From the 2021 Faculty and Staff Excellence Awards:
Marcy Hunt, Ph.D. is the director of Counseling Services at the Center for Student Health and Counseling (SHAC). She received her Bachelor’s degree from the College of Wooster and her doctorate in Counseling Psychology from the University of Oregon. As a licensed psychologist, Hunt has spent her career serving students in university counseling centers with prior leadership as the counseling services director at Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio.
Since 2010, Hunt has served Portland State University with a mission to center mental health as a core facet to student success and wellbeing. Within SHAC, she and her team have created innovative practices to increase student access to mental health care, such as same- or next-day access to counseling consultation appointments; expanding transgender health and mental health care services; enhancing group therapy, psychoeducation workshops, Mindful Moment for classrooms/meetings; and most recently, successfully transitioning all counseling services, including LD/ADHD evaluations, to a telehealth platform.
Hunt has made connections across divisional and departmental lines to promote student and faculty/staff wellbeing through her involvement in the CARE Team, Interpersonal Violence Task Group, Healthy Campus Initiative, University Public Safety Oversight Committee, Student Experience Committee and the Reimagine Campus Public Safety Committee. She has consistently contributed to and promoted a culture of care across campus through her mentoring of students and intentional collaborations with colleagues in Student Affairs, Enrollment Management, Academic Affairs, Global Diversity and Inclusion, Finance and Administration, Office of Information Technology and Athletics.
Dana Tasson, Associate Vice Provost for Student Health and Wellbeing, wrote “[Hunt] has enhanced our community by setting an example of how to adopt a culture of care and help-seeking in our daily work, and through her generous mentoring has helped countless students and colleagues through difficult times. I often think of [Hunt] as one of the key people who ‘takes care of’ our community. However, it might be more accurate to say that she helps us learn how to better take care of each other.”
The Mary H. Cumpston Award for Service to Students is given annually to an academic professional or university administrator, without academic rank, who has demonstrated excellence in the area of service to students. Mary H. Cumpston was a beloved colleague who truly embodied the meaning of excellence in service to students at Portland State University.