A grant from the U.S. Department of Education will help Troy University’s Department of Counseling, Rehabilitation, and Interpreter Training address the shortage of mental health counseling services in area school systems.

The five-year, $1.132 million grant, awarded from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Supportive Schools, will provide scholarship funds for graduate students within five partner local education agencies interested in pursuing careers in school counseling.

Those partners include school systems in Montgomery, Crenshaw, Coffee, Geneva, and Macon counties.

“The Trojan School-Based Mental Health Counselors Initiative will allow graduate students to earn master’s degrees in school counseling at no cost,” said Dr. Kerry Palmer, dean of Troy University’s College of Education, in a press release.

In the announcement, Palmer said providing mental health care services to young people is more important today than ever before, and this grant will aid in that process.

“The Troy University Counseling Department is committed to expanding access to professional degrees in the increasingly important field of mental health counseling,” said Palmer. “This country is experiencing an unprecedented mental health crisis, and Alabama is, by no means, immune to this. School systems in rural Alabama find it especially difficult to staff their schools with the mental health professionals needed to meet the current situation. This grant with its tangible financial resources will help to change that. Never has it been more important to make mental health care available to our young people.”

Dr. Sherrionda Crawford, the chair of Troy’s counseling department, said the grant team will work collaboratively with the school systems to identify scholarship recipients, who will in turn commit to working within the system for three years.

“We are thrilled to be able to offer this scholarship opportunity to at least 30 school counseling students,” Crawford said in the same release. “These students will come from the five local education agencies. Within the five LEAs that will receive these services, approximately 40,000 students will be impacted. Those individuals will, in turn, provide three years of employment to that specific LEA, so not only do they earn a master’s degree in school counseling, become a certified school counselor and apply for licensure as a Professional Counselor, they will also have employment for the next three years. And, our partner LEAs will have school-based mental health professionals in their schools for the next three years.”

Dr. Samantha Booker, the assistant chair of Troy’s counseling department, said that the partner agencies were selected based on various demographic thresholds, as well as the systems’ current counselor-to-student ratios.

The scholarship recipients will be enrolled in Troy’s master’s degree program in school counseling, but will also receive some additional training with regard to mental health counseling.