SCRANTON — Penn State Scranton Chancellor Marwan Wafa has announced the campus’ new professional counselor, Katherine J. Stefanelli, Ph.D., LPC.
Stefanelli is a licensed professional counselor, a national board-certified counselor, has worked for over 18 years in both private and educational settings, and is also a Pennsylvania Certified Secondary School Counselor.
She has worked as a college counselor, secondary school counselor and extension educator facilitating a workshop series on family cohesion.
In her role at Penn State Scranton, Stefanelli will work directly with students for one-on-one counseling, as well as part of the campus’ Health Services and Student Services teams to provide workshops, presentations and information on a variety of mental health and wellness issues and topics.
Her approach to assessment and therapy is client-centered and holistic. She believes each human perceives experiences through the interconnected lens of the mind, body, and soul; her own research on proactive approaches to mental wellness has influenced her stance as an educator committed to promoting preventative approaches to mental wellness, such as mindfulness and self-care.
Stefanelli is committed to the destigmatizing of mental health issues on college campuses and helping to ease discrimination in this area through education.
Her specialties and areas of interest are body image, relationships, alternative and integrative therapy (ie, guided meditation and PDMR), stress management, spirituality, and wellness.
Stefanelli holds a doctoral degree in human development from Marywood University, where she also earned both her master’s degree in clinical psychology and a post-master’s certification in school counseling. She earned her B.A. in psychology from Penn State, where she also completed a year of independent study serving as a research assistant at The Pennsylvania State University Child Study Center.
She resides in Clarks Summit with her husband Marc and their three children Kenny, Billy, and Milania, as well as her fur baby, a sassy yellow Labrador named Snowie. She is a passionate animal rights advocate and belongs to several non-profit organizations which support animal welfare.
