Counseling & Psychological Services

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Heidi comes to the Counseling Center from a background in community and school mental health, working in interdisciplinary settings with youth and their families. She works with a wide range of issues, including depression and suicide, trauma, anxiety, women and minority issues, and relationship and family concerns. Heidi has a strong interest in developing competency in working with students with autism spectrum disorders and providing consultation to the Athletics Department and other campus groups.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: Heidi works from a holistic, collaborative perspective, blending a humanistic, relational orientation with interpersonal process, cognitive-behavioral, dialectical behavioral, and mindfulness techniques. She also uses motivational interviewing techniques, in particular in addressing substance abuse concerns. Heidi has a developmental approach in her work with college students and has a strong belief in every persons capacity for growth and health. She views her role as therapist as creating an accepting, safe environment to foster growth and optimal functioning.

Personal Interests: Heidi cherishes spending time with family and loved ones, especially outdoor adventures with her husband and two children. She is an avid runner, cyclist, and skier and takes any opportunity to get out in the mountains of the High Country . Heidi is also a keen traveler and especially enjoys experiencing different cultures. In her quieter moments, she enjoys reading, baking, and gardening.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Kati is a generalist by training. Her areas of interest include eating concerns, trauma, sexual assault, LGBTQIIA concerns, and life transitions. In addition to individual therapy, she is very passionate about providing group therapy and training/supervision.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: Kati's theoretical orientation is integrative, primary drawing from interpersonal process therapy, client-centered therapy, and feminist-multicultural therapy. As she collaboratively tailors counseling to each of her clients, she also pulls from existential-humanistic, cognitive-behavioral, emotion-focused, relational-cultural, and mindfulness-based approaches.

Personal Interests: In her personal time, Kati recharges by spending time with friends, practicing yoga, training her dog, and hiking in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Scott likes to utilize "Strengths Based Perspective" to meet students where they are in their college journey, and assist them in connecting with community resources that will best meet their needs. In addition, he incorporates Cognitive-Behavioral therapy into his Individual Therapy practices when working with students.

Personal Interests: Scott enjoys anything outdoors, time with his family, video games, and traveling to new places.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Chris has a particular interest in the relationship between physical and mental health, men's issues, mindfulness, research in clinical settings, and program evaluation.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: Chris is respectful of each individual and focuses on the development of the whole person. He integrates interpersonal and cognitive-behavioral therapy into his work with students, while also emphasizing a client-centered, mindfulness, and multicultural approach.

Personal Interests: In his spare time, Chris enjoys spending time with his family; sports and exercise, whether it be heading to the gym, hiking a trail, or watching a game on T.V.; traveling and exploring new places; and the challenges of learning how to do new home improvement projects.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Sara's areas of interest range widely, but she is particularly passionate about mindfulness, mind/body therapy, and working with survivors of trauma. Other interests include stress management, underserved populations, graduate students, transfer students, and people working through identity-related or existential concerns. In addition to individual therapy, Sara enjoys supervision, group work, and outdoor adventure therapy.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: Saras approach to counseling is collaborative and holistic, drawing on an integration of Eastern, multicultural/feminist, and interpersonal approaches. She often uses mindfulness and other contemplative practices in her work, and believes in using a strength-based model to help empower clients on their healing journey.

Personal Interests: Saras personal interests include spending time with her human and canine family members and friends, going on outdoor adventures, cooking, dancing, meditation, and yoga.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Stephanies areas of interest include LGBT, trauma-related issues, life transitions, transfer students, and eating concerns. In addition to individual therapy, she also has a passion for group therapy, supervision/training, and outreach. Stephanie also has a strong research interest in the human-animal bond and womens issues, and she is nationally active with the APA in these areas. Stephanie is also the Co-Coordinator of the Sexual Assault Response Team of Watauga County.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: A generalist by training, Stephanie utilizes an integrative therapeutic approach in her client work. She believes in the power of crafting a strong, affirming relationship with her clients and often uses interpersonal, developmental, cognitive-behavioral, and mindfulness techniques in therapy.

Personal Interests: In her free time Stephanie enjoys being with her pets: four furry four-legged companions, nine chickens, and two hives of bees. She also loves connecting with friends and family around the country, drinking coffee, exploring the outdoors, practicing yoga, and eating scrumptious food.

