By In June 2024, Long Beach State’s Counseling and Psychological Services planned to hire three additional counselors to better accommodate the student-to-counselor ratio.
While the ongoing hunt for more counselors has been steady, students and faculty have voiced concerns over the student-to-counselor ratio as recently as last month’s Presidential Forum.
In November 2024, Faculty Affairs and the Office of Equity & Compliance accepted the request to hire more and approved for posting.
Despite the spring semester being in its home stretch, only having two months left, the university has yet to hire any additional full-time counselors.
Two positions are listed on the “Jobs @ The Beach” website: one originally posted on June 4, 2024, and the other posted on Nov. 13, 2024.
In addition to these postings, there was an Indeed advertisement for the same position on Nov. 13, 2024. The ad is promoted through a paid sponsorship rather than a free listing.
The positions are required to stay open for a minimum of two weeks and must be filled for the posting to be taken down.
A counseling position is considered non-instructional faculty and must be approved before being hired. This process may take several months before someone is officially onboarded.
Damian Zavala, executive director of Student Health Services AVP Health & Wellness, which includes CAPS, said CAPS will ensure they hire the best counselors fit for the position, even if that means only one hiring during the current round.
“We’re not going to settle for subpar applicants just so we can fill those positions just as fast as possible. We’re looking for the best people to do the job,” Zavala said.
Two counselors out of the 17.5 are unable to see students. One counselor works part time for the California Faculty Association, meaning they are allowed a certain amount of time to work with CAPS.
The other counselor is on sabbatical.
Additionally, three of the 17.5 counselors are full-time doctoral interns who receive clinical supervision but only work 24.5 hours of direct services to students. These interns are employed for one year.
In the meantime, the university has hired a temporary counselor to help accommodate more students.
“Any counselor serving in a CFA position is given release time to do so, meaning that these two positions are temporarily unable to provide full-time direct service to students (or less service hours), but they cannot be replaced,” Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives Melissa Kawamoto said in an email to the Long Beach Current.
She also said CAPS counselors as “unit 3” faculty positions with sabbaticals included in their contracts.
According to Kawamoto, two employment offers have been sent to prospective candidates. If the offers are accepted, these candidates will join sometime next month.
Hiring these two counselors would bring CAPS one step away from its goal of hiring three.
A CSULB press release states the university has a counselor ratio of one to every 2,657 students. Their goal is to increase the number of employed counselors to 20.5 this spring.
Due to two counselors being unable to see students, the total number of working counselors is reduced to 16.
“We’re also keeping that recruitment open. So, even though after we fill those [positions], we’re going to keep it out there and open,” Zavala said. “If we get another sabbatical, or we have somebody move on or if we get more funds, we can hire another counselor, and it’s already in place.”
Kawamoto said the counselor search is posted as ongoing, “to avoid potential delays in recruitments moving forward.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 4:39 p.m. on Wednesday, April 9 to change the wording on paragraph 11 and paragraph 16.
