it is definitely uncharted territory for a lot of Asian students precisely because they never really quite have a chance to do that before they enter college. This is an area that Asian students tend to get involved with but they don’t know how to handle a lot of the inter-personal issues. Then on the other hand they take these things very personally. These are some of the issues that I have observed and maybe I will wait to hear from you and we can have a longer discussion.

Katie Chen:

I actually have a long presentation originally. I am going to try to skim it. I will start with where I am coming from. I work for the Chinese American Planning Council and have started a college counseling program called Project Gateway. This program started about two years ago and I pretty much helped to develop that whole program. That is part of the reason why I have focused on understanding better what are Asian American’s needs. As you can see from a lot of these statistics, it already seems so obvious. Why would you need a college counseling center when most of the Asians are already doing well going into college? Why would you still need more support to encourage them to go to college when you can see the statistics that they didn’t need help?

One of the things we understand from the agency’s standpoint is the knowledge that there is some interesting statistics that, I didn’t bring with me but I know it is about how, for instance, Chancellor Goldstein has talked about during the lunch time about the whole category of Asian being too broad. There are some “Asians” that are not getting these services at all and are not able to actually do well in college or are financially discouraged to go to college. I just want to add to that.

Another aspect that also motivated me to want to participate in this project to begin with, was knowing that even though a lot of Asians have got the type of degree that are equivalent to mainstream Whites. The income level and the type of jobs they can acquire are completely different. Although equivalent in education, they have in much lower bracket in terms of income, availability of jobs, and employment as compared to the majority group. We ask that question, why is that so? What I have done is to continue to ask that question in terms of students that I served. What are their difficulties in going into college and differences in preparation as compared to the majority group?

One of the aspects that we do see, a lot of Asians tends to scatter around certain particular colleges. A lot of it is the Ivy League type of colleges. One of the missions of the program was to help to disperse a lot of these Asian populations into other colleges. Why it has to be these particular colleges and nothing else, right? To even be able to understand that aspect, their understanding of why they have to go in that direction is quite interesting, when I do counseling with students to be able to understand different levels to why this is happening.

One of the bigger aspects is, had everything be said, is what I’ve experienced in terms of the issues involved with the Asian Americans. But first I want to make clear that the types of student population I work with are mostly Chinese Americans who are from Hong Kong and China. And most of them are high school juniors and seniors. Either they are immigrants, they’ve been here for a year or more, or born here but their parents are immigrants in this country. What I do mainly is a college advisement type of setting where I help them in understanding career connections to college, decisions about college, applying to college and the whole process of college admissions procedures, that’s what I do.

The type of the things that I am seeing, the big aspect of what is being mentioned about culturally is how the parents have a big factor in how the children make decisions. Because of that I have changed the program so that I can have the parent in the counseling process along with the children. One of the interesting thing I found is that a lot has to do with really the mentality of understanding about college and about how the values of college and the values they hold about education, of what career means, of what occupation means, of what life means. When you go into those depths in terms of values, you will see such a big difference in terms of the Asian American, Chinese American values vs. the more Americanized values.

That itself does impact on how they make a decision. For example, in the value system for the Chinese Americans that I have seen is that concept of education is really about to be able to get a job. A job is about to be able to survive. So the concept has a lot to do with survival. But in American value and understanding, education and a job is more than just survival, it is a life learning process, it is part of you, it is who you are and your identity on top of it. For the student who in simpler terms trying to decide on what college do I go to, when I ask them the question, “Well why do you want to go to college in the first place,” there is no real thoughts in that realm at all. Because of that it makes it harder for them to be able to think “Ok, I am doing this for this reason, and therefore I am going along with it.” The value is, as was said, has a lot has to do with going along with what your expected obligations. Because of that they don’t ask these questions.

I don’t want to go too far but really you can sort of expand that to other aspects. For example, the aspects of students not understanding when they are trying to… I have one student who went into college, a school where it is very white dominated. He was having problems in class and he would not ask the professor for help. And he would ask me for help. And I am like “Why are you asking me for help?” What I did was helped him understand that the professors expect you to ask them for help. They are there for you, to give your assistance if necessary. And by them understanding something as simple as that we think that “oh, it’s obvious that they would actually helped him,” and he was a lot more willing to go and ask the professor for help and do those things.

So I am trying now to make it as simple as possible here. It is the acculturation concept, and there is a range in terms of what I have seen, is depending on how acculturated a student is to the American culture. The understanding and the ability for them to actually engage in some of the activities those have been said before from personal to academic support and help, would first depend on acculturation. In that the activity they are willing to engage is linked with their own cultural values that they have held, which may not been adjusted and learned in that time period.

