Asbury Seminary alumna Molly Ann Halpin recently received the Kentucky Counseling Association (KCA) Award for Graduate students. Each year, KCA invites nominations for this state award. Recipients must be graduate students in good standing, be a member of KCA and be involved within its leadership.

“I am incredibly surprised, honored and humbled to receive this award,” Halpin said. “The award is a huge honor within the association, but it also represents all of the work of everyone who has invested in me at Asbury Seminary, as well as the sacrifices my family made during my time here. I am grateful for the tangible affirmation that by pursuing my passion for mental health, I am connecting with God intimately by discovering who He has created me to be.”

Within KCA, Halpin has served as a mentee in the fourth cohort of the Dr. Bill Braden Mentoring Leadership Academy of 2018 with mentor Dr. Naomi Brahim, past president of KCA and recent Southern Region Chair within ACA. Halpin has also served as secretary of KY- ASERViC (Association of Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling) alongside Asbury Seminary Professor of Counseling and Pastoral Care, Dr. Steve Stratton, and Adjunct Faculty Dr. Tiffany Arrows. As part of ASERViC, Halpin worked to create a Kentucky chapter for the Association of Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling by building membership and connecting with members through quarterly newsletters and events.

“Molly has been involved in [KCA] in multiple ways,” Karen Cook, Executive Director of KCA, said. “She is a graduate of the mentoring leadership academy, which is a very elite group of people who were selected through a stringent application process, and she has worked a lot within the ASERIViC group, provided submissions for the KCA newsletter, and held an officer position. She worked as a volunteer at the registration desk during the recent KCA Conference in her spare time. We all just love Molly.”

Halpin also serves as the membership chair of the Kentucky Mental Health Counselors Association (KMHCA), which is a group composed of mental health counselors in Kentucky. Her role is to build membership and connect with members within the association.

“This award specifically reflects Molly’s scholarship and dedicated service. She models how our students and alumni are making a difference in the counseling world,” Stratton said. “It also shows how the Seminary’s counseling program is becoming more and more integrated within the Kentucky Counseling Association. Molly’s example demonstrates how the professional counseling world is recognizing the excellent training and the high quality students who are associated with our program.”

Haplin graduated from the Seminary in 2019 with an M.A. in Mental Health Counseling and an M.A. in Marriage and Family Counseling. She is currently working in her own private practice called Fearless Grace, as a Marriage and Family Therapy Associate and Licensed Professional Counseling Associate in Lexington, Ky. She also works with clients in acute crisis as a mobile triage clinician at the University of Louisville Peace Hospital.

KCA is the state branch of the American Counseling Association and is an organization of counseling professionals who work in educational, health care, residential, private practice, community agency, government, business and industry settings.