Jill Nelson, assistant professor in the School of Education, gave two presentations at the American Counseling Association annual conference, held March 19-23 in Charlotte, N.C. The first presentation was titled “Teens Facing Tough Times: Integrating the Developmental Assets into Counseling Practice.” The second presentation was “Integrating Technology into Coursework: A Primer for Counselor Educators.”

The first presentation was based on Nelson’s book, “Helping Teens Handle Tough Experiences: Strategies to Foster Resilience,” that was published in July. It was a poster session covering critical incidents in the book and developmental assets that can be integrated into counseling practice.

Nelson wrote the book with Sarah Kjos, a student in the community counseling program. There are 20 chapters describing tough experiences that teens face today. Each chapter has suggestions for how adults might support a teen going through each adversity. Each chapter also has reproducible handouts and the book comes with a CD for the handouts. Topics include self-injury (cutting), homelessness, witnessing domestic violence, dating violence and divorce.

Nelson and Kjos also presented the book at the Healthy Communities - Healthy Youth conference. For more information about the book, go to amazon.com or www.helping-teens.org.

Nelson presented at the second conference with Clarrice Rapisarda from the University North Carolina Charlotte and Kimberly Desmond from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The second presentation was based on the practices of the presenters. Nelson, Rapisarda and Desmond covered topics in technology including using interactive video network and other videoconferencing services, podcasting, online courses, and course management systems including WebCT and Blackboard.