Professional Interests/Areas of Expertise: Denises areas of interest include outreach and prevention and she has developed a number of campus wide programs addressing a variety of mental health issues. As part of such efforts, Denise co-created and co-leads the Mental Health Ambassadors, a peer education group that is focused on delivering presentations to students on mental health related topics. Denise provides individual therapy and is a generalist in practice with an expertise in the treatment of eating disorders. In addition to individual therapy, Denise often leads general therapy process groups and provides supervision to both Masters and Doctoral level students. Over the years, Denise has provided consultation to communities such as Greek Life, Residence Life, and the Appalachian Spiritual Life Association. Denise is the Project Director for the SAMHSA funded Suicide Prevention Project on campus and supervises the campus Suicide Prevention Coordinator.

Approach to counseling/Theoretical Orientation: Denise is rather eclectic in her approach to therapy working from both psychodynamic and cognitive behavior theories and practices. Denise also integrates interpersonal theory as well as some gestalt practices into her interventions. Due to the nature of our center, Denise works within a short term model in her delivery of therapy.

Personal Interests: In her personal time, Denise enjoys being with her family adventuring in the mountains or just relaxing together. She travels across the US in her RV or enjoys camping on nearby lakes and forests. She recently started running again and trying yoga.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Leslie’s areas of interest include the training and supervision of new and emerging professionals. She also enjoys career counseling, working with non-traditional students, and helping students who are navigating identity-related and developmental concerns. Leslie is passionate about prevention and outreach efforts, and loves working with the Appalachian State Mental Health Ambassadors, a program she co-created and co-coordinates with Dr. Denise Lovin.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: Leslie’s approach to working with clients is collaborative, and she prefers a holistic integrative approach to treatment that incorporates cognitive-behavioral, interpersonal, existential, and client-centered techniques. Leslie recognizes that there is no “one size fits all” approach to therapy and tries to tailor her interventions to each client’s unique needs and preferences. The value of authenticity is appreciated and modeled in Leslie’s therapy sessions.

Personal Interests: Leslie’s interests and hobbies include playing pranks on her co-workers, spending time with her family, enjoying the outdoors, armchair traveling, magic, and robots. Okay, she’s not really into magic and robots, but she does love to read five books at once, listen to good music, and spend money on shoes.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Ally’s areas of clinical interest include LGBT concerns, grief and loss, college student identity development, family of origin concerns, and crisis intervention. Ally also finds group therapy extremely exciting and fulfilling because watching clients connect with one another on a deeper level and begin to realize that they are not alone in their struggles have been some of the most powerful therapeutic moments she has had the privilege of witnessing. Ally’s professional interests also include supervision and training, campus liaison relationships, counseling center administration, and larger university system issues.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: Ally’s approach to working with clients is collaborative and strengths-based. Ally primarily uses an interpersonal process approach in her work with clients; however, she often incorporates cognitive behavioral, mindfulness-based techniques, and dialectical behavioral therapy techniques into her work as well. Although the Counseling Center has a short-term therapy model, Ally works to understand her client’s worldviews and how their past experiences may be impacting their current concerns.

Personal Interests: Outside of the office, Ally enjoys spending time with her partner, yellow lab seeing eye dog named Allstar, and German Shepherd named Nekot (silent T). She is also an avid audio book listener and trashy reality TV watcher. Ally has also recently begun listening to podcasts, and the most recent one that she enjoyed was about the invention and physics behind water slides. Ally also loves spending time with her family and two nephews when she has the opportunity.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Allstars professional interests include greeting individual and group clients in a warm, genuine, and empathic manner, snuggling up to clients with their consent (He is the only staff member who is allowed to do this), and offering large sighs or snores as a means of providing empathy or comic relief depending on the situation. Allstar also enjoys doing outreach programs to help students reduce their stress and reduce stigma about the Counseling Center and seeking mental health treatment in general.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: Allstar tends to use a very Rogerian approach to working with clients as unconditional positive regard comes quite naturally for him.

Personal Interests: When he is not working hard at the Counseling Center or as a guide dog, Allstar enjoys taking long walks, napping on the couch, playing at the dog park, being outside in the yard if a human is with him, wrestling with Nekot for approximately 5 minutes at a time, eating nearly anything, food or not, that he can sink his teeth into, and napping some more.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Audrey is a generalist by training, and as such enjoys working with students with a broad variety of presenting concerns. These commonly include anxiety, depression, relationship issues, trauma, and eating concerns. Special areas of interest include trauma, group therapy, connecting with traditionally under-served populations, and the therapeutic use of art for healing and self-expression.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: Audrey uses an integrative, person-centered approach to therapy that draws on mindfulness, interpersonal processing, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and expressive arts therapy.

Personal Interests: In her free time she enjoys gardening, crafting, and hiking with her dog, Margo.

Personal Interests: In Ashley’s free time she enjoys spending time with friends and family, painting, curling up with a good book, and hiking with her dog, Avery.

