Jean Sunde Peterson Editor & Author

Susannah M. Wood, PhD is currently an associate professor in the Department of Rehabilitation and Counselor Education at the University of Iowa. She is also a faculty partner with the Connie Belin and Jacqueline N. Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talented Development, where she provides professional development opportunities for undergraduate students, graduate students, and practicing educators related to the social and emotional concerns of gifted students. She has received the University of Iowa’s collegiate teaching award in 2012 and the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES) award for outstanding teaching in 2015. Her research interests encompass preparing school counselors for practice, with a particular focus on serving the gifted population in collaboration with other educators and helping professionals. Dr Wood’s research has been published in such peer-reviewed publications as Gifted Child Quarterly, Roeper Review, Journal of the Education of the Gifted, Journal of School Counseling, Journal of LGBT Issues in Counseling, and Journal of Counselor Leadership and Advocacy. In 2015 Dr. Wood co-edited a special section in the Journal of Counseling & Development dedicated to counseling the gifted individual. With Dr. Tamra Stambaugh, she co-edited the book Serving Gifted Students in Rural Settings: A Framework for Bridging Gifted Education and Rural Classrooms (Prufrock Press). She regularly presents at the American Counseling Association convention the National Association for Gifted Children convention, and at conferences of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES).

Jean Sunde Peterson, Ph.D., professor emerita and former director of school counselor preparation at Purdue University, was a classroom and gifted education teacher for 24 years and was involved concurrently in teacher education prior to graduate work in school counseling and counselor education at The University of Iowa. A licensed mental health counselor with considerable clinical experience with gifted youth and their families, she is a veteran consultant and presenter nationally and internationally and conducts school-based workshops on social and emotional development of high-ability students, academic underachievement, bullying, parenting gifted children and adolescents, cultural values related to selection for gifted-education programming, prevention-oriented counseling curriculum, and listening skills for educators—all of these related to her research and clinical work. She has been an active researcher and author in her second career, publishing 9 books, 45 refereed journal articles, 44 invited book chapters, 16 articles in practitioner journals, and countless articles in other professional publications. Her research has been presented in journals such as Journal of Counseling & Development, Journal for the Education of the Gifted, Professional School Counseling, Roeper Review, Gifted Child Quarterly, Journal for Specialists in Group Work, and Counselor Education and Supervision. Her Talk with Teens books (Free Spirit) are used in many countries and are often on resource lists for youth work. Specific to working with gifted individuals are Models of Counseling Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults (Prufrock Press) and The Essential Guide to Talking with Gifted Teens: Ready-to-Use Discussions About Identity, Stress, Relationships, and More (Free Spirit). She served two terms on the Board of Directors of the National Association for Gifted Children, has received 9 national awards, and received 12 awards at Purdue, evenly divided among research, teaching, and service.