| Mark Pope | |
| Birth Date: | 23 April 1952 |
| Birth Place: | Fisk, Missouri, United States |
| Death Date: | 29 January 2023 (age 70) |
| Death Place: | Missouri, United States |
| Education: | University of Missouri-Columbia (AB, MEd) University of San Francisco (EdD) |
| Occupation: | Career counselor, professor |
Mark Pope, Ed.D. (April 23, 1952 – January 29, 2023) was an American counselor and academic. He was the Thomas Jefferson Professor and Curators' Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri – Saint Louis (1997–2018),[1] where he was a colleague to the social theorist Robert Rocco Cottone. Pope also served from (2006–2016) as chair of the Department of Counseling and Family Therapy at that university. He was president of the American Counseling Association (2003–2004), National Career Development Association (1998–1999), Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues in Counseling (1976–1978), and Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues (Division 44 of the American Psychological Association) (2011–2012), Sovereign Amonsoquth Tribe judge and founder and first chair of the Professional Counseling Fund (2004–2006).[2] Pope was widely considered to be one of the founders of, and the leading authors in the field of cultural diversity issues in the career counseling and the career development, especially gay and lesbian career development.[3] His major publications have included writings in counseling with sexual minorities and international students, the history and the public policy issues in counseling, and professional identity. He also served as the editor of The Career Development Quarterly (2004–2008), the preeminent journal in career counseling and development.[4]
Pope was raised in Fisk, Missouri.[5] He was valedictorian of his graduating class and elected state vice-president of the Beta Clubs of Missouri.[6] Pope attended the University of Missouri – Columbia (A.B., political science and sociology, 1973; M.Ed., counseling and personnel services, 1974) and the University of San Francisco (Ed.D., counseling and educational psychology, 1989).[7] He has been president for the American Counseling Association, National Career Development Association, Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues in Counseling, Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues (APA Division 44), and Professional Counseling Fund as well as editor of The Career Development Quarterly, the preeminent professional journal in career counseling and development. In addition to the US, he has visited and written on the career counseling systems of China, Malaysia and Australia.[8]
Pope was a founding member of the non-recognized [9] Sovereign Amonsoquth Tribe. Chief Walking Bear swore in Mark Raven Speaks Pope as a Southeastern District Cherokee Tribal Judge on April 7, 2002, in Eastwood, MO on the Amonsoquath Reservation. Isom Douglas "Hawkwatcher" Pope, his brother was present at this reservation formation meeting as a shaman.[10] Pope and Isom Pope were founders of the St. Francis River Band of the Cherokee in the Fisk and Poplar Bluff area of Missouri where they were from. Isom Pope was a member of the National Native American Law Enforcement Assoc.[11] "In August 2006, Pope was cited for possession of a small amount of marijuana and rolling papers while he was serving as the Iberia chief of police. He resigned immediately."[12]
Pope's early achievements, including founding his high school student council, foreshadowed significant milestones both in and out of the counseling profession. He founded the Missouri Student Lobby (now known as the Associated Students of the University of Missouri), which was the third student lobby in the United States. He also established the first gay and lesbian peer counseling program in the country, part of the Beckman House LGBT community center in Chicago. Prior to moving into academia, he had his own career counseling and consulting firm in San Francisco for 15 years. Coming from such a rich culturally-diverse background himself, it was only natural that there - in the culturally-rich San Francisco Bay Area - he would develop and hone his ideas on the important role that culture plays in the lives of individuals and especially in their careers.https://www.umsl.edu/~pope/bio.html
During his doctoral studies, he founded the Graduate Student Council at the University of San Francisco and served as its first president. Additionally, he created Career Decisions International, the first multicultural career counseling agency in the US, and established the counseling services section of the American Indian AIDS Institute/Native American AIDS Project in San Francisco. Notably, he was elected as the first openly gay president of the American Counseling Association and founded the Professional Counseling Fund, the first federal political action committee for professional counselors.[13] Pope is the author of several books, including Professional Counseling 101: Building a Strong Professional Identity.[14] He has contributed over 45 book chapters and published more than 50 professional journal articles. Additionally, he has delivered over 150 presentations at international, national, regional, state, and local levels. His presentations include keynote addresses in China, Australia, Canada, and the US as well as consultancies in Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. He worked with companies including Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Pacific Bell, the Internal Revenue Service.[15] [16]
His other major contribution has been to the literature on the training of counselors and includes seven books on teaching career counseling classes (Experiential Activities for Teaching Career Counseling Classes and for Facilitating Career Groups (3 volumes) and the Career Counseling Casebook (2 editions)); on teaching multicultural counseling classes (Experiential Activities for Teaching Multicultural Counseling Competence, 2010), on teaching classes on counseling sexual minorities (Casebook for Counseling Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Persons and Their Families, 2012), and on teaching social justice and advocacy competence in counseling (Social Justice and Advocacy in Counseling: Experiential Activities for Teaching, 2020). (See "Books" below.)
Pope was a fellow of several major professional societies including the American Counseling Association, American Psychological Association, National Career Development Association, Society of Counseling Psychology, Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race, and Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity.[17]
Pope passed away on January 29, 2023, at his Missouri home.[18]
He was the recipient of a number of major awards in the mental health professions including the human rights awards from the American Counseling Association and the state professional counseling associations of both California and Missouri, and culminating with receiving the Eminent Career Award of the National Career Development Association in 2008, the highest award in career counseling and development in the US.[19]
In 2018, the Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues in Counseling (ALGBTIC) named an award in Pope's honor, the ALGBTIC Mark Pope Social Justice and Advocacy Award, for his lifetime of contributions in service of social justice and advocacy for the LGBT community.
In 2018, the University of Missouri System presented him with The Thomas Jefferson Award, the highest award that any faculty member may receive. Only one such award is given annually and faculty are nominated from all four campuses of that university system. In 2015, he was named a Curators' Distinguished Professor, only the 2nd such professorship awarded to a College of Education faculty member at the University of Missouri – St. Louis since the founding of that campus in 1953. Later, upon his retirement in 2018, he was named a Curators' Distinguished Professor Emeritus.
In 2004, Pope was selected for the OUT 100 as one of the major contributors to lesbian and gay culture in the US in that year.[20] He received this recognition for being elected as the first openly gay person to serve as president of a major mental health professional association exactly 30 years after the removal of "homosexuality" from the list of psychiatric disorders in the US (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association), repudiating once and for all the illness model used to limit the rights of gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals in the US and around the world.[21] [22]
Pope was awarded the NOGLSTP LGBTQ+ Educator of the Year in 2012.[23]