Personal Interests: As a native of Florida, Dawn enjoys camping, boating, kayaking, and reading a good book. She loves spending time with her family. Dawn states that "I miss the beach and the feel of the sand between my toes."

Personal Interests: Among Sammy's interest are spending time with family and friends, learning new concepts, ideologies, and methodolgies in a number of fields, history, music (all forms), guitar, photography, art, reading, sports, television, and working with computers and various software programs. He enjoys doing research and the creative part of the writing process.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Emily has trained in university counseling centers and a community mental health center. She has also worked as an advisor for students on academic probation and helped lead her graduate institution's chapter of Active Minds. In addition to providing individual therapy, Emily enjoys group therapy and campus outreach and prevention. She is also particularly interested in working with phobias, self-harm, grief and loss, academic and career concerns, and suicide prevention.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: Emily's approach to counseling is collaborative, emphasizing the therapeutic relationship and students' goals and strengths. She primarily integrates principles of interpersonal, cognitive-behavioral, mindfulness-based, and dialectical behavior therapies.

Personal Interests: In her free time, Emily enjoys spending time with loved ones, traveling, creative writing, cooking, biking, drinking tea, and watching British TV.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Predair has a multitude of professional interest. His primary training has been working with gender and sexual minorities, paying special attention to the LGBTQIA community and the intersectionality of identity. He also specializes in multicultural psychology, advocacy, identity development, and relationship concerns. Aside from individual and group therapy, Predair enjoys supervising trainees, providing outreach, conducting research, and consulting with student groups.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: Predair defines his theoretical orientation as integrative, focusing mostly on feminist theory and brief dynamic theory. What that means is that Predair focuses on personal empowerment and self-awareness to assist in problem solving and reducing stress. While being mindful to the various intersection of identity, he hopes to provide a positive, supportive atmosphere to help students discover and advocate for themselves.

Personal Interests: Predair is a big advocate of enjoying video games, both privately and online with friends. You may even see him around campus trying to catch Pokémon! He enjoys spending time with his friends playing a large number of board games. Predair is an avid baker, though he’s learning how to alter his recipes to account for new environmental factors, and enjoys working out.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Whitneys interests include multiculturalism/diversity, trauma, eating concerns/body image, gender and sexuality, womens issues, identity development, and anxiety. She is also interested in group therapy and has had the opportunity to co-lead groups focusing on topics such as eating concerns/body image, trauma, and gender and sexuality issues. Whitney has received extensive training conducting cognitive assessments and is passionate about helping students struggling with LD/ADHD achieve success in college.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: Whitney integrates feminist-multicultural, interpersonal, and emotion-focused approaches within therapy to create a safe space for clients to identify and explore their thoughts, emotions, and experiences. She also draws upon mindfulness and cognitive-based interventions when needed and will work to adapt her style to meet her clients needs.

Personal Interests: In her spare time, Whitney enjoys playing her instruments, listening to music, collecting vinyl records, and traveling to music festivals/live shows. She also enjoys watching Netflix, reading, obsessing over cute dogs, and most importantly, spending time with her family and friends.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: James’ interests include LGBT issues, gender and sexuality, career development, outreach, and multicultural programming and student life. James also has experience working with substance use issues and domestic violence. James has received specialized training in LGBT health issues, including assessment, smoking in the LGBT community, intersectional approaches and considerations, lesbian and bisexual women’s health, and many other topics. Lastly, he has co-led groups with students discussing privilege and oppression along axes of race, class, and religion.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: James integrates interpersonal, client-centered, and feminist-multicultural/critical approaches to his work with clients to co-create a space with client’s to identify, explore, and reach solutions for the client’s presenting problems. James believes in being able to adapt his style to client’s needs, and also employs motivational interviewing, solution-focused, and other cognitive-behavioral interventions when needed.

Personal Interests: James self-identifies as nerd, playing video games and watching anime is his spare time. Since moving to East Tennessee and, now, Boone, he has taken up hiking and running to maximize his enjoyment of the beautiful scenery around him, too.

Professional Interests / Areas of Expertise: Sean has a broad range of interests and enjoys working with a variety of students. He has abundant experience working in a college setting and is particularly equipped to help with relevant struggles. Sean is especially attuned to working with students who suffer from panic, and traumatic experiences. Sean is interested in research on mentalization, mindfulness/meditation, neuropsychology, spirituality, and the use of dreams in clinical practice.

Approach to counseling / Theoretical Orientation: Therapeutically he tends to work from a psychodynamic/relational, existential, and mindfulness-based orientation. He often utilizes meditation training as a way to help students decrease anxiety and better manage stress.

Personal Interests: Outside of work, Sean enjoys hiking, architecture, photography, snowboarding, and reading.