Pat McMahon, president and CEO of Rock In Prevention, a Des Moines-based nonprofit which uses music to encourage young students to make healthy choices, has been coming to the University of Iowa campus for continuing education for more than 25 years.

McMahon was one of 132 Iowa and Illinois helping professionals who attended this year’s UI Helping Professionals Workshops, known as IHELP.These workshops provide continuing education credit as well as networking opportunities for community, agency, and education practitioners in helping fields.

The UI College of Education’s Rehabilitation and Counselor Education Department has hosted the event, formerly known as the Annual Summer School for Helping Professionals, for more than three decades. This year’s event took place July 31 through Aug. 2. Attendees could choose among five day-long workshops covering a variety of topics each day.

Joelle McDermott, a Bettendorf-based vocational and rehabilitation counselor for the state of Iowa, has attended IHELP more than 10 times, dating back to her time as a UI student earning her master’s degree in Counselor Education.

This year she attended a workshop on ethics and reports that she hopes to return again next year.

“I have always enjoyed the variety of workshops and believe IHELP is a very good value,” she says.

Harvey Joanning, who has presented at IHELP for the past two years, says IHELP is “a great resource.”

“I think it’s an incredibly helpful thing for the college to do,” Joanning says. “The people who attend get so much out of it.”

This year, Joanning’s workshops focused on “The Brain and Love,” sexual enrichment therapy, and the divorce process.

An emeritus professor at Iowa State University, Joanning also is an adjunct instructor in the UI College of Education and was instrumental in forming the college’s new Couple and Family Therapy doctoral program. He says his workshops attracted a broad range of helping professionals and drew from his extensive clinical and research work.

McMahon says the quality of instructors and the interactive workshops keep him coming back year after year. This year, he attended workshops on multicultural competence, childhood trauma, and new drugs of abuse.