Erica Rhoads, PhD, LPC, NCC

I completed chapters 4 and 5 after a wonderful day of group work. I had 4 adoptive couples meet for 4 hours to share their adoptive stories and react to each other in compassionate ways. The day was all that I had hoped for and after interviewing each of the couples for 2 hours/couple, I had 8 hours of audio recordings to transfer to transcripts and look for key themes and quotes.

I found 4 areas to highlight and numerous quotes as examples of the themes. After explaining all of the findings and implications in chapters 4 and 5, I created a presentation to defend my dissertation.

On April 12th, I presented the research to my committee and dissertation chair along with an audience of other interested friends and peers. The presentation went well and made an impact. After discussing as a group, my committee and chair congratulated me with the completion of my defense and welcomed me as a colleague: Dr. Erica Rhoads!

While that day started out very difficult, God was with me and I felt so privileged to present this material and represent the parents who shared their hearts in my group. I am praying that this will be the beginning of more research and opportunities to impact adoptive parents with God’s direction.

I am so thankful to the many people who have been with me on this journey and the encouragement that I recieved to never give up! Please continue to pray that God leads me to use what I have learned to further His kingdom!

This semester was full of so many things. Being able to present at several key conferences was truly exciting and a great growth opportunity. It did, however, make getting my dissertation chapters written more of a challenge. With the last few weeks providing more time to work on those chapters, I was able to complete the first 3 that will provide the foundation for my research. Chapters 4&5 then hinge on the research and I pray that God will grant grace in my research going well and finding significant information to add to the field of knowledge for adoptive families.

As the holiday season approaches, the bittersweet of family struggles are continued motivation to keep at this work. Knowing so many adoptive parents who grieve over children who have walked away from their families is so hard and I want to figure out how to help them walk this path with God’s comfort and peace. Your prayers are coveted as my next steps begin and the final chapters are added to finish out my dissertation and work towards the spring graduation.

American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC)…Association of Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES)…Association for Creativity in Counseling (ACC)

As part of my Candidacy Portfolio, I was required to submit proposals for Professional Counseling Conferences. Attending and presenting at conferences is another way to develop my identity as a Counselor Educator. I submitted 3 proposals for conferences this fall and was accepted to all 3. I declined the one conference as it meant too much travel in a short amount of time. I also was co-presenter for a 4th that another peer submitted.

AACC was one of the conferences that I did not submit to present, but was so excited to kick off the fall by getting to meet several other LU students in person as well as meet a few LU professors.

The ACES Conference in Denver was the most stressful as this Felt Safety presentation was national level for other Counseling Professors. Dr. Kristy Ford was so kind to attend and take my picture (see above). She encouraged me with compliments after the session.

Next was a wonderful trip to Florida for ACC to present in 2 sessions with several wonderful LU colleagues! The sessions were scheduled back to back, so we relaxed on the beach where Ana Barend and I, with Dr. Sosin present by facetime, presented on some surfing imagery to build resilience and embodiment.

Then Deanna Eddy and I rushed to the other side of the hotel to present on using InnerActive Parts cards with IFS and EMDR. Both of these sessions were very well received and I so enjoyed the collaboration with my LU friends!

As I close this fall season, I am extremely grateful for the opportunities and the strengthened relationships with these dear friends. We are all excited about presenting again together in the future and are already brainstorming how to make that happen!

I have completed my last Intensive (a week long course of full days in front of my screen with a group of amazing colleagues and one fearless professor!) which puts me at All But Dissertation to complete my Ph.D. hopefully by Spring of 2024. That is less than a year away, so I will be nose to the grindstone with researching and writing my dissertation. I am doing a transcendental phenomenological study of the distress experienced by parents who adopt older children with trauma. In other words, I hope to interview other adoptive parents and listen to their stories, find out what themes and commonalities there are among them, and present the information to the counseling field to bring attention to their pain and need for healing. While it will be an arduous process, I am so excited to officially begin this part of my studies, as helping adoptive parents was my primary motivation for getting into this field! I have found other areas of passion, such as trauma in general and interpersonal neurobiology, but my heart is for other hurting parents.

