Bailey Receives Honor From National Counseling Group

A College of Education professor, whose mentoring program aimed at developing and nurturing academic and social excellence in young African-American males has been gaining national recognition, has received another top honor for his work.

Deryl Bailey, an assistant professor of counseling and human development who developed a program called “Gentlemen on the Move,” has been named the recipient of the 2004 ‘Ohana Honors Award from the Counselors for Social Justice (CSJ).

The CSJ 'Ohana Honors awards were created by Michael D'Andrea and Judy Daniels, counselor education faculty at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, in 1994. They are given annually by the CSJ at the American Counseling Association spring conference to honor individuals in counseling who affirm diversity and advocate for social justice in the spirit of nine elements of the indigenous Hawaiian concept of 'ohana or extended family: caring, humility, intelligence, generosity, integrity and honesty, unconditional love, spiritual power, courtesy and courage.
 
About 40 Athens area black middle and high school students participate in Gentlemen on the Move, which was first creaeted by Bailey a decade ago when he was a counselor in a North Carolina high school. Every Saturday, the boys and their parents meet on the UGA campus to study and to work on social skills. Faculty from UGA and Clarke County schools volunteer as tutors.

The program has received growing recognition over the past few years and Bailey received a $10,000 grant from the state Board of Regents last May as one of six programs in the state designed to motivate African-American males to stay in school and to steer them toward college.

Black males are all but disappearing from Georgia's high schools and colleges, and state officials want to reverse the disturbing trend.

While college-age African-American males constitute 16 percent of the state's population, they make up only 7.2 percent of the students enrolled in Georgia's public colleges and universities. Black females are 15 percent of the student population.

In 1997, 23.5 percent of the African-American males who graduated from Georgia high schools went on to college in the state. By 2001, that percentage had dropped to 20.8.

Many boys in the program have had no male role models before joining Gentlemen on the Move. Many are from single-parent homes. The program tries to fill a void left by schools, which have very few African-American men as teachers.

“Students who have a positive relationship with teachers do well academically,” Bailey said. “For black male students, that often doesn't exist.”

Last fall, Bailey was invited to speak about the program at two important national conferences in Washington, D.C. – Double the Numbers: Post Secondary Attainment and Underrepresented Youth, sponsored  the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation and W.K. Kellong Foundation; and the Congressional Black Caucus’ 33rd Annual Legislative Conference.

In March, Gentlemen on the Move was named the 2004 Multicultural Program of the Year by the Georgia chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education (GA-NAME).

Counselors for Social Justice, a division of the American Counseling Association, is a national community of counselors, counselor educators, graduate students, and school and community leaders who seek equity and an end to oppression and injustice affecting clients, students, counselors, families, communities, schools, workplaces, governments, and other social and institutional systems.

Bailey will receive the CSJ 'Ohana Honors Award on Saturday, April 3 at the CSJ/ACA spring conference in Kansas City, Mo.

Tuesday, March 30, 2004
WRITER: Michael Childs, 706/542-5889, mchilds@coe.uga.edu
CONTACT: Deryl Bailey, 706/583-0126, dbailey@coe.uga.edu
PHOTOS: Elissa Eubanks, Athens Banner-Herald