Rebecca Toporek

CV: Toporek vita 9-21 read only.doc

Welcome!

I have been a faculty member in the Department of Counseling since 2003 and am personally and professionally committed to a lifelong journey to address white supremacy in myself, my profession and my community. I identify as a white, cisgender, intermittently disabled woman who is a mother and a partner in a long term heterosexual relationship. I use she/her/they/their pronouns. I live in what is now called the San Francisco East Bay, unceded land of the Chochenyo Ohlone people and work to support rematriation of the land.

My most recent writing project, Taking Action: Creating Social Change through Strength, Solidarity, Strategy & Sustainability, is an activity guide that I co-authored with Dr. Muninder Kaur Ahluwalia, a close friend and colleague. It was published in spring 2020 and aimed at anyone in the general public who wants to work toward change in social issues they care about.

Teaching
I am a Professor in the Department of Counseling at San Francisco State University. When I am not chairing the department, I love to teach. I have taught introductory and advanced career counseling, social and cultural foundations, life span development, legal and ethical issues, advanced internship. 

Community

I am also involved in a number of San Francisco community organizations and initiatives, most predominantly Employment Services of Project Homeless Connect and engage students in this through the advanced career counseling course as well as throughout the year. There are a number of other community organizations I am committed to supporting on a personal basis including Save West Berkeley Shellmounds (Indians Organizing for Change) and Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ). I have, and continue to, work with professional associations to connect more closely with communities experiencing oppression.

Research
My research interests include social justice and multicultural training, attitudes toward race and poverty, the role of systemic interventions in addressing discrimination, and career and college counseling. I was fortunate to participate in the founding of Counselors for Social Justice of the American Counseling Association and was a co-editor of the 2009 Journal of Counseling and Development: Special Section on ACA Advocacy Competencies, ACA Advocacy Competencies: A social justice framework for counselors, the Handbook for Social Justice in Counseling and Psychology and the Handbook of Multicultural Competencies. Other publications include numerous chapters and articles in the areas of advocacy, multicultural counseling, supervision, training, and cultural equivalence in career assessment. I was founding co-editor of the Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology and served as a co-editor for the first decade of the journal. My colleague, Dr. Muninder Ahluwalia, and I recently released a compilation of video interviews Helping counselors and psychologists as advocates and activists and published the workbook, Taking action: Creating social change through strength, solidarity, strategy and sustainability. We are now are working with two additional colleagues, Drs. Derrick Bines and Bryan Rojas-Arauz, to revise and expand Taking Action for counselors, psychologists and other helping professionals. In addition, I am working on several other projects related to community college counseling, community engaged empowerment, and advocacy in counseling.

My Training and Experience
I received my doctorate degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Masters degree in Community Counseling from the University of Oregon. I worked at the University of California, Berkeley, in Counseling and Psychological Services as a predoctoral intern and postdoctoral fellow.

Prior to receiving my doctoral degree, I was blessed to work as a counselor and administrator at Mission College for two years and DeAnza College for 6 years. Community college counseling is very close to my heart. The best mentors and the people who challenged me to start a lifetime journey of multicultural awareness came from DeAnza College especially Jacqueline Reza and Shirley Kawazoe. Other wonderful mentors have continued to challenge and support me and for that I am so thankful. Thanks to Janet Helms, Don Pope-Davis, Derald Wing Sue, Patricia Arredondo, Allen Ivey, Thomas Parham, Judy Daniels, Michael D'Andrea, Judy Lewis, Will Liu, and many, many, many others.