Julie Chronister

Dr. Chronister is Professor and Chair of the Department of Counseling at San Francisco State University. At her core, she is a counselor educator dedicated to teaching and mentoring future counselors and strengthening the behavioral health workforce through research, training, and community partnership. Dr. Chronister approaches teaching as a relational and reflective process. She views the classroom as a space where knowledge is co-created and examined with attention to power, culture, disability, and systemic inequity. Students are invited to engage course material with curiosity, including ideas that may feel complex or misaligned, and to reflect on how their values and professional identities are developing in relationship to community and justice.

Dr. Chronister's scholarship centers on social support — how it is defined, measured, experienced, and mobilized — particularly among individuals with lived experience of mental illness and disability. For over two decades, her work has examined the relational, cultural, and structural conditions that promote belonging, recovery, and quality of life. She is especially interested in how social networks, stigma coping, disability identity development, and systemic barriers interact to shape psychosocial outcomes. A significant focus of her research has been the development and validation of social support measurement tools. As Principal Investigator of a National Institute of Mental Health (NIH) research grant, she led the development of a social support scale designed specifically for individuals with lived experience of mental illness. Her psychometric work bridges rehabilitation psychology, community mental health, and counselor education, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of how support functions across disability and cultural contexts. Her publications appear in journals including Rehabilitation Psychology, Journal of Community Psychology, Disability and Rehabilitation, and Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin. In addition to her measurement work, Dr. Chronister’s research examines stigma, coping processes, and the preparation of an equitable and justice-focused counseling workforce. Her federally funded projects integrate research and training to expand access to counseling education and to prepare culturally responsive, disability-informed practitioners for integrated behavioral health settings.

Dr. Chronister has served as Principal Investigator on three U.S. Department of Education Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) Long-Term Training Grants, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services HRSA Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Grant, and a National Institute of Mental Health research grant. She also serves as co-investigator on a U.S. Department of Education Mental Health Service Professional grant supporting equity-focused school-based mental health training. Dr. Chronister earned her PhD in Rehabilitation Psychology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2004 and has been an educator at SF State since 2007. She has served as Department Chair since fall 2024. For a complete and up-to-date list of publications and citation metrics, please visit my Google Scholar profile.