Sailee Karkhanis Rath, Ph.D.

About

Sailee Karkhanis Rath

I’m Sailee Karkhanis Rath (I publish as Sailee Karkhanis), and I’ve been an Assistant Professor of School Counseling in the Department of School Psychology, Counseling and Leadership at Brooklyn College, CUNY, since September 2025. My research, teaching, and service all come back to one commitment: preparing school counselors to protect and advocate for K-12 youth in an increasingly digital world.

I came to counselor education through schools in India and the United States. As a Gandhi Fellow with the Piramal Foundation (2016–2018), I led professional development for 48 government school educators in Rajasthan, and afterward I worked on strategy and capacity-building projects in education and social enterprise. I then trained as a school counselor at Vanderbilt University, with internships in elementary, middle, and high schools in Metro Nashville Public Schools, and went on to earn my Ph.D. at the University of Iowa.

Education

  • Ph.D., Counselor Education and Supervision, University of Iowa, 2025
    Dissertation: Lived Experiences of Counselor Educators Training School Counselors to Address Cyberbullying in K-12 Schools (Advisor: Dr. Yung-Wei Lin)
  • M.Ed., Human Development Counseling (School Counseling), Vanderbilt University (Peabody College), 2021
  • B.A., Economics, University of Mumbai, India, 2015

Licensure

I’m a Licensed Professional School Counselor (Practitioner School Services) through the Tennessee Department of Education.

You can find my honors, fellowships, and awards on the Recognition & Awards page.

Art

Three of my artworks, Serengeti, Explicit Freedom, and Love is Love, were shown in the Art of Healing Exposition, which featured work from WHO Art to Act for Health (2021–2022).

Research and public work

My research focuses on cyberbullying, digital harm and how school counselors are prepared to respond, along with generative AI in counselor education, professional dispositions and counseling assessment. See the Research and Publications pages for details. I also built Lantern, a free atlas of cyberbullying law for school counselors and educators.