What I want to go into lastly is really a suggestion of how do you help a student to be able to go through that part and what is the role of a counseling program in order to help students in that kind of situation. I think that counseling should have a much bigger role for a lot of Asians who are going through this acculturation process. Because counselors have to deal with not only with their own cultural learning, but also being able to understand their own culture of what they did learn, I would think that we as counselors actually have to go through, from my experience, a multi-cultural sensitivity class in order to learn how to understand our own culture, and how do we learn about ourselves and our own value system and our own values. That is the significance of the multicultural sensitivity class, which I think all counselors should take in order to actually engage and understand acculturation and help the students in the acculturation situation.

For the student, it is partly their own culture and what they have to learn from a new culture on top of it. By them being able to identify their own cultural values and perspectives and so forth, they have to start there first before they can even understand what is going on from the outside. One of the things that I would suggest, that I found has been very helpful to a lot of students that I have helped, is help them identify what are their values that they are coming in with? And then help them understand what are the values and expectations and perspectives of the mainstream culture.

The biggest obstacle is being able to help them use that process, in terms of knowing what you do. Now that you know where it is, the two parts, where do you want to go with it, do you want to follow this, do you want to follow that? Which parts and pieces as said earlier in a presentation during the morning about how a student wants to be able to take all the goods at one culture and be able to merge it their own way. It’s the same attitude and perspective. What I am saying is the counseling center has that role of helping a student through that process, of being able to say what you like and why and for what benefit and how useful it is for you to go and take on this particular aspect of your culture and add it with that particular culture. How do you merge the two? I think that is a very difficult part for a student.

What I would end with is that, being myself an immigrant—I wasn’t born here, I was born in China; I’ve been here since I was eight. Since then I lived in Chinatown for about many years, and I’ve grown through a bi-cultural experience. My parents don’t speak English. For me, it was pretty much that experience. Being able to juggle with these two cultures, and I think in the early ages of my life I was not able to see it, it was just subliminal in my own head, trying to merge the two, one way or another. A lot of times it contradicts one another and can drive you crazy, because it really has a lot of contradictions that you don’t even notice until you act on it.

As I grew older I got into psychology, I learn to introspect. That is another hard thing, teaching student introspection. I think culturally we were so into following our culture and going along with what our parents want. The whole idea of you having your own ideas and your own beliefs and opinions, it is not valued in your family. That adds up to the difficulties we are playing with here, it is not like you haven’t developed it, your parents are not encouraging it, so how else are you going to get encouraged except through other resources. So I experienced in my life that sort of separation of two lives.

It takes some counseling and some time and process to be able to merge those experiences together and to be able to live a more holistic life. That is what I feel is a very important aspect in the counseling role, to be able to help the student in that manner. Interesting thing is that we see a lot of college counseling centers is focused in a sort of deep seeded type of issue that they might have and so forth. Interestingly, one biggest difficulty that most students have is with acculturation alone. I think it would be good if the university, if possible, be able to see this aspect of it and be able to merge that understanding into their counseling centers and open that realm up to the students. They will see a lot more of receptiveness to the counseling centers from Asian Americans, because most of the issues are transitional issues.

You have to start there before you even go into deep seeded issues. That is what I find in terms of being able to retain a lot of students. They aren’t even interested in being there, unless you try to convince them or give them or be able to show them: well they have a service here that is relevant for you, not because I said so, but because I have shown you that this is so, and they will come back. I have students coming back to a point where I am like I don’t have that much time to see you. I was surprised to see how receptive they are with the counseling process. I realized that it’s not necessarily that they are against going to see counseling. It’s really much about what process do you have when you engage in that.

Kyoko Toyama:

Hello. My name is Kyoko…I am from the counseling department of LaGuardia Community College. Actually it’s good that Irene talked about emotional issues of Asian American students and then Katie talked about youth and high school students going to college and making decisions about academic planning. My talk is really focusing on the career issue so its really great to complement. What the counselors in our place do is really integrate all this three aspects.

I come from LaGuardia Community College, which is a two-year college. It is located in long island city, it is just across 59^th St. bridge. Next door we have this tall Citibank building. Because of the location we attract students all over New York City five boroughs and also now we call ourselves “world community college.” Our president has been investing to publicize our school as a world community college on the cover of anything. In fact we have about 150 countries represented and about 120 languages represented. So that’s where we are.

