Acknowledgements

The construction, implementation, and management of this project was a monumental undertaking. Many individuals participated to greater or lesser degrees in this training becoming a reality and succeeding in training well over 500 teachers, pre-service teachers, and daycare workers in Springfield, Missouri. I would like to take this opportunity to begin to thank them, knowing that this will be a wholely inadequate effort.

To begin with, I would like to thank the Springfield Public Schools administration for their support of this project as part of the Safe Schools/Health Students grant, including Dr. Norm Ritter, Superintendent, and his most able staff. Next, I would like to thank the Safe Schools/Healthy Students project leaders and staff for their unwaivering support and encouragement. I would also like to thank the Missouri State University administration for allowing me the opportunity to pursue this training project. It is testiment to the abiding nature of the public affairs mission of the University that this happened. I would also like to particularly thank my former Department Head, Dr. Chuck Barke, for his help and support in navigating many systemic hurdles in doing this project.

Next I would like to both thank and celebrate the participation of the staff and graduate assistants who worked in the project. Suzanne Weatherman was my colleague throughout nearlly the entire grant and did a marvelous job taking care of the may details of the project and then in training many of our participants. Our graduate assistants that worked in the project, Bethany Horna and Paige Buschling, both did a wonderful job helping to keep us on track and delivering quality training to so many. They have both gone on to professional positions in the counseling field. I hope their experiences in this project serve them as well as they served our trainees. I would also like to thank our videographers, Jason Crow and Tony Garcia, for producing a wonderfully professional video to aid in the sustainability of this project on the web.

i would next like to thank all those in Washington, D.C. (including Roy Blunt, who was a strong supporter of the grant effort) for their support. In particular, I would like to thank the project director for her active participation with the grant.

Finally, I would like to extend a thanks to all the authors of books, articles, and experiential exercises, who allowed us to use their materials for our training purposes, both during the grant and on this website. Cheers to all!

Joseph F. Hulgus, Ph.D.
October, 2008