Article Published: 8/13/2025
Counseling is a constantly evolving profession. As an integral part of counseling, the practice of supervision must also change to best prepare emerging professionals and support established counselors.
The trends in supervision largely reflect trends in the broader counseling profession. Some recent trends include an expanded focus on telehealth, optimism and concern about the uses of AI, and the use of reliable outcome evaluations.
Telehealth has exploded in popularity throughout the health care world, and counseling is no exception. Supervisors must be prepared to assist supervisees with the unique quandaries that may arise from telemental health. Additionally, telehealth tools allow counselors to conduct and receive supervision over distance.
“Coming from the university level, we see more of our site supervisors, the clinical supervisors that are out in clinical mental health centers and out in school settings, doing a lot more clinical supervision online,” says Dr. Cassie Storlie, past president of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES) and Professor and Doctoral Program Coordinator for Counselor Education and Supervision at Kent State University.
“We've had 5 years now since the pandemic where we got pretty good at this. We're making sure that supervisees have that telehealth training, that they're having online sessions as part of their practicum and internship early on because it's just the way of the world.”
When providing supervision remotely or supervising a counselor employing technology, supervision requires additional considerations as well as increased attention to certain counseling fundamentals.
“There's a more attuned focus on confidentiality for clients,” says Dr. Storlie. “There's more intentionality behind how we plan for emergencies when we're on video, awareness of security for the technology, encryption, Wi-Fi privacy, and so on.”
Dr. Storlie compares telehealth to the use of home visits—a practice it has largely replaced. Although the technology is different, both practices take a counselor outside of the carefully curated office or clinic.
“You’re not able to control the environment,” says Dr. Storlie. “If somebody's not coming into your office, you're going virtually into their home, their bedroom, their kitchen. But in addition, you have to be prepared for technical issues, how to handle delayed responses and things like that. We need to think about those things that we aren’t necessarily focused on when people are coming to our offices.”
Another technology with implications for counseling practice and supervision is artificial intelligence (AI). AI is a newer technology than telehealth, and while telehealth serves essentially one function, AI has the potential for many uses. AI applications are already available or deep in development for everything from notetaking and scheduling to treatment planning or acting as a therapy adjunct. Controversially, some AI companies claim that their programs can serve as a therapist.
As AI finds its way into more and more technology products and its use becomes common, counselors need to be aware of the ethical, legal, and practical implications of using AI in practice.
In Dr. Storlie’s experience, many supervisors are still educating themselves on how to address this new and continuously changing technology.
“Site supervisors are working with universities to find out what they should know, or they're going to conferences to figure out how can this be used or not used,” she says. “When we think about AI, about our students and from a supervision standpoint, we have to think about the ways in which AI is used that can keep our professional identity strong.”
In Dr. Storlie’s view, there are both practical issues and ethical issues to the use of AI by counselors, supervisors, and educators.
“I think AI can make things easier, but it's not at a place where we would like to see it yet from a university perspective,” says Dr. Storlie. “Our universities are trying to still figure it out, and not just for the clinical parts. We're trying to figure out—does AI hold weight or not in dissertations and research? We have a lot of journals that require you to disclose AI use, but we also have publications, including textbooks, for which you cannot use AI in their development. There's a lot of different stances on it. What's most important is making sure that we're accessing best practices. And I think that that the field itself has started with some of that.”
NBCC has published the Ethical Principles for Artificial Intelligence in Counseling as a companion document to the NBCC Code of Ethics.
Counselors are increasingly choosing to specialize for many reasons. Supervisors may wonder what this increasing specialization means for supervision. Most fundamentally, is it necessary for a supervisor to share the specialty of their supervisees?
Not normally, says Dr. Storlie, although there are exceptions such as EMDR that require a supervisor with specific training.
“To be a good supervisor doesn't mean that I have to know all things,” says Dr. Storlie. “It doesn't mean that every credential that a counselor has, the supervisor must have too. It means that I have to understand developmental approaches. It means I have to understand clinical interventions. It means that I can be curious with my supervisee and still facilitate a strong therapeutic relationship between the supervisee and me. Asking the right questions and knowing how to approach supervisees regardless of specialization, I think, is fundamental.”
Dr. Storlie sees a parallel in the counseling process itself. Counselors must often seek additional education about specific diagnoses or issues.
“It’s up to me as a counselor to do that extra legwork, to ensure that we're being most knowledgeable for our client. A parallel process happens in clinical supervision: if this is something that my supervisee is asking questions about or they're trying to specialize in or getting more education toward, what am I doing to be a better supervisor?”
Outcome evaluation tools are an important part of supervision, especially when gauging the progress of a counselor-in-training. Universities use evaluations to assess the progress of counselors-in-training but may increasingly be doing so for supervisors.
Dr. Storlie’s program requires supervisees to provide evaluations of their supervisors at the end of each clinical experience for practicum or internship.
