Brief Bio

Rick Balkin, Ph.D., LPC, NCC is a Distinguished Professor and Chair in the Department of Leadership and Counselor Education, and Coordinator of Educational Research and Design in the School of Education at the University of Mississippi. Rick currently serves as the Editor of the International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling. Dr. Balkin was the editor for the Journal of Counseling & Development, the flagship journal for the American Counseling Association; an ACA Fellow; and past-president for the Association for Assessment and Research in Counseling. Rick began practice as a professional counselor in 1993 and has worked in academe since 2003. Rick has over 100 publications, which include textbooks on assessment in counseling, research, and the counseling relationship, published tests and technical manuals, peer-reviewed manuscripts, book chapters, and conference proceedings. His counseling experience with at-risk youth was formative to his research agenda, which includes understanding the role of counseling and relevant goals for adolescents in crisis and counseling outcomes.  This led to an initiative in providing counseling services to underserved youth in Mississippi, culminating in a tele-mental health delivery system that provides free counseling services to youth in high-need areas of Mississippi. He has published in the area of religious diversity and forgiveness and developed a model and measure for counseling clients through issues of forgiveness and conflict, The Forgiveness Reconciliation Inventory. He is the author of Practicing Forgiveness: A Path Toward Healing, published by Oxford University Press.