Maximizing Counseling and Psychological Services Impact 

        According to Derek Bok, a renowned former president of Harvard University, part of the mission of higher education is to produce college graduates with the "qualities of intellect, imagination, moral character, and emotional maturity.”  In contrast to his more encompassing view, many people think the mission of higher education is academic achievement and career preparation. They  neglect the more comprehensive psychobiological system that is the whole human being.  A person’s  basic values, beliefs, goals, and life skills are the internal structures that primarily determine that person’s success and happiness in all life areas–including academic and career areas.  Typical classroom learning has an impact on the whole human being, but may neglect  important parts vital to every student’s success and happiness in life. Who should know more about these key inner human factors than psychologists/counselors?  I believe that we have a unique perspective and knowledge to contribute to the mission of the university and to the development of its students. 

        What is the mission of a university counseling center?  In this year 2004 it seems that the overwhelming majority of centers have become almost entirely psychological therapy and referral centers.  The focus of most centers is upon individual psychological counseling/therapy for personal, developmental, and psychological problems.  In addition many centers offer other types of services which they generally see as secondary to the main mission of providing individual counseling/therapy.  These secondary services often include counseling groups,  workshops, Masters or Doctoral level training (which also provides more individual counseling), consulting within the university community, special presentations to classes or groups, etc.  This type of university counseling center is often called Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS)  or something similar.  This has increasingly become the dominant model at our own CSULB CAPS.

        The question of this paper is, how can university counseling centers have maximum impact upon students’ lives? Is the current model the model that has maximum impact? Not only have centers narrowed the types of services they offer, increasingly many counseling centers have narrowed their focus to individual therapy for the treatment of psychological disorders and  reduced the emphasis on normal developmental issues.  I question both trends.  First, I question the over-reliance upon individual therapy. Second, I question the increasingly prevailing  medical-illness model that human beings can be described by a diagnostic manual.  I believe that both trends undermine the impact of counseling centers and the cost-effective delivery of human development services.

        In this paper I will argue that the most desirable role of a counseling center is to use a system-approach and attempt both expensive, individual therapy for a few and (much) less expensive approaches for impacting a much larger number of students, other members of the university community, and the institution itself.  The end result would be a counseling center with far more impact than the increasingly dominant model in most centers.

        My comments come from reflections on my 31 years in the CSULB counseling center.  They come with a certain sadness of seeing our own center change from the Counseling and Human Development Center  (CHDS) that had developed and maintained several major ongoing programs  affecting the lives of thousands of  students each year to the current Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) center that almost predominately focuses upon individual therapy and outreach efforts that serve only a small number of students.  We also are involved in consulting , university governance, and other activities that can have significant indirect impact upon students.  But the numbers of students served and the total impact is far less than when we had a strong (continuing) direct-service program emphasis.  Since the focus of this paper is on the past and future, I prefer not to make specific comments about recent program attempts or anyone currently employed at our institution.  However, I hope that our very capable current staff, director, and other administrators will listen to what I have to say and give program development greater priority in the future, even if they do not personally want to create programs.

        For anyone who might misconstrue my comments as a critique against the value of individual therapy, I would like to be clear that I believe individual therapy is an essential and primary role of university counseling centers.  For anyone who relegates examining numbers of students affected by our efforts as “bean counting,” remember that each number represents a real person who may benefit from  our efforts.

        I propose three major changes.  First, that more effort be made to understand, identify, and communicate content that is effective in transforming human’s lives (life skills, beliefs, values, etc.); second, that more programs be created which impact the psychological lives of large numbers of university students; and third, that students be directed toward more cost-effective help as much as possible.  Return to index

NOTE:  Since this article was written, I have completed a research project on the Success and Happiness Attributes Questionnaire (SHAQ), which was deigned for college students, thought it has been used more by non-college adults.  SHAQ's scales were developed to measure key life skills, and the research results strongly supports both SHAQ's utility and the importance of the life skills for college and life success. It is available free online to anyone, and may be useful for college programs.  Go to:  www.csulb.edu/~tstevens/success

         

The Mission and Programs of the Counseling and Human Development (CHDS) Center

 The CHDS mission

        In my early years at CSULB (1973 to 1980), Dr. Ken Weisbrod was the architect of the CHDS mission and its programs.  Ken looked upon the mission of the university as a mission to foster human development in ways that would help our graduates achieve happier, healthier, more productive lives.  He realized that the classroom was the primary means for this development and that the academic side of the university focused upon discipline-related and career student development.  It was his belief that psychologists who look at the whole person from a more learning-developmental and values-oriented perspective can help students develop aspects of themselves that are not adequately addressed in the typical classroom.