I think because of the time, what I am going to do is really talk about limitations of career counseling theories, that we all as counselor should have been informed and got training in. And yet this type of theory doesn’t work for ethnic minority students, especially Asian American students. Also I want to give up some time to these two students that I brought so that you can put the faces on what I am talking about. I brought two students. and a little later after the theory part I am going to talk about what many people are talking, about the differences between Asian American students, Asian students.

And we have a lot Asian student coming from South America; Korean students who speak Spanish as a first language. So we do have those students that come from those continents. And we have students who are foreign students who come here on a temporary visa, and their intention is to go back to their own country. So when you think about career counseling, there is a different approach, as a councilor, teachers, as educators. Just a little bit from my experiences, I came here also as a student and I choose counseling, which completely unmarketable in Japan. So now I am here, I couldn’t really find a way to go back. Now that the world’s different in Japan and other Asians countries are opening up their doors to mental help, very slowly. So I think young people who choose this profession is much luckier.

I think Katie was talking about having different hats. We need to be more than just a counselor. I am getting old enough so I have to sometimes really take a role of big sister or a mother of the student. When you think of the professional issues, that some people say break you cannot break the boundaries, you can’t really have a dual relationship. So I think I am very careful at the same time, if the student are getting benefit we have to be culturally understand and kind of break that boundary appropriately. These students [Feng Wu and Choko Suzuki] are going to speak a little bit really illustrating some of the things I am going to say.

The traditional career development theory really focus on an individual, and I think many of the people talk about focusing on individual: what your interest is, what you are good at and talking about yourself. You do a lot of exploration of who you are in a long term. That theory pretty much, famous people like [Soper and Holland], their research was really based on white middle-class samples, and also that the theory is base on life stage theory like where you are in your life, so when you are 18 you are supposed to go to college. But it doesn’t work that way in CUNY and in CUNY the average is 32 across the board. So that’s a very different sort of demographic data we are looking at.

So this theory really don’t work for some of our student. I didn’t realize this because again I got training in this country as a new sort of major, which I never thought of going into. As I started working with the student I realized this is not working because we trying to explore what their interest are, what their skills are and marketability of their field. Yet when you think about, again, this have been address by many panelist, family is a very important matter. For instance, if I just go with the traditional theoretical framework, I might just find students who have very good social science, in becoming psychologies or a historian. But if you think about the student as a whole, let say the first generation immigrant who came here, actually Feng is one of them, who has been here less than 10 years and the most important thing is the economic survival, in addition to educational attainment.

So when you bring all this issues and the situation together, you can’t just say “oh you should study psychology and go and get a master.” What is the job possibility? The other issues you have to think about, as a realistic issue, is we are all ethnic minority. We have to think about job discrimination as women or as a minority. We can’t just put a blind over our eye wonder: if we have education, we have a degree from such and such school, we can get a job. That’s not a reality. So one of the things that we do as counselors also is to be an advocate. And that is my other role of myself comes in. Of course I can’t favor student. I am a very firm advocate for Asian students because if I don’t do it, who else is going to do it?

I have a very great working relationship with my colleagues in the counseling department. Yet some of them still refer any Asian student to me. In the last 18 years I’ve been working in LaGuardia, I am still the only tenured faculty in the department. So that’s the real reality you have to deal with. So I am constantly educating my own college about the difference between these students. But also there are a lot of similarities. Any student has to deal with separation, individualism issues, and developmental issues, no matter how old or no matter what ethnicity they are. So these are really the issues as professional we are dealing with.

I am going to come back to this after they talk, just to summarize and also give some recommendation from faculty and educators. Again before they talk I want to just distinguish. When you talk about Asian students again there are Asian American student who are more acculturated, and there are Asian students who come from different continents. They are ethnically Asians but their cultural identity is very much south American. Then there are immigrant students who, Feng is one of them, who came here with a family for educational opportunities, but yet the parents themselves had to give up their professional positions for the sake of children. And then there’s a group where [Choko] belongs to, [Choko] is from Japan. She came here to strictly study and she’s planning to return.

I just want them to speak. Also, another thing to try to do is bring those students together. We have some student from LaGuardia to be with other students in a forum like this so that they don’t feel isolated, they may have never seen people in one room, you know people who are interested in Asian issues. So I think that’s a great sort of encouragement to them and they could compare this. So that I would like for them to let you know their experiences.

