Beatriz Bello and Lauren Koch
Beatriz Bello and Lauren Koch, students at the Gevirtz School at UC Santa Barbara, have been awarded the Ray E. Hosford Awards for Excellence in Clinical Dedication for 2013-14. These awards are for service they performed at the Hosford Counseling and Psychological Services Clinic at UC Santa Barbara.
In a nomination letter, a co-worker claimed Bello, “Contributed to a positive sense of community in the clinic as well as outside the clinic through her community engagement.” In a letter supporting her nomination, a colleague wrote of Koch, “She helped her clients grow and flourish and was also dedicated to understanding client identities that were different from her own.”
Beatriz Bello is beginning her third year in the Counseling, Clinical and School Psychology Ph.D. program in Dr. Collie Conoley’s Positive Psychology lab. She is currently working at the Hosford Clinic as an advanced practicum clinician working with English and Spanish speaking clients in the community. Bello has also started her third year externship at the Family Service Agency working to promote healthy functioning among English and Spanish speaking families and individuals. As the first of her family to graduate from a four-year university and the first to attend a graduate program, she is motivated to helping others achieve their educational goals through exploration of protective factors that may promote attainment of higher education among underrepresented populations. She works closely with Dr. Conoley and members of the lab to explore ways in which to promote optimum functioning among individuals by exploring Positive Psychology tenets that can be used in the therapy setting.
Lauren Koch is advised by Dr. Merith Cosden and will be entering her third year in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology. She recently completed her practicum at the Hosford Clinic and will begin working with patients at a new practicum site, CALM, in the fall. Koch is particularly interested in working with traumatized and underserved populations in the community. Her research interests broadly include trauma and substance use. She aids in the evaluation of a family treatment drug court program, which provides trauma-informed substance abuse treatment, in Dr. Cosden's lab.
The Hosford Counseling & Psychological Services Clinic is a university-based community clinic that is designed to provide developmentally appropriate and culturally sensitive, low-cost individual, couple, family, and group psychological treatment and testing/assessment services to people living within the central coast community. The Hosford Clinic serves as a training site for students in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology (CCSP) of UC Santa Barbara and as a clinical-research facility for the faculty and students of the CCSP Department. It also strives to provide educational, consultation, and training services to professional and paraprofessional clinicians and educators in the tri-counties.