Distinguished University Professor Award

Lorraine Guth, a professor in the Department of Counseling and Human Development, is IUP’s 2024-25 Distinguished University Professor. A member of the faculty since 1998, she teaches, supervises students in clinical settings, and works internationally to advance the counseling profession.

In 2020, she was awarded an Erasmus+ Grant from the European Union to give student workshops at Middle Eastern Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. Topics included enhancing counselor wellness and strategies for using group work to transform hate and enhance community building. Her 2015-16 sabbatical project included teaching, service, and research in Malawi, Africa. It followed her 2014 outreach as one of 10 US counselor educators chosen for the National Board for Certified Counselors International’s Malawi Counseling Institute. In 2017, she was invited to lead the second Malawi Counseling Institute, facilitating a group of US delegates who taught counseling courses at Africa University of Diplomacy, Counselling, and International Relations.

Chosen in 2011 for the NBCC-I Thunder Dragon Institute in Thimphu, Bhutan, she provided direct counseling services to students in a local school and trained the school’s principal, teachers, and counselors. She then coordinated a US service project to donate counseling resources to the Bhutanese school. She has also worked with counseling professionals in Ireland, Italy, and Hong Kong.

Guth’s scholarship has focused on group work, multicultural and diversity issues in counseling, teaching effectiveness, and counselor wellness. She has contributed to 46 publications, 100 professional presentations, and numerous service projects.

She is the clinical coordinator for her department’s master’s degree program. Her university service has also included longtime membership on the University Senate, including as a member and chair of the Research Committee, and membership on the Middle States Commission on Higher Education Accreditation Committee and the Commission on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues.

Highlights of her year as Distinguished University Professor so far have included keynoting a mental health conference in Botswana and studying the quality of life of the country’s mental health workers. She also plans to write about and give a conference presentation on integrating sex positivity into counselor education and to pursue certification through the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists.

About the Distinguished University Professor Award

IUP recognizes one faculty member each year with the Distinguished University Professor Award, based on a record of outstanding teaching, university service, and active and demonstrable engagement in research/scholarly activity that advances the professor’s discipline or its pedagogy. In addition to the lifetime title, the award earns recipients a grant and a reduced teaching load for one year to allow more time for research and scholarship.

Past recipients are as follows:

The award was not presented from 2001 to 2006 and in 2021.