By Kirk Bowden, PhD, MAC, NCC, LPC, NAADAC President

Congratulations to Ottawa University’s Masters level Addiction Counseling Program! The OU program received the International Association of Addictions and Offender Counselors (IAAOC) 2017 Outstanding Addictions/Offender Program Award. The award was presented at the IAAOC’s membership and awards meeting on March 17th at the American Counseling Association’s Conference and Expo in San Francisco, CA. (IAAOC is a division of ACA).

OU’s Addiction Counseling Program was founded in 2007 and redeveloped in 2013. The redevelopment goal was to build a high quality addiction counseling program available online. An online platform provides accessibility to students across the country; even students that live in remote locations. During the redevelopment process, OU determined that NASAC Accreditation was important to students searching for a high quality addiction studies program. OU was granted NASAC Accreditation in 2014. In addition to NASAC Accreditation, OU is also a NAADAC Approved Education Provider and a NAADAC Organizational Member.

OU is a nonprofit university founded in 1865 as a collaboration between the Baptist Church and the Ottawa Indian Nation. The Tribe endowed 20,000 acres of land. In exchange, the Baptist Church agreed to build and operate a college with a promise to provide free education to the Ottawa Tribe. Free education to the Ottawa Tribe continues to this day.

Ottawa University administration offices and residential campus are located in Ottawa KS, approximately 40 miles southwest of Kansas City.  Over the years, OU added campuses in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Indiana. In 2008, OU began offering degree programs fully online.

Congratulations to Ottawa University from Advances in Addiction & Recovery,
NAADAC’s official publication.

Kirk Bowden, PhD, MAC, LPC, SAP, is the President of NAADAC and serves on the Editorial Advisory Committee for NAADAC’s Advances in Addiction & Recovery magazine. While serving in many capacities for NAADAC through the years, Bowden also serves as Chair of the Addiction and Substance Use Disorder Program at Rio Salado College, consultant and subject matter expert for Ottawa University, a past-president of the International Coalition for Addiction Studies Education (INCASE), and as a steering committee member for SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), Partners for Recovery, and the Higher Education Accreditation and Competencies expert panel for SAMHSA/CSAT. Bowden was recognized by the Arizona Association for Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors as Advocate of the Year for 2010, and by the American Counseling Association for the Counselor Educator Advocacy Award in 2013, the Fellow Award in 2014, Outstanding Addiction/ Offender Professional Award in 2015, and most recently the California Association for Alcohol/Drug Educators’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.