Counseling and Higher Education

Having grown up in the northwest Chicago suburbs and completed her B.S. with honors in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1972, Janice Miner Holden became certified to teach and taught high school psychology for 11 years. Since completing her M.S.Ed. and Ed.D. in counselor education at Northern Illinois University in 1988, she has been a member of the University of North Texas Counseling Program faculty where she served for 12 years as chair of the Department of Counseling and Higher Education and is currently professor of counseling. Beginning with her doctoral dissertation, Professor Holden’s primary research focus has been counseling implications of near-death experiences, after-death communication, and other transpersonal experiences — those that transcend the usual personal limits of space, time, and/or identity. Among over 90 publications and 100 national and international presentations, she served as lead editor of the 2009 Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation and co-authored the textbook Theoretical Models of Counseling and Psychotherapy, now in its third edition. She has served for 10 years as editor-in-chief of the International Association for Near-Death Studies’ peer-reviewed Journal of Near-Death Studies.

Professor Holden is a Texas Licensed Professional Counselor-Supervisor, a National Certified Counselor, and an American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (ACISTE) Certified Mental Health Professional. For her career-long research on and advocacy for people who have had transpersonal experiences, Professor Holden was awarded the Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling’s 2013 Research Award and the American Counseling Association’s 2015 Gilbert and Kathleen Wrenn Award for a Humanitarian and Caring Person.