        He saw that it isn’t just the relatively few students who walk into a counseling center that need this “whole-person” development, it is a much larger population of students who need to develop their values and beliefs, self-management skills, interpersonal skills, emotional coping skills, learning skills, career planning skills, and much more.  He didn’t see students as a diagnostic profile of psychological disorders from the diagnostic manual, but as complete human beings  in a stage of personal growth in many life areas.  He saw the CHDS not as a psychological disorder treatment and referral center, but as a place to help students develop their potential for leading happy, productive lives.

        Viewing the mission of the CHDS as affecting the lives of massive numbers of students presents a whole different point of view than viewing CAPS as a place where we can best meet the needs of those who happen to come in the front door.  The first view challenges us to develop effective programs with high impact.  The second view challenges us only to develop high quality individual therapy and similar services for a few students. How successful was the CHDS in its mission?  To answer that question, we need to look at its programs and their outcomes. 

 Development of the CHDS programs

        Ken Weisbrod didn’t see himself as a master architect who was to build a number of programs according to some master plan.  Instead tried to identify high student need areas and he looked for people who could design programs to meet those needs.  His approach was to “hire good people and turn them loose.”  In fact he did much more.  He used his position and personal effectiveness to match up people with needs, encourage them to develop  programs, give them all the time and resources he could muster, and pave the way for program institutionalization. In addition he would publically praise the program director and program at every opportunity and never take any credit himself.  He was the “one-minute manager” personified.  He did what Walt Disney did at Disneyland: go out and see what was going on, give assistance, encourage, and provide meaningful financial and other support.  He gave freedom and responsibility to the leaders and expected results.

        The result of his efforts was the development of a number of major ongoing programs that have impacted the lives of tens of thousands of students.  Many of these programs exist today, but they are no longer related to CAPS.  Also, the program directors all loved working with Ken and within the CHDS umbrella.  That umbrella fostered a special synergy between the various CHDS parts and people.  We were always helping each other out and supporting each others’ programs.  The program directors enjoyed working in an environment where they felt like they were part of a team that was providing innovative and valuable services to large numbers of students and having a significant impact upon the university as well.  We were constantly seeing needs and opportunities for each other to fulfill.  It was fun to be a part of it.

        The reason that the program directors split from CHDS should be a lesson to any director who wants to develop programs.  The directors each told me that they left because the director who immediately followed Ken “drove them nuts” with his style of micro-managing.  Other areas of the university were happy to get these prosperous and high-profile programs, so the directors left with their programs.  The cost to the university was that the special cooperation between programs disappeared because we no longer were all part of CHDS; we no longer had  program manager meetings, and there were new barriers to interaction created by institutional boundaries.   Return to index

 

The CHDS programs 

        I will describe some of the programs developed at CHDS under Ken Weisbrod to give an idea of both what was done here and what can be done.  They include (but are not limited to) the following:

 The Learning Assistance Center (LAC).  Ken hired Frank Christ to develop the LAC.  Frank had developed a smaller, but similar center at a small college.  Even though Frank didn’t have a PhD, Ken hired him because he believed that Frank could make an important contribution to the academic success of CSULB students.  The LAC that Frank developed achieved national recognition, and Frank was instrumental in helping universities throughout the nation develop their own LACs. Frank developed funding from Academic Affairs and gradually increased the size of his staff. He also effectively trained and used volunteers from the university and surrounding community. This way of developing people and funds from sources outside of CHDS was a common way that CHDS programs grew and prospered on lower internal CHDS funding.  The LAC saw several thousand students each year and continues to serve many students today long after Frank’s retirement.

