Steinhardt’s Harrod to Counsel Students on Personal Development
By Timothy Farrell
When Shawn Tina Harrod, who today earns her M.S. from the Program in Counseling for Mental Health and Wellness at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, works with at-risk adolescents and young adults to encourage them to apply to college, she understands the fear many of them face at the application process. The first in her family to graduate from college, Harrod resumed her undergraduate education as an adult, following a career as a research assistant at a corporate library.
“It was daunting to go back to school,” she said. “For many years I worked doing something that was safe, but I decided to do something that I liked.”
Graduating with honors from Brooklyn College with a degree in psychology at age 39, Harrod wanted to train for a career as a counselor for emerging adults. She felt she could “help make the world a little better, one person at a time.”
Despite the pressures of holding several part-time jobs and raising her 11-year old daughter, Harrod pursued her master’s degree full-time.
“My age helped me. I was able to stay focused,” she says. “I knew I just needed to get it done, despite distractions. And I wanted to take advantage of every opportunity that Steinhardt offered me.”
For the past year, she has held a 20-hour per week residency at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, counseling students and developing programs that tackle difficult social topics. Recently, she organized a discussion on hip-hop culture, asking students to think about the hyper-masculinity, misogyny, and homophobia that often accompany hip-hop lyrics.
Harrod credits Steinhardt’s program in counseling with broadening her horizons and making her better prepared to treat clients of different backgrounds. Specifically, she says her coursework in cross-cultural counseling was invaluable in her development as a counselor.
“The class made me aware of my own biases that can impact a therapy situation,” Harrod says. “It taught me that being a minority doesn’t give me a free pass with these issues.”
Outside of NYU, Harrod works at the Brooklyn College Community Partnership, a nonprofit that targets at-risk high school students and offers them art-based programs in such areas as theatre, fashion design, and music production. She also has worked at Inwood House, a residence that cares for pregnant teens in foster care.
Following graduation, Harrod will teach personal development courses at John Jay and will continue to counsel students there. She hopes one day to start her own community-based non-profit for at-risk populations in an underserved community, such as Bedford-Stuyvesant or Crown Heights in Brooklyn.
Reflecting on her successful treatment of her first client, a young woman who was experiencing panic attacks, Harrod becomes philosophical. “Working with her, I really felt like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. I felt honored to have her as my first case and to have modeled a positive relationship for her.”
ShawnTina Harrod
