School of Education

Rex Stockton is the Class of 1969 Chancellor's Professor in the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology at Indiana University. Additionally he is an Affiliate Faculty Member in African Studies and a Research Fellow, Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention. He has held a wide variety of academic, administrative and professional responsibilities at IU. For several years, he was Associate Dean in the Office of the Vice President and Dean for Research and Advanced Study. In this capacity, he assisted in the coordination and administration of research and academic programs. Additionally, Dr. Stockton has served as Director of the Center for Human Growth, a departmentally staffed campus/community research and counseling center. Dr. Stockton was a long time (20 years) director of the annual Paul Munger Summer Conference for counselors at Indiana University. This conference is a well-known, in-service training summer program for counselors in Indiana and neighboring states.

Over the years, Dr. Stockton has taught most of the courses in the counseling curriculum. Because of his interest in students who are beginning graduate work as well as more advanced students, he teaches a yearlong counseling internship. His research team is composed of doctoral students in Counseling Psychology and master's students in Counseling. Throughout his career Dr. Stockton has been active in counseling organizations at the state, national, and international level. These activities have given him a perspective on the development of counseling globally. Currently, he leads a project focusing on the social-emotional consequences of having HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. More information about the International Counseling, Advocacy, Research and Education (I-CARE) project may be found here.

Over the years, Dr. Stockton has directed or participated at a senior level in a series of funded research and development studies. These studies have been designed to investigate various aspects of group dynamics, evaluate human resource delivery systems, post-secondary drop-out problems, education-to-work mechanisms, and other counselor training materials and teaching strategies with a focus on group work. Dr. Stockton has published well over 100 articles and book chapters in his career. Since 2003, Dr. Stockton has focused on the socioemotional components of having HIV/AIDS primarily in Botswana. Recently, he and his research team have completed a country-wide study of HIV/AIDS patients' satisfaction with counseling. The study was reported at the American Psychological Association Convention and later in Gaborone, Botswana. This study complemented an earlier study of HIV/AIDS counselor perceptions of their training and issues related to their well-being. That study was published in the Journal of HIV/AIDS & Social Services. A prevention-related publication, Preventing the Spread of HIV/AIDS in Botswana, was published in the Cambridge Handbook of International Prevention Science in 2015. Currently, he and his research team have completed a country­wide study of HIV/AIDS pregnant mothers' feeding choices for their infants. Earlier World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations were to provide formula because of the possibility of transmitting AIDS; however, it deprived the children of the immune propetiies for other illnesses that infants were susceptible to. New WHO guidelines recommend breastfeeding for the first six months and then switching to formula. This provided a dilemma for mothers; the study was most concerned with decisions the mothers made and the reasons why.

Dr. Stockton has also developed a three-videotape group leader training for the Association of Specialists in Group Work. The series is entitled Developmental Aspects of Group Counseling: Process, Leadership, and Supervision. The American Association nationally distributes it for Counseling. He has received several major research awards for his work. For example, he is a recipient of the American Counseling Association's Extended Research Award and the Association for Specialists in Group Work Eminent Career Award. Most recently, he received APA's Division 49, the Arthur Teicher Award. Dr. Stockton is a recipient of the Burton W. Gorman Teaching Award at Indiana University and the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision's Distinguished Mentor Award. More recently In 2018 the American Psychological Association's Division 49 gave him their excellence in teaching of group dynamics award. Also In 2019 the Association for Group Work endowed a scholarship in his name. The Rex Stockton scholarship is for an international student to attend the association’s semiannual conference. The first student to be awarded will be in Puerto Rico at the 2020 semiannual conference.

In addition to his research efforts, Dr. Stockton has conducted many workshops, nationally and internationally.

As well as his consulting, instructional and research activities, Dr. Stockton has held numerous offices and committee assignments in professional societies. He is a Fellow of the American Counseling Association (ACA) and of the American Psychological Association. He is a Certificant of the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC) and Diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology. Additionally, he has served on many boards related to counseling including the American Counseling Association's Governing Council. He is a past president of the ACA Specialists in Group Work Division and the Research and Assessment Corporation for Counseling Inc. (RACC). Dr. Stockton has been honored for his years in professional activities, research, and instructional and clinical work by a special issue (September 2005) of the Journal of the Association for Specialists in Group Work.