USC Rossier’s Atheneus Ocampo and Kortney Hernandez co-designed Counseling as an Act of Love, a course grounded in critical theory, social justice and relational practice. Ocampo is an associate professor of clinical education whose scholarship and teaching are grounded in love as praxis, centering critical consciousness, decolonization and relational practice. Hernandez is an educator in the Master of Education in Educational Counseling program whose teaching integrates relational care and community connection, to create spaces where complexity, vulnerability and growth are embraced.
What was the spark that told you this class needed to exist now? Why here and why now?
Atheneus Ocampo: This course is really an invitation into a pedagogy of love, as articulated by prominent educators and scholars Paulo Freire and Antonia Darder; into imagination and love as an ethic, grounded in bell hooks’ work; and into collective becoming, informed by activist Adrienne Maree Brown.
Why now? In many ways, why not? The course is timely, but also timeless. Love here is not sentimental, it’s political. It’s a method and a lens through which we activate our values and our professional practice. Because that work is deeply human and relational, it moves beyond any single moment. We wanted something in the curriculum that could evolve without chasing trends, something grounded in growth, humanity and becoming.
Kortney Hernandez: That question “Why here, why now?” touched my heart because we were asking ourselves the same thing. There was something that needed to be birthed in this moment.
During our curriculum redesign, we kept circling around love. We already centered it in our classes, so much so that students joked about it. Eventually, we realized we needed to name it and be unapologetic. This is a course about love, not just as an emotion, but as something students practice daily as human beings and counselors.
How did the course grow out of the existing curriculum?
AO: The course emerged from a broader revision of the Educational Counseling program. Kortney and I previously taught a course called Equity in College and Career Access. We entered that space already grounded in love as a lens, which raised the question: why not name it explicitly?
Rather than treating counseling as a technical exercise, we wanted to emphasize it as a living praxis, something students embody daily, shaping how they show up and how they imagine the communities they serve.
The syllabus frames love as a “living relational force.” What does that mean?
KH: That framing draws from Antonia Darder and Paulo Freire, who understood love as political. Love is something you feel, yes, but it’s also something that moves through relationships, built through care, trust and commitment. Cultural critic bell hooks describes love as a set of practices: care, responsibility, trust, knowledge. Those practices require intention and accountability. By naming love as a living relational force, we’re signaling that this is ongoing work, something you commit to, not something you simply feel.
AO: Darder also describes love as political clarity, a North Star. Freire wrote that love is necessary for liberation and bell hooks reminds us that love disrupts systems built on fear and dehumanization. All of that is foundational to this course. Education is entangled in histories of harm.
Education is entangled in histories of harm. How does the course help students confront that while imagining something more liberatory?
AO: The course creates space to name and engage systems of domination—racism, sexism, coloniality—while acknowledging our own entanglement within them. We’re both participants in and disruptors of these systems. Rather than offering fixed solutions, we invite students to sit with complexity, contradiction and tension. Those tensions become openings for ethical practice rooted in love and care.
KH: Love isn’t just softness, it’s accountability. Some conversations are uncomfortable because people don’t always agree. But the work is learning how to hold one another’s humanity in those moments. Students bring history, current events and their lived realities into the room. Learning to hold that for themselves and with those they serve is central to being an educator or counselor committed to liberation.
What do activities like “Holding Change” and “Mapping Love” offer students?
KH: Those assignments disrupt the idea that the professor holds all the knowledge. “Holding Change” is student-led; students co-create how they sit with tension and complexity. “Mapping Love” acknowledges that love can’t be defined once and for all, but we can trace how it shows up in our lives right now. The assignments evolve as the course unfolds. That flexibility is part of practicing love.
AO: Education often operates with inherited logics that uphold domination. Imagination helps us move beyond them. bell hooks reminds us that definitions are starting points, we have to articulate what we’re moving toward. Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy shows us that holding change is fundamentally about love. The goal isn’t a finished product, but creating space for students to design pedagogies of love rooted in their lived experiences.
How do you hold space for vulnerability while maintaining care and dignity?
AO: At the heart of the course is relational accountability. The idea that our learning and growth are interconnected. Love is communal. In holding-change circles, students share deeply personal reflections. We hold both trauma and possibility.
KH: Unfinishedness is powerful. Freire reminds us that we can always begin again. Making mistakes doesn’t disqualify students, it’s part of becoming. We don’t hold space for students; we hold it with them.
What do you hope students carry forward after the course ends?
AO: I hope students leave knowing that we practice building the world we long for now. Love isn’t deferred, it’s enacted in the present. If they can sit with complexity, center community and embody love in daily life, the course has done its work. In many ways, our inaugural cohort modeled that for us. Their courage, vulnerability and willingness to practice love in real time shaped the course as much as any text we assigned, and for that I carry deep gratitude.
KH: We ask students to write love letters to education, to themselves, to their communities. We write love letters to them, too. I hope they carry the knowledge that love can be central to how they move through the world, especially when it’s hard.