Student One [Feng Wu]:

My name is [Feng], I am a student of LaGuardia community college and my major is accounting, computer operations and I will be graduating this semester hopefully. I came from China with my parents and my younger brother when I was 18, about five years ago. But those years in America I enrolled in a high school and I dropped out just because I couldn’t keep up with other student. I tried again to the evening class and I dropped out for the same reason. Finally I enrolled in a GED program and I passed it. Now I am attending college and I enjoy my college life very much because I think college offers me chances to change my life in many aspects, not only academically but also generally.

Attending college I have to handle things well and prepare my classes well, and I take good care of my classes, just because I want to make sure I am in the right track of my education without wasting any time. However I think major decisions could be very important for students, we can make many mistakes as well. I remember when I completed my application, I did it in the Internet. I choose my previous major, which was business administration, not intentionally. However I thought I could be on track and see what could go on.

Then when I started school, I went to a counselor and took some classes the majors were required, such as introduction to business, principals of accounting. I studied hard, trying to work it out. By the end of the semester I found out that something was not right. I got low grades on my business class and I had a hard time for my accounting class even though I got an A-. Then I began to wonder if I was studying the right major and I began to seek help and ask advices from my classmates, my friends and finally I decided to use my counseling service of my school.

I went to my counselor and talk to them. They offered me helpful advice; they also gave me their career assessment booklet, which I need to fill it. If I spent some time finishing it and with the help of my counselors I know it would really help me. The result was really helpful because I found out that I am on the right track but still I was still in business and accounting. And still I need to make a final decision on which major would be the best for me. I went back to my parents and talked to my father and my father said something like “why don’t you take accounting, it could be more practical.” My parents never interfere with my life.

However one semester went by and I still have to take classes which I attended because business management. But because of my procrastination and my thinking, I couldn’t take these classes because a lot of students tried to get in. So instead of business management I took one computer class then and guess what I found out? That I am actually interested in computer classes and I also got an A, and managed to pass all my classes. I managed to pass all my classes because of my different experiences and my friends advices, and mostly because of my counselor helping and I changed my previous major to my current one because accounting was an option.

And I am doing good now with all my classes and I feel I maintained a good GPA as well. In the accounting internship session I’ll begin my part time internship and I hope I can apply my academic skills as much as I can and be able to learn more things besides school and try to learn how to get along with this society.

I appreciate my friends, my counselor, my parents, especially my parents. They are very supportive and helpful. I guess being an immigrant of a strange country is very difficult, especially when English becomes an obstacle, it’s very difficult. Especially my father, he was a teacher for 20 something years in my country. He’s working in a Chinese restaurant right now, which are totally different ideas from his previous job. I feel like he sacrificed a lot, we have very good relationship between members of our family, we like to express our best feelings and share our ideas. My brother and I are always glad to listen to things that happen around us. And we show our sympathy. And we understand each other very well.

David Cheng:

Sorry, can I interrupt for one second? Kyoko, in LaGuardia Community College, when the students go to counseling, do they have different psychological counseling vs. career counseling vs. academic advisement type of counseling?

Kyoko Toyama:

That’s a very… I think…

David Cheng:

It’s very confusing right now, I think. At Baruch, each counseling has distinct functions. We have career development; academic advisement and we also have counseling centers, which are the counseling and psychological services.

Kyoko Toyama:

LaGuardia went through the different phases. We started out with a holistic approach to counseling. Any student would come to one place and then we do the intake. Depending on students needs, we will see the students. In other words, all of us could do all the three things, academic, career, and personal. Then new administration came in 10 years ago and changed it and separated it.

David Cheng:

I think there are certain requirements to do personal or psychological counseling. The counselors who do psychological counseling have to be licensed psychologist, as opposed to career counseling or academic advisement, which can be master’s level and psychologists as well. I think that there is that distinction because, sometimes people who are kind of generalists, you think you do everything. The student nowadays show a higher level of pathology, the severity of people’s problems, personal problems coming in, then very often the counselor who hasn’t gone through that training have trouble handling somebody that has more psychological issues.

Kyoko Toyama:

Right, so we do have five psychologists on staff. One is getting a trained license right now. So when the students come in, if the issue is more pathological like suicidal, yes, this staff will take care of the student. But in the eyes of the student when they come to the counselor’s office, they don’t know who’s a licensed psychologist. Who would they come to? They would come to somebody they have heard about.

Sometimes we get a call from faculty members in the departments, especially English departments because they read the essay. The students don’t know that… the faculty members give topics like “what was the most difficult thing that you experienced in your life” that are very hard. The students are very [discrete] in their writing, and they might say things about suicidal ideation or depressive issues. Then they call us and we would ask the student to come back because the teachers think that the student should see us. Doesn’t mean they would come. If it’s a real issue like suicidal we have to report, we have to trouble-shoot right there.