“Our supervisees are evaluating their supervisors, and our supervisors are evaluating supervisees under those same domains about their supervisee or supervisory relationship, ethics, timeliness, and responses,” she explains. “Do supervisees feel like they're growing and being heard? Those responses are also shared with our supervisors. I think that the emphasis really is just on transparency. We don't know how we're going to grow if we don't get feedback. And part of our identity as counselors is being open to feedback. It's one of the core things that we evaluate: Are you open to feedback?”
After years of advocacy and collaboration, the Counseling Compact promises to change the nature of counseling across state lines.
Right now, says Dr. Storlie, this topic is all about providing information and clarifying what is known about compact implementation.
“University supervisors are doing their part to educate students, and every year we hold a reception for all our site supervisors, educating them on what's most current in supervision and the profession.”
In addition to practical issues of applications and privileges to practices, in Dr. Storlie’s experience, discussion of the compact largely centers on the future of professional identity.
“One of the things that we often talk to our students about is professional identity when we're opening up counseling licensure laws,” says Dr. Storlie. “We want to make sure they're aware of what can happen. That was one of the things that we discussed in our most recent site supervisor reception—what does this mean? We need to be aware of these potential pitfalls in professional identity. Kudos to the Compact for coming out with an FAQ on that and addressing it. That's a huge way to show how advocacy can be done at the professional level, there can be responses, and we can have dialogue about it.”
These emerging and well-established trends show how the role of supervisor has changed. Such changes have implications for the profession beyond supervision practice, and Dr. Storlie reminds counselors that supervisors need support, too.
“When it comes to supervision, there are so many different modalities, and supervisors have so much to juggle, that they really have to be a jack of all trades when it comes to approaches and theoretical frameworks,” says Dr. Storlie. “I think that with these kinds of emerging trends, the ability to be just a clinical supervisor anymore almost feels nonexistent. We have to be mindful of what an important and special role supervisors play—clinically and administratively. That's maybe a protective thing that we see as faculty, that supervisors are overloaded, and how can we make sure that they have room to be strong advocates, to be in leadership outside of supervision.”
Although the largest and latest trends in supervision come from new technologies and seismic shifts in the counseling profession, the most impactful changes in practice can also come out of evidence-based research.
“A recent dissertation that I served as chair of, asked how do we think about the supervision of group work, not in terms of group supervision, but individually supervising counselors who are facilitating groups. How do we prepare for that? So, I think that there's more research on supervision that we have yet to uncover and investigate.”
ACES is currently developing best practices for supervision, which it will soon share. Dr. Storlie hopes that these best practices will be the next big trend in supervision.
“This last year, I served as ACES president, and we’ve had this coming down the pike. We’re so excited that the best practices in supervision will be coming out soon. We have been listening to what members want and what supervisors need, and we’re trying to address and respond to that.”
Cassie Storlie, PhD, NCC, LPCC-S (Ohio), RN (Illinois), is Professor and Doctoral Program Coordinator in Counselor Education and Supervision at Kent State University. She has held a variety of leadership positions in counseling at the state, regional, national, and international levels. She has had an active history with Chi Sigma Iota since 2003 including serving as Secretary on CSI’s Executive Council from 2016-2018. She is currently the Co-Editor for the Journal of Counselor Leadership and Advocacy (JCLA). She is a past president of the North Central Association of Counselor Education and Supervision (NCACES) where she also served as secretary (2015-16). Dr. Storlie chaired the ACES Advocacy Interest Network (2013-2017), has served as an ACES proposal reviewer/mentor, and served on a variety of ACES committees and taskforces. She chaired the ACES Bylaws & Resolutions Committee (2020-2021), was ACES Secretary (2021-2022), Co-Chair of the ACES Strategic Planning Committee (2021-2023) and recently completed her time as ACES President (2024-2025).
Dr. Storlie has served on the Professional Advocacy Taskforce for ACA (2015-2016), co-chaired ACA’s Awards Committee (2019-2020) and has chaired the Ohio Emerging Leaders program for the Ohio Counseling Association (OCA) in 2019-2020. She was awarded the NCDA’s Diversity Initiative Award (2016), Outstanding Mentor of the Year for Ohio ACES (2017), OCA’s Writing & Research Award (2019), was the 2020 recipient of JCLA’s Outstanding Article Award and received the 2021 Qualitative Article of the Year award for the Journal of LGBTQ Issues in Counseling. In 2019, she was awarded Distinguished Faculty Researcher in the College of Education, Health & Human Services at KSU. She was the recipient of ACA’s David Brooks Outstanding Mentor Award in 2022.
As a Latina, Dr. Storlie’s research is focused on leadership and advocacy and the career development of Latinx/os/as and BIPOC communities. She was senior editor for the book, Counseling Leaders & Advocates: Strengthening the Future of the Profession published in 2021. She has been funded by the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation (2015-2022) to research and support college and career readiness among historically marginalized youth in Northeast Ohio. She has authored or coauthored approximately 60 journal articles and book chapters.
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