 The Academic Advising Center (AAC).  Dr. Pat Gerlach had been involved in a variety of projects to help students with their academic success while she was completing her doctorate and before she came to the CHDS.  She developed the Business Undergraduate Advising Center at CSULB before arriving at CHDS.  Even though Pat did personal counseling, her real interests were in helping students succeed academically and professionally.  At the time all advising was done by generally untrained faculty.  Pat was disturbed by the terrible state of advising-- especially for undeclared majors.  So she started the “Porta-Centers” on a shoe-sting budget.  She got graduate counseling students to either volunteer or work for minimum student wages to stand at these wooden centers near the sidewalks. She had one in the administration building courtyard by what is now Enrollment Services and a second on upper campus.  She prepared many pamphlets and got academic departments to do the same.   President Horn saw her efforts and endorsed them.  Her Porta-Centers averaged about 20,000 contacts per year.  Eventually she got more funding and started the Academic Advising Center.  She mentored the current director,  Marilee Samuelson.  The AAC continues to be an effective program helping thousands of students each year.

 The Testing Office.  What is now the current Testing Office which administers student testing of many types started as a CHDS program headed by Dr. Bill Abbot.  Dr. Richard Cantey was associate director and Dr. Van Rousos was the psychological testing officer. The service began with psychological testing and academic-related testing.  It has changed and grown through the years, and split from CHDS after Ken left for reasons cited above. 

 The Faculty Development Center.  Dr. David Whitcomb had a special interest in consulting and team building.  He regularly held very productive workshops for academic departments and colleges at CSULB and elsewhere.  He also offered these workshops occasionally through the Chancellor’s Office due to the excellent reputation he gained.  David was particularly interested in professional growth, and saw a need for faculty development.  He founded the CSULB Faculty Development Center, and was the Director for several years.  That center has continued to serve faculty well beyond David’s retirement.  Many students must have benefited from the help given to faculty for classroom instruction and many other aspects of their work.

 International Education Center (IEC).  Dr. Russ Lindquist saw that our many international students needed help they were not getting at the time.  With Ken’s support he developed the IEC.  He also got additional funding from both Student Services and Academic Affairs.  The IEC saw hundreds of students every year and has become the Center for International Education, which is a strong program today.  

Veterans Affairs Program (VAP).  During and after the Vietnam war, CSULB was flooded with veterans from that war who were receiving special federal assistance.  At one time we had more than 9,000 students (the largest in the U.S.) in this program. Ken hired Frank Noffke, who had his MFT license and had been in charge of the Student Union and the construction of the current Student Union building. Ken hired Frank because of the combination of his license and his administrative abilities.  Frank was  given two primary roles.  He developed and managed the new VAP and he oversaw the Community Counseling Services.  Frank oversaw a program that assisted these veterans in a variety of ways and even worked with our U. S. senator to pass additional veterans legislation.  Frank received congressional recognition for his efforts.

 Explorations in Communication (EIC).   During the late 1960's and early 1970's students were actively protesting the Vietnam War at CSULB. Long Beach Police were called in at times, and there was considerable tension on campus.  The EIC program was started as a joint project of the United Methodist campus minister Norm Self,  his wife Nan, and the CHDS.  The original purpose was to help ease the tension caused by the war and civil rights concerns. The founders recruited volunteer faculty, graduate students, and others who received training and supervision from CHDS staff to organize mixed groups and build open communication between different factions involved in the conflicts and with anyone who wanted to participate.  During the 1974-75 academic year the EIC had 57 small groups and 88 small group facilitators.  After the war, the focus shifted under the leadership of Maurie Brennen to personal development and developing interpersonal communication skills in general.  After Ken Weisbrod retired, concerns were raised about lack of leader supervision, distinctions between therapy and personal development, and liability; and the counseling center gradually phased this program out.

 EdP 191-391: Career and Personal Explorations Class.  The first year I was at CHDS, Ken invited me to attend a meeting he and Dr. Robert Swan of the Educational Psychology Department chaired.  They knew I had an interest in developing self-development courses (possibly one of the reasons Ken hired me).  So they told me about an idea to develop a course for helping students choose a major and develop themselves personally.  Bob wanted a purely career development class and Ken wanted more emphasis on personal development.  They said they wanted me to develop a new course that would do both if I was willing.  I agreed.  A week or two later, Ken told me that he had been discussing the idea with the CSULB Academic Vice-President Goodman-Malumuth, and that the VP thought it was such a good idea that he suggested we submit a grant proposal to the CSU Chancellor’s Office to fund its development.  Ken assigned me the task and told me it was due at the end of the week.  He said I could cancel all appointments and meetings to work on it.  I consulted with Frank Christ and Pat Gerlach–who both provided invaluable help. (This is an example of the synergy I mentioned above.)  The grant was funded for class development, evaluation by an outside expert, and all costs for a workshop to be given a year later for representatives from all CSU campuses to see what we did, since there were not any such classes in the CSU at that time.