But if it is just a depression, it is very difficult. Students might not come to our door or they might not get to our place after they leave their faculty’s office. So we really need to think about what the student’s needs are and whom they feel most comfortable with. And sometimes we go over there to the faculty offices to have a three-way meeting, with the permission of the students. So what our department do now is still holistic yet when the issue comes up that is very critical…

David Cheng:

Then you refer to someone in the center?

Kyoko Toyama:

All the licensed psychologists are in…

David Cheng:

All in one place…

Kyoko Toyama:

Exactly.

David Cheng:

So that you will know who will come and do psychological counseling and who will do career counseling and who will do academic advisement…
Kyoko Toyama:
But we don’t divide that. In other words every counselor, even including master-level counselors, are able to do intake and continue. We don’t call that psychological counseling, we call it personal counseling. And when issues are much more than master-level counselors can handle, that’s when the PhD psychologist takes over. Again, speaking about the students, they don’t want to be shifted from one person to another; they might not want to open to someone just because that person is a psychologist.

David Cheng:
Yes, in fact….there’s a little problem of students being intimidated to come in and talk about personal issues. That is why we have a lot students that try to come in and talk about career issues and academic issues. But really after they talk for about five minutes you know they have a personal issue that they really want to talk about. And it is a good entrée into personal counseling.
But with this model, there is some difficulty and confusion, like sometimes people would think “I am not equipped to handle that,” and it also confuses the administration. I think the people were talking before about administration, they don’t know, even professors don’t know the difference. But psychology it is so broad. People think of psychologist and think of all these stereotypes and not really know what a psychologist is. And yet there are so many different types of psychologists even, within the category of psychology. And counseling too, there is so many different types of counseling…

Kyoko Toyama:

What David does is psychological counseling, so he may be considered counseling. We are counseling psychologists, and we do counseling as well, but we come from a different discipline. Irene’s discipline…

David Cheng:

Exactly, there is confusion there. Like people would say “I am going to my counselor.” What exactly are you talking about here? But the good thing is that in today’s panel is that each one has brought in a different aspect of what counseling is about. It is a great way to start. We are trying first of all to define what we are talking about. We often need to have preface. Which aspect of counseling are we talking about? We really tried to cover that. I think the panelists sufficiently covered that. We are sort of running out of time.

Audience:

It’s great what you are talking about right now. For those of us who are interested in becoming counseling worker, or counseling in education, I was wondering if you could explain the different approaches that you take when you go through counseling, the educational background that you have, the differences in terms of what you do.

Kyoko Toyama:

That’s great. One of the things we have to talk about is to increase the level of Asians who are going into social services and social counseling. We are still struggling with practitioners. Because most of the Asian students go into what? Engineering, computer science… And we are really short with people who are going into our field. I think that’s a very good question.

David Cheng:

That’s a very good question. Because I think that people go into a field without knowing what it is. There’s no awareness. She asked a very good question. What are the different approaches and educational backgrounds…

Audience:

Can I just interrupt for a second? Since we have another student who come over, I would like to listen to her… I don’t want her to feel overlooked. That’s really a broader question.

David Cheng:

Yes, yes, that is a very good question. We need to talk about that at the end. So we will finish with the second student and then we will do that.

Student Two [Choko Suzuki]:

Hi, my name is [Choko Suzuki] from [inaudible], it takes me two hours to go to Tokyo by train. My major is Liberal arts. I am going to graduate from college this August. The reason for choosing this major which is liberal arts is that I wanted to know which major is good for me by taking different courses. When I took international business course, I liked professor’s way of teaching. He spoke about experiences as international business person as well as [inaudible].
I studied international business at college and then I am going to go back to Japan and go into industrial area. What I experienced in internship is, internship and other college courses. I was working as public relation assistant. What I did is not related international business. However I learned culture including manners, language and customs. I believe what I did in my internship will be helpful because I learn knowing other cultures is helpful to me to work in trade industry area.
Looking back on my college life it was a great decision that I took liberal arts major. I discovered my suitable major and I gained basic knowledge from different areas by taking different courses. As I said before, I want to study international business. After I finish my degree, I am going back to Tokyo and I am going to work in trade areas. Also I want to apply by learning in America in trade area, because it would be very beneficial. I think my studies at LaGuardia would be my first step to develop my career goal into my future.