I have a few weeks left in this semester to produce my proposal that will guide the research and the rest of my dissertation. This will be my goal through the next month and I hope to have a plan fleshed out for how I will work with parents and structure my research. I will also be doing some professional presentations both online and in person, so that will also keep me busy, perfecting PowerPoints and doing some traveling in the fall. It is such a blessing to see my hard work paying off and the end closing in! What a wonderful journey and lovely opportunity this has been and I am excited about the doors that will open to serve others through all that I have learned.

I am finishing up this week with a few self-reflection pieces to complete the assignments for this semester. What a packed semester this has been! I attended a day training with the Center for Being Known where I heard from Curt Thompson and several other wonderful speakers. Then the next week I presented at the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS-East) in Lancaster on Felt Safety. While I was anxious at the start of the presentation, as I kept going, I felt energized and completely enjoyed myself. The feedback from the attendees was so positive and I am excited to put more presentations together to share in the future! The next week I was off to Pittsburgh for the NARACES conference. There was so much information shared that my brain felt like it was bulging! What a wealth of knowledge from so many other professionals. Finally, this past weekend I was able to go to sunny, warm Florida for the Association for Creativity in Counseling (ACC) conference. So many creative people sharing creative ways for me to help my clients heal. I was also priviledged to spend time with the amazing Dr. Lisa Sosin. She is always a refreshing reminder of God’s love and grace. Even though I continue to be loaded with learning and assignments, I am constantly filled with strength and encouragement and truly know that this is the best journey for me. At the end of this week, I will have Advanced Career, Qualititative Research, and my Counseling internship all completed. Three more items to check off my degree plan and only a few more to go! The end of the tunnel is beginning to show some light! Thank you, Jesus!!! I couldn’t do any of this without Him!

Summer flew by in a rush of classes, counseling sessions, and connections. I am so amazed at how God has shown up in so many ways. I started with Emerge Counseling Ministries at the beginning of summer and have already seen God matching me up with people who are able to connect with me and begin the healing process. This fall I am taking Career Counseling and Qualitative Research, plus doing my counseling internship. It will be a lot of reading and writing, but I am excited to be closer to completing my coursework and preparing for dissertation! I have a number of ideas and a book list that I have already begun reading to prepare for my dissertation. I hope to get more writing done and finish my research article from spring, which has continued to be mulling in my mind.

As I finished up the supervision internship last week, I have become more convinced that my calling is to be a professor, training future counselors and walking through them on the journey to be all that God is calling them to be. I had the opportunity to lead my own section of our practicum class and felt that this is where God has gifted me. I added copies of my feedback from both the practicum class and the teaching internship to this website…so you can all see what students had to say about me as a professor. (Use the Teaching and Supervision links to read more).

I continue to walk in God’s unforced rhythms of Grace! May you find His Grace as well!

Blessings, Erica (aka Professor Rhoads)

Wow! What a crazy spring. I was fortunate to have a wonderful experience co-teaching an introductory counseling class for my teaching internship. I met an amazing group of students passionate about learning to be better counselors. What I didn’t expect was the joy that I felt when I was teaching and learning along with this group of students.

This is especially exciting to me, as my degree is in counselor education, which means it is preparing me to be a Counseling Professor. So finding how energizing it was to teach this class means that I have chosen a perfect option for my future. I hope to be able to start teaching in the summer or fall of 2023 after I finish up the rest of my courses and start my disertation.

My other experience this spring was doing quantitative research and writing an article about Shame, Attachment and God-image. This was quite a challenge for me, as I have not had much experience in SPSS (the IBM Statistics package). We put in the variables and it spits out numbers with lots of statistics that should mean lots to me. However, I feel overwhelmed with the possibility of all the information and what it should tell us. Either way, I still have a bit of work to clean up the article and then hopefully submit it for publication.

While today is the last day of spring semester, there is no rest for the weary as Sunday begins the summer semester and 2 new classes that hold exciting potential. Looking forward to interacting with more master’s level students and sharing our journey to learn more about counseling and how to help others!

This website is a documentation of my doctoral journey. It’s been an exciting ride so far and I have learned so much and made wonderful friends along the way. I am inspired to make a difference for the people around me, my community, and the academic world.