        The next Fall, 1974, we started our first five sections of the course.  Its mission was to help students clarify values and career goals, choose a major, develop self-management skills, and help them succeed academically.  Pat Gerlach and I wrote the text with many written assignments to demonstrate students’ new skills.  The course included small groups of 8-12 students. These groups were led by mature class members or graduate students.  All leaders were supervised weekly by CHDS professionals (more synergy).   Lou Preston and Frank Christ also provided valuable assistance.

        We had defined measurable outcome goals and we had a research assistant and an independent outside evaluations expert who would gather data and assess the results.   We met almost all our objectives.  Students learned, chose majors, and also succeeded academically better than a matched sample of controls.  Retention was a major goal and a major reason why the Chancellor’s Office had funded our grant.  In our follow-up study, students completing EdP 191 or 391 dropped out of CSULB 50% less than the matched sample.  Our course specifically targeted EOP students who were known to have a low retention rate.  Lou Preston was instrumental in recruiting those students through his contacts with EOP and in teaching them in his section of the course.  Observation and indirect evidence credited the small groups with having a major effect on reducing student attrition.

        I received  0.25 released time funded by the EdP department for coordinating the course after the grant money ran out, but decided to move on to other projects after five years.  The course meets general education requirements for self-integration and has continued to enroll nearly 1,000 students per year for the past 30 years.  In addition our follow up CSUseminar which provided training for potential course developers from almost all CSU campuses resulted in nine campuses starting similar courses.

        In summary, I think it is important to note how the synergy provided by the CHDS and its director, its close relationship to an academic department, and funding based on perception that we were meeting important student needs that tied to the mission of the university and its current priorities  were important to the success of the program. It is important to note that except in its first few months of development, the CHDS didn’t pay for the huge amounts of coordination time, instructor time, volunteer student time, and other resources that were used to deliver this program.    Return to index

 The Intern Training Program. When I arrived at CHDS in 1973, this program was headed by Dr. Phil Gallagher.  He was a Rogerian-oriented therapist who believed in providing an atmosphere of intern self-development.  The program drew its interns from the Educational Psychology department (more synergy).  The strength of the program was that we generally got very mature returning adult graduate students who had excellent personal skills and Dr. Robert Cash’s Carkhuff-training to help them help our counselees.  They extended the number of clients we could see and helped meet the client-load so that others could do the program development activities cited herein.

        With our current director Dr. Clyde Crego’s support, Dr. Richard Cantey developed the current APA-approved doctoral internship program now headed by Dr. Michael Johnson.  This tightly-run program has continued to attract three excellent interns and achieve excellent results. Its emphasis is more upon doctoral training than service delivery or student impact. Its main benefits may be the impact on our doctoral trainees’ careers.   

Adult Re-Entry Program.  This program was begun by Dr. Marge Dole before I arrived in 1973.  She retired shortly thereafter and two graduate students, Ken Caillet and Bob Crook, administered the program for quite a few years. The program provided information, counseling, and workshops to returning adults and received a considerable amount of support from President Steve Horn.  The program helped many students for quite a few years after Dr. Weisbrod retired. It later evolved into the Women’s Resource Center and separated from CHDS.              

The Life Skills Education (LSE) Program.  EdP 191-391 was one major part of the Life Skills Education Program that I coordinated. The LSE program has included a variety of elements over the years. The program mission was to develop effective means for helping students and others grow in ways that would maximize their own happiness and effectiveness. My theoretical model views humans as collections of learned cognitions, life skills, and other habits that can be modified with new learning.   I believe that there are many modes for helping people change any particular deficit or dysfunctional system and/or grow.  The program was based upon the main theses described herein.

        Part of the original mission of the Life Skills Education Program was to develop cost-effective means to have maximal impact.  The LSE program was also based upon an assumption that before we can teach a life skill, value, or belief that can help someone lead a happier, more successful life, it is helpful to first identify and behaviorally define it.  Therefore, part of the LSE program effort was to identify and define the life skills, etc. and part was to find cost-effective means of helping people develop them.