Kyoko Toyama:

You can see the difference between how they approach… In the U.S., you don’t have to pick a major. You could be an undeclared for two years. In Japan and other countries in Asia too, you have to really know the subject. You go through an entrance exam with a particular subject. So it is a very different concept. So those students, they come to a country and they feel like they have to decide. Then they realize as they talk to us that it doesn’t matter, you could just explore. She ran into a business teacher who was really helpful. You don’t have to make a decision, just take philosophy, sociology.
That’s what she did. She feels grateful. So again, she was not just coming to counseling, she went to different faculty members. So I think what we are trying to do is that anybody, anybody in the college that comes in contact with the students can be a resource. And those faculty and staff can really influence their planning in the career decision-making.

Audience Member:
The other student… she was talking and she got interrupted…

Student One [Feng Wu]:

I just want to make a conclusion. And I hope I can have a better life in the coming years. I just want to make sure that my parents can feel very [proud] and I would like to do something to return them.

David Cheng:

I would like to apologize about the time. I think Tom Tam is really very well-meaning, but he packed so much into this program… Each speaker is supposed to have five minutes to talk. And I really promised you guys that you would have a chance to talk, so now we really don’t have much of time. But can we say for another 15 minutes, since we started 15 minutes later. We will stay till 4:15. I know there’s a cocktail party reception downstairs at 4:15. If you are really anxious in going down there now I guess you can. But if you want to stay, we can give people a chance to talk about some of the questions they may have and address them to the different panelists that brought a different aspect of what are the current counseling issues on Asian students. So please stay. Now it is open… to answer your question now. Go ahead. So, what is your name?

Audience Member:

My name is Amy. I have a different question for Katie.

David Cheng:

Okay, you have a different question. So Katie, go ahead and answer her question.

Katie Chen:
Okay, so what I was going to say is that, that is one aspect of trying to decide on what counseling field to go into, were one of the things that I had to look into through the years. It is still a part of continually of trying to understand what you are comfortable with and into what’s out there. Going back to what are the differences, guidance counseling vs. clinical, I think one big difference is that of the degree of disorder that you are talking. The second would be the population. The first would really be in terms of how deep of an issue you want to address. Guidance counseling is not therapy, as you know clinical therapy. Guidance counseling, if anything, is sort of crisis intervention.

Audience:

As I was listening, I was kind of struggling,[inaudible] moving closer to clinical social work as well. In terms of population, I have another question: as an Asian counselor or something with that degree, did you find yourself focusing on Asian or with a variety of populations, because ideally I would like to work with diverse population and not just focusing on just one population.

Katie Chen:

I can answer both of those questions as well, because I struggled with those kinds of questions myself. School counseling is what I am going into. My understanding of school counseling is that, again it’s really more the degree in terms of disorder we were talking about. Clinical deals with those who have neurosis that are very severe, like schizophrenia, something like that, vs. what you work with school counseling is transitional issues. Anything that has to do with transitional issues.

David Cheng:

We have Professors [Barouches and Barouches] here, psychologist and therapist, he will tell you any issue that you are interested in.

Audience Member [Professor Barouches]:

This question come up time and time and again. Students are interested in career path, with graduate schools and what have you, thought of becoming a counselor or [inaudible] therapist, it’s multi-determinant. It depends on a number of things. How much time do you want to devote to essentially and in terms of your commitment. You can get a MSW in social work, it is licensable and if you become a State-certified social worker, you’re eligible for insurance reimbursement, third-party practice and essentially your own practice. If you’re entrepreneurial, you can carve out a nice career for yourself. If you want to go the other route, PhD in clinical and counseling psych; it’s much more time consuming. Three years of course work, three years of internship, if you are lucky, a year or two sometimes five years for a PhD dissertation, the long time plan. It really depends on… in terms of the clinical skills, my wife [Carol] started off with a MSW, has a PhD in social work. Her clinical training was far better than my training as a clinical psychologist. I think, they overlap tremendously as long as clinical training, social workers get, the psychologists get. Ultimately, you have to look at the time factor. If you really feel that you can devote a full five-year plan and you want to go the distance, then you consider a PhD and not clinical counseling, in terms of entrée into the health professions. If you want to go the other route, get the MSW, there’s always the option of taking out the PhD or a GSW in social work.

David Cheng:

To compliment that answer, in New York State anybody can call themselves psychotherapist. But if you want to call yourself a psychologist, that’s a different story. You have to be licensed in psychology, do clinical and counseling psychology to call yourself a psychologist. But if you want to call yourself a psychotherapist, then you can be a MSW, you can be a PhD, you can be an MD, whatever degree you have. Or you can have no degree and call yourself a psychotherapist.

