Friday, May 19^th 2006 from 8:30am to 3pm

As helping professionals, we must continue to expand our understanding of life affirming and life inhibiting sexual identity development. In this experiential workshop, participants will explore therapeutic dialogue working with students and clients sexual issues including; education, sexuality, orientation, and abuse issues. Participants will examine healthy sexuality and the underlying conflicts which arise when individuals and groups are introduced to sexuality and gender in ways that violate their core sense of self. Participants will have the opportunity to practice individual, and group strategies and interventions.

Presenter - A. Michael Hutchins, Ph.D.

A. Michael Hutchins, Ph.D. is a professional counselor in private practice in Tucson, Arizona, is on-staff at Cottonwood de Tucson Treatment Center, and is an adjunct faculty member in school counseling at the University of Arizona. He specializes in working with adolescent and adult males who have histories of sexual abuse and trauma. Michael is an advocate of group work and has incorporated experiential and adventure-based group approaches into his work with men and their families.

Michael became active in the Association for Specialists in Group Work (ASGW) when he chaired the first ASGW Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues Task Force. He represented ASGW on the first ACA Human Rights Committee, which he chaired, and has served as the ASGW newsletter editor and was ASGW President in 1997-98. He was selected as an ASGW Fellow in 2000.

Michael is a founding member of Counselors for Social Justice (CSJ) and was the organization’s first president. He currently represents CSJ on the ACA Governing Council. He is passionate about addressing issues of discrimination and oppression in our profession and in the community-at-large. He was honored to receive the ACA Kitty Cole Human Rights Award.

Michael served as Chair of the Association for Gay Lesbian and Bisexual Issues in Counseling (AGLBIC) from 1990-93, and received the Joe Norton Award for his work on gay, lesbian and bisexual issues. He has written about sexual identity development and has begun to speak and write about “sexual minority” concerns in order to be more inclusive of people of different sexualities. Michael is on the City of Tucson Commission on Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Issues.