2026 Suzee Leone Grant Recipients

The Suzee Leone Grants Program offers small-grants that fund innovative counseling initiatives across the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Each spring and fall, the Grants Committee reviews proposals submitted by members in good standing and awards funding for as much as $1,000 per grant for programs that align with the foundation’s mission to foster professional development and enhance counseling services throughout Virginia.

Below are those selected as 2026 recipients.

Sessions will intentionally incorporate elements of mindfulness, emotional regulation, teamwork, and reflection. Participants will have opportunities to learn about plant care, nutrition, and environmental stewardship while also building trust, communication skills, and a sense of belonging. The program is designed to be inclusive and accessible, serving youth with a range of emotional, behavioral and developmental needs in a safe, supportive environment.

This project will implement a 6-8 week structured intervention series for students identified by school staff as needing additional emotional and behavioral support. Sessions will focus on emotional identification, coping skill development, self-regulation and executive functioning. Interventions will include sensory-based strategies, cognitive-behavioral techniques, social-emotional learning (SEL) activities and expressive play. Students will engage in hands-on activities such as therapeutic games, art and guided reflection to build practical skills they can use in real-time within the classroom.

Furthermore, research suggests that immersive mindfulness strategies significantly reduce symptoms for adults experiencing depression and anxiety by providing distraction free, and safe environments for emotional regulation (Srinivasan, 2025). Expanding this program to adult psychiatric populations will address critical gaps in mental healthcare through scalable technology integrated solutions.

The Woodrow Counseling Center currently has a Calm Space that is open to all students who need time to practice self-regulation skills to calm down, focus or regulate their emotions. Our current space, however, is limited to emotional regulation practices that do not require movement, such as deep breathing, coloring at a table, mindfulness activities, grounding activities and other activities that are used while sitting and remaining still.

While these types of strategies are helpful for some students, other students require strategies that provide more movement, activity, and other multisensory experiences. Since our current space does not provide a supportive way for students to utilize all the coping strategies they have identified as being helpful, students are either not being able to practice self-regulation or wandering the hallways as a means to practice emotional regulation through movement.

The addition of a sensory wall to our current calm space will provide a controlled area for students to use movement-based coping strategies as well as other multisensory experiences in a more supportive environment than wandering the hallways during instruction.

Currently when students experience emotional dysregulation, they are often removed from the classroom to the office or counseling space due to limited classroom capacity for immediate intervention. Research indicates that classroom calming spaces reduce disruptions, support emotional regulation and improve overall climate by allowing students to practice coping skills in real time (Brasfield et al., 2024; Vallejo, 2025) 

Funds will be used to purchase calming and sensory tools that are familiar to students through small group or individual counseling sessions. When students experience dysregulation, they may have the option to use the calming corner for up to five minutes to engage with developmentally appropriate self-regulation tools. These tools help students calm their bodies, identify emotions and return to learning with minimal disruption.       

This proposed project was part of a larger initiative that received the U.S. Department of Education Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant, but was unfortunately discontinued due to emphasis on inclusive practices for diverse populations.

We were able to implement this project from October 2025-March 2026 with the previous grant money supporting 14 students across two elementary schools in Newport News. However, we need funding to continue this much needed project into the next academic year.

Graduate counseling students, supervised by licensed counselor educators, provide trauma-informed counseling to elementary students in schools serving historically underserved communities.

Since Spring 2025, student-counselors have delivered more than 300 counseling sessions, expanding access to care while receiving hands-on clinical training.

This pilot study will be conducted during the fall 2026 semester with 10 volunteer counseling students. The project responds directly to emerging national expectations for counselor educators. The ACA AI Workgroup has emphasized the need for training that addresses ethics, DEIA, essential counseling tasks and specialty-area considerations, while also warning of risks such as bias, misinterpretation and ethical misuse.

Students in this project will engage in multiple simulated counseling sessions with AI-generated clients through SimCare. These sessions will allow them to practice core counseling skills such as empathy, reflection of feelings and content, rapport-building, cultural attunement and ethical decision-making, in a low-risk, feedback-rich environment. Because AI tools are increasingly used in training, supervision and service delivery, this project positions VCU students to develop competencies that align with emerging professional standards.