Audience:

I think when you talk about any kind of counseling, there are generic skills that any counselor needs to develop. And no matter what discipline, you could wind up doing forensic work, working with people in the criminal justice system. You could do that as a social worker, as a psychologist, as a counselor. So that it might not be the particular degree that you want to pursue that will determine the kind of individuals services that you want to get into. Rather it might be the setting that you find yourself located in.
Whereas I don’t agree, people don’t know, people go to a counselor, they don’t know whether they are a psychologist, psychoanalyst, counseling psychologist, social worker, marriage and family counselor. So someone doesn’t say “I am neurotic and I need to go see someone with this type of degree.” You go to a counselor and if the counselor feels that they cannot provide the kind of services that you need, it’s incumbent upon them professionally to say “Look, I can’t help you with your career decision, but I suggest that you go to a career counselor whose particularly trained in this.” If that’s what your issue is.
If your issue becomes more of something that they are experienced and trained in terms of interpersonal relationships, work related issues, that perhaps they can help you with. I think it’s not necessary what the degree that someone has whereas it depends where you walk in the door. If it’s a mental health counseling center, if it’s a vocational guidance facility, if it’s a hospital setting, because your counselors that are situated all of those places, as well as counselors that work independently and privately. We all bring a certain level of skills and sensitivity to working with clients.

Katie Chen:

I think one of the things I want to say is in regards to school counseling. When she was mentioning about school counseling, there’s a difference between school counselors vs. masters vs. PhD. The reason why I addressed that distinction is to clarify for you in terms of the degree. My perspective is coming from when you are educated in the programs that you learn, and the school counselor, they do not teach you enough to be able to do clinical counseling work. That’s what I’m trying to say.

David Cheng:

But you can get a PhD in school psychology as well.

Katie Chen:

Yes, but she is referring to school counseling at a master level…

Audience Member:

This may get really personal. I am actually aware of the basic differences. My question is really between guidance counseling at the master’s level and clinical social work, it’s becoming very similar work. The guidance counseling, they are having this new legislation that cannot call yourself a therapist if you’re not certified by the state. They want to have this legislation passed. With master level counseling, I heard that in the future in 2005 you can start doing private practice, so I just wanted to know what the deference between….

Audience Member [Professor Barouches]:

I think one of the important issues early is, ultimately if you’re looking for a future, I think you have to look towards a thing I consider a universal passport that’ll open many doors for you. Specializing in guidance counseling, that will get you training, but working within the confines of an educational establishment primarily, or an educational setting. Whereas the MSW in social work broadens the scope, essentially. It could be a school setting, you can be a school social worker providing counseling services. It could be an academic setting, a clinical setting, a hospital, or community facility. It gives you many, many more options, and also it’s a bona fide certifiable degree. You don’t have to have to wait for the state legislation to be passed. You don’t have to wait for professional recognition; all of the professional organizations are in place. It is happening, the professions are beginning to recognizing these changes. The social work…

Audience Member:

It also depends, if you are interested in working educational settings. It would be the appropriate thing to pursue. If you’re interested in working in broader settings, something that could encompass a broader approach would be helpful.

Audience Member [Professor Barouches]:

I wanted to add one other thing. I think they have to bring it back ultimately to the issue of cultural diversity. When you look at the training programs professionally, I think that the social work programs by the way did a much better job as far as preparing students, graduate students and terms of dealing with diversity issues, minority issues, than the classical psychology programs…

David Cheng:

I have to interrupt. That’s a very interesting question that we can continue afterwards. Any other questions?

Audience Member:

I have a question for the panelists in terms of counseling. Do you notice within yourselves any type of gender bias [inaudible] cultural background? Let’s say a boy or a girl comes to you with the same problem. Is there any kind of gender bias of yourself as far as how you advise and counsel these students?

Irene Chung:

We try not to have the bias, but I guess maybe sometimes. I would say gender may not be such an important factor as much as personality wise and the circumstances why this person comes in, for me personally.

David Cheng:

Katie mentioned before about multicultural counseling. I think gender is part of… when we talk about different cultures, male vs. female, that is also a layer of cultural differences. A well trained clinician or counselor should have had the background of doing multicultural counseling. We understand our own personal biases and work from that. But we can’t say that we don’t have any, that’s part of the work that we have to work on ourselves.

