Shelly Wolfe, LPC, a UA Little Rock alumna, has expanded access to school-based mental health services in rural Arkansas. Wolfe, a native of Warren, Arkansas, did not initially set out to work in education or mental health, earning a bachelor’s degree in speech communications. After the birth of her daughter, she took her first teaching position in kindergarten, which ultimately reshaped her career path.
She later earned a master’s degree in teaching and taught sixth-grade literacy. During her time teaching, she became more interested in students’ social well-being than academics. “When I was teaching, I became more interested in the students’ social well-being than academics. It became my passion to help them,” she said. She earned a master’s in counselor education from UA Little Rock and has been licensed as a Licensed Professional Counselor since 2015.
After three years as a K-12 school counselor, Wolfe joined Mainline Health Systems in 2023 as a behavioral health consultant for the Warren School-Based Clinic, returning to her home community. Her years in the classroom gave her something most counselors lack: an insider’s understanding of what teachers face daily, allowing her to hold space for those demands while helping students process their experiences and reframe difficult situations.
The school-based clinic model is particularly powerful in rural communities like Warren, which historically face barriers to mental health care including transportation, cost, and shortages of local providers. By embedding services directly in the school, the equation changes entirely. Support becomes part of the daily environment rather than something families have to seek out, schedule around, or afford. Wolfe measures success not only in clinical outcomes but in quieter moments like a student gaining confidence or simply feeling safe enough to speak.
This article is an AI-assisted summary. All facts and figures are drawn from the original report: https://ualr.edu/news/2026/04/03/ua-little-rock-alumna-expands-access-to-school-based-mental-health-in-rural-arkansas/