Rick Balkin, Ph.D., LPC, NCC is a Professor, Department Chair of Leadership and Counselor Education, and Coordinator of Educational Research and Design in the School of Education at the University of Mississippi. Rick is a Fellow of the American Counseling Association; past-president for the Association for Assessment and Research in Counseling; and former editor of the Journal of Counseling & Development, the flagship journal of the American Counseling Association. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief for the International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling. Rick began practice as a professional counselor in 1993 and has worked in academe since 2003. Rick has over 100 publications, which include textbooks on assessment in counseling, research, and the counseling relationship, published tests and technical manuals, peer-reviewed manuscripts, book chapters, and conference proceedings. His counseling experience with at-risk youth was formative to his research agenda, which includes understanding the role of counseling and relevant goals for adolescents in crisis and counseling outcomes. He has published in the areas of religious diversity and forgiveness and developed a model and measure for working through issues of forgiveness and conflict. He is the author of Practicing Forgiveness: A Path Toward Healing, published by Oxford University Press.