        The life areas targeted were those that students typically come to counseling to get help with.  I sorted them into the categories of self-management, interpersonal, and learning-related life skills. The Life Skills Questionnaire (LSQ), Stevens Relationship Questionnaire (SRQ),  and Success and Happiness Attributes Questionnaire (SHAQ) were developed to test hypotheses about these life skills.  Results from research on more than 5,000 people have supported hypotheses about what personal attributes lead to success and happiness.

        To deliver cost-effective life skills training I developed a number of modes and programs during the past 31 years. They include EdP 191 described above, a self-management course, a time-management course, an assertion training course, workshops, self-instructional videotapes on self-management and interpersonal skills (14 research studies provided positive outcomes on the self-instructional tapes), short-term group and workshop projects on smoking cessation (one study which showed a 75% success rate), dating training for inexperienced daters, faculty training,  ANDY CARES--an artificial intelligence expert system computer program to help students with advising and academic success, my book You Can Choose To Be Happy: "Rise Above" Anxiety, Anger, and Depression,  a web site containing the SHAQ questionnaire and expert system to help students identify and develop life skills (http://www.csulb.edu/~tstevens/success), and a free web site containing most of the self-help materials I have written (http://www.csulb.edu/~tstevens).  About 60 people per day have visited my web sites during the past few years.  I will maintain them during retirement.

        I have enjoyed developing these different projects and programs, and at least 70,000 to 100,000 people have had direct exposure to these LSE programs during that time.  The intensity of the experience varied from brief contact with self-help materials to spending many hours completing a course.  But these experiences offer alternate means of delivering value, belief, and life skill education experiences to many people who would never have received them through individual counseling.  In fact, in most cases students taking a course have a much more intensive learning experience than even a student in weekly individual therapy sessions. They spend three hours per week in class and additional hours reading, writing, studying, and talking with classmates for 16 weeks.    Return to index

 
What program development opportunities exist in universities where there are already many programs?

        Many of the programs described above already exist on many campuses and most probably were developed outside of counseling centers.  You may be thinking that your university doesn’t need any more programs.  Maybe it doesn’t.  On the other hand, I believe that important student development needs are being massively ignored or under-addressed on all campuses.  For example, high proportions of graduates from every university probably have poor self-management and interpersonal skills of various types (see Appendix A).  What can be done to create new programs or classes to address these vital needs? Dealing with even one part of this huge need can easily consume the career of any counseling-faculty member.  Once you begin to think from a system perspective and from a human developmental perspective, you will find you will have many potential opportunities and challenges.  Find the ones that fit your own interests and talents best.   Return to index

        

What is Impact?  What is Cost-Effectiveness? And How Do We Measure Them?

What is impact?

        Counseling centers can have many types of impact.  I believe that the most important goals should be impact on the health, happiness, and productivity of our students over the period of their lives.  Shorter term goals include academic success and happiness and personal growth while a student.  Other types of impact that might be of secondary importance include outcomes like impact upon the institution, impact upon the university community’s perception of the counseling center, and impact on the wider profession or world.

        Intuitively we can see that programs like the Learning Assistance Center (LAC) and Explorations in Communication (EIC) must have  lots of impact.  Each year hundreds of students participated in these programs and reportedly received benefit related to important academic and personal development goals.  But we need to think more seriously about both the content and the means of delivering the content to better understand what impact and cost-effectiveness really is.  That understanding is especially important for making hard decisions about which effort to pursue or fund. 

 What is cost and cost-effectiveness?

        Cost is relative to the point of view of the administrator of the funds.  Often we are most concerned about three kinds of cost: cost to the university, cost to the division, and cost to the counseling center. There are other types of cost.  For example, the time which volunteers contribute costs them something.  However, we are focusing on the point of view of the university and of the counseling center.  In the case of the LAC the full-time director was a counselor paid out of the CHDS budget and the assistant director (and many other costs) were paid out of the Academic Affairs budget. From the point of view of CHDS, the LAC only cost us one position yet had a fairly large impact on both student lives and on the university community’s view of CHDS.