Audience Member:

I noticed a lot of times in, let’s say, Chinese American culture, you got this young female who wants to take one career path and you have a boy who wants to take the same path. Often times in counseling, we tell the girl “Don’t do that, don’t initiative”, but for the boy is “Great, go for it.” Because they come from the same culture, the gender issue that gets in the way.

Irene Chung:

That wouldn’t be inappropriate counseling technique to say to someone that you shouldn’t go for it. I think that would really defeat the whole purpose.

David Cheng:

Yes, so any of the counseling, different discipline would do the same thing. They wouldn’t tell you that “don’t go for it because of…”

Kyoko Toyama:

I think Amy is also underlying…. I’m very aware. They’re Asian students and that’s their choice of seeing me. I’m very aware that I’m trying to be a counselor because you cannot really hide your face. Both ways, there are some kinds of expectations. I’m trying to be aware of it because students might think “Oh this is an Asian counselor, she might know too much about my culture. I don’t want to talk too much.” There’s a sort of reverse [psychology], some students come to us because they want to get cultural comfort or the language of the issue, we do comment. But sometimes it works opposites.

Audience:

Yes, I [noticed] that too because if I go to a counseling session with another Asian American, it’s the complete opposite whereas if I go to, let’s say, an American counselor. It’s the American counselor who advises me properly, whereas people from my own culture, it’s the opposite.

Katie Chen:

That’s a good point because that’s what I mean by being culturally sensitive in having multicultural sensitivity. It’s that just because you’re from the same culture doesn’t mean you’re culturally sensitive to that culture. You have to examine your own cultural biases before you can actually do that.

Audience Member:

I noticed my own culture even sets me back, whereas American cultures, or other cultures, let’s say Puerto Ricans or Hispanics, it’s a different twist on the thing. It’s something interesting that I noticed.

Kyoko Toyama:

You mean that you’ll see more options for you than if you go to someone who you feel is similar to your own culture, the options they will explore with you are narrower.

Irene Chung:
I think you are focusing on the advisement piece, which I think it’s a narrow focus. I think that when people go in for counseling, it shouldn’t be for advisement. It should be to explore their feelings and thoughts, their own options. It’s about them; it’s not about asking what do you think I should do.

Audience Member:

I think it’s a good idea to go on with a narrow focus. If you go with a narrow focus, with you talk to Americans and opened your possibilities whereas you talk with a Chinese American, it’s still something that’s narrowly tuned.

Katie Chen:

Again, you can’t really generalize to everyone. Like I said, it really depends on a person. If you have an American counselor who just so happens to have gender biases in their heads, and have not had sensitivity to those things, they will give you the same narrow path. It’s just more of what they’re sensitive…

Audience Member:

Maybe a gender bias or not, but it’s also a different culture; American culture, take initiatives, be yourself, be your own person. Whereas Chinese culture, it’s very different.

David Cheng:

That’s why the American counselors, too, need training to work with Asians.

Audience Member:
I don’t like the word American… it’s non-Asian.

Kyoko Toyama:

It’s Amy’s personal… It’s a perception, it’s very important to hear it, what she thinks is her own perception.

Audience:

No, no, it’s my perception as well as I’ve heard the same thing with my sisters and other Asian friends of mine, we noticed the same thing.

Katie Chen:

I’m not saying what you experienced isn’t true. It’s out there. It’s a reality; it’s not a perfect world. The whole concept of multicultural sensitivity is [inaudible] too. What I’m trying to say is that sometimes you have to… That’s another aspect. I do see a lot of times with the Asian or the Chinese values is to accept authority too easily. You do have to question it.

Audience Member:

The gentleman who spoke about the Italian American and the Asian American experience. If you look at the chart where the people went to school, at one point, amongst the Italian Americans, a lot of them went to private universities or private colleges as compared to the Asian Americans or Asians. Now part of that was because they also came out of a parochial school education. Parochial school education, they will guide you to go to one of the catholic schools. That’s a cultural bias that perhaps everyone wouldn’t have been aware of and the people who perhaps, if it was done within the school setting, yes it was because that’s part of propagating a particular faith or belief. But if they went to a counselor, depending upon the counselor’s orientation, if they were American, Italian American, Asian American, you don’t know what they would bring to it. I think you’re right, sometimes the confines are much more narrow. It depends on where the source you’re going to, and it really depends what door you knock on.

David Cheng:

I’d like to thank you all for coming and participating. The panelists were wonderful and stimulating. We just needed more time; I think we need three hours. Thank you.

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