        The LAC also used a significant number of volunteers from within the university and the surrounding community to help students.  Considering that they had several thousand sessions with students per year, it would seem that individual contacts were relatively inexpensive.  So it was a program with very good cost-effectiveness from both points-of-view.  A program like EIC relied almost entirely on volunteer group leaders, but required a half-time professional position to administer it.  It was quite inexpensive and many people reported benefits. Therefore its cost-effectiveness was also probably high.

        These examples may seem obvious.  But many programming choices aren’t so simple.  What if budgets are very low and many students are coming into the counseling center asking for services?  How can a such a center have both individual counseling and structured human development program activities?  How can it meaningfully compare the impact and cost-effectiveness of very dissimilar types of programs like individual counseling, group counseling, workshops, self-help materials, classes, or other treatments?   Return to index

 Are there any simple measures that we can use to compare impact of different treatment modes? 

        Ideally, we would all be doing many controlled experiments to test our methods; but almost no one does that because it is too costly.  So many counselors simply ignore the issue.  Isn’t there some way we can compare different treatment modes such as individual counseling and classes?  Before I answer that I want to underline the fact that for some types of problems and treatment goals, individual counseling is necessary and/or much more efficient and cost-effective (see above).  However, if we make the assumption that some problems can be addressed nearly as well or better by structured learning activities, then we can find effective means other than individual counseling. I believe that evidence supports such an assumption. For any type of treatment  I suggest we use as a crude measure of impact (1) the hours of directed goal-related learning along with (2) some evaluation of the quality of the content delivered and received relevant to the developmental goals. 

 Hours of directed goal-related learning with effective content 

        What is it that we are trying to effect in students?  The goal of human development is learning–learning new values, beliefs, knowledge, skills, and habits.  Ideally, we should be measuring changes in these.  For simplification, lets call them all cognitions.  Also, we should be prioritizing what particular cognitions we want to change according to the goals of the learning experience. What are the change agents’ and students’  learning objectives?  Once we start looking at impact from this point of view, then it may change our perspective. 

        In many practical, applied settings, we can’t really measure these changes.  So what can we do?  We can measure samples of change  such as verbal reports, written work, observed changes, etc.  We can also measure, or at least estimate, the amount of time that  students spend engaged in relevant learning experiences generally known to be effective.  Let’s call this last measure the hours of relevant directed learning (or thinking). In the literature this is often called time on task. This measure would include activities like individual counseling, listening to a lecture, conversing about the subject, reading, or personal reflection. 

        In addition to time on task, we can often measure results.  We can give exams in classes that measure learning outcomes. That is something we all understand, and so does the academic community.  We can do limited research measuring learning content outcomes and consumer ratings as well.  For example, I almost always give consumer feedback forms out to workshop participants. 

 Control and accountability 

        When a student is taking a political science class, he/she might be reading his/her textbook, when suddenly he/she gets a new idea that he/she associates with a parent.  The result may be that the student  spends an hour thinking about his/her parent.  This could be a positive outcome of reading the political science text, but it might not help the student understand political science any better.  An instructor exerts control or influence on the student to the degree that the student thinks about and learns content related to course goals.  If the student is examined on that content, then the student is also being held accountable.  The hour thinking about text material was under the influence and accountability of the course goals, the hour thinking about the parent was not.  Both types of learning  may have been valuable, but setting specific goals and testing for goal-attainment will have a much more uniform and predictable effect upon a whole group of students. Building in control mechanisms to maximize the focus of thinking upon the issues that related most directly to the personal development goals will tend to maximize that goal-related directed thinking and learning. Both incidental and directed learning are important, but if we advertise a goal, we should be accountable for results related to the goal.    Return to index

 

Comparing Individual Counseling To Other Treatment Modes

         Most counselors and administrators assume that it is impossible to compare these different learning modes.  The way they would be compared in a good experiment would be to compare the measured results of these different treatment conditions.  That would be the best measure, and more research like that is needed.  Some research like that has been done, and generally all methods seem to work for content to which they are relevant and with students who are capable and motivated to use that particular method.  In summary, all of these methods have been shown to be effective for many types of content with many types of students.

        In many practical, applied situations this type of research isn’t much help.  Examples of common student development goals might be to help students achieve greater academic success, do effective career planning, improve their interpersonal relationships, increase self-esteem or autonomy, improve decision making, or better cope with their emotions. The practical question becomes, how can we maximize our impact on these goals?

 Advantages of individual counseling

         If our overall mission is seen as focusing on those students who walk into the counseling center, then most counselors believe that individual counseling would be most effective.  Students who come to counseling generally have rather specific goals they want help with.  They want to get over a relationship breakup, reduce anxiety about an overwhelming load, feel less depressed, improve grades, choose a major, improve family relationships, increase self-esteem, etc.  To maximize help with a student’s specific and somewhat unique problems, it is important for the counselor to understand the specifics of that student’s situation and give specific help that addresses those problems.  No class, workshop, or book can do that.  That student might have to read several books or take an entire 3-unit course to find an answer that a counselor could give to that specific problem in one hour.  The more unique and complex the problem, the more the student needs individual counseling, and in many cases nothing will substitute for the effectiveness and efficiency of individual counseling.

        Often the impact of individual counseling goes beyond what is normally easy to compare.  How many counselees after one or more hours of counseling didn’t act on suicidal intentions, improved relationships during the rest of their lives, were more successful in their career, made life-altering decisions, or increased their happiness for many years?  These dramatic outcomes don’t occur with most clients, but they do occur frequently.  Classes, workshops, and books can have the same effects; but a suicidal client’s odds of overcoming those impulses are probably going to be much greater going to a competent therapist than going to a class or reading a book.

 Mixing individual counseling and structured learning to increase the impact of individual counseling 

        A one-hour counseling session that causes the student to constructively reflect on the problem for 5 hours, read for 2 hours, and talk to friends about it for 3 hours  has contributed to 10 directed learning hours.  Of course we have no simple way of measuring this learning, and the counselor may not do any conscious directing of mental activity at all outside of therapy.  However, this example shows how individual counseling can potentially increase it’s effect by the counselor consciously directing outside thinking-learning activities.

         Some of the most effective counselors know when to use structured learning in counseling sessions and when to give homework assignments to clients that direct learning.  Also, the most effective teachers give individual help to students with special needs whenever they can.  Both types of learning experiences are valuable, and both exist on almost all campuses.  However, most therapists underutilize structured learning experiences, and fail to maximize their potential impact because of this failure.

        Another way to increase the impact of individual counseling (in general) is through flexible and effective appointment scheduling.  Counselees often learn the most during the first few sessions; and in many cases  more time is spent on maintenance and support after those first few sessions. Scheduling weekly sessions until a client gets the basics, then doing something else for maintenance and support could cut costs. Using  self-help or low-cost support groups, workshops, classes, self-help materials, and  less frequent appointments are alternatives.  That approach frees up time to have high-impact sessions with clients who otherwise would have received no help at all.  Certainly the impact on them will be far greater.  However, counselors often get into a mind set of letting clients schedule weekly appointments until the client chooses to stop even though the sessions are less productive.  Monitor the productivity of your sessions and try different scheduling practices and referral practices for clients who are past the high productivity stage of therapy.

 Advantages of structured learning

        For general developmental needs or more extensive training (e.g. assertion training, emotional coping, time-management, learning skills, career planning, etc.) structured learning activities are probably both more effective and more cost-effective.  A student who has a general problem of being too nonassertive and not having good conflict-resolution skills may be helped better by reading a book or taking a class that can present a lot more information in a more structured manner than individual counseling can.  The course or book author is an expert in that particular area and has spent considerable time organizing the material to be maximally effective, whereas a counseling session is much less organized with much less time to present a great deal of highly organized learning material. 

 Structured learning example–a class 

        What is the cost-effectiveness of university classes as a mode of delivering student development compared to other modes.   Let’s examine the EdP 191: Career and Personal Explorations class.  The program director received 0.25 released time to coordinate the program. The instructors and all classroom costs, were paid by Academic Affairs. Staff also provided about five hours weekly of supervision to about 24 small group leaders.  Thus the five supervision hours had effects upon about 240 students versus five students in individual therapy.  Therefore, costs to the Counseling Center staff time were minimal, and the impact of the staff time was great. 

        When we proposed the class, counselors asked how we would get students to spend time exploring their values, gathering information, solving personal problems, etc. in a class for credit. We used two basic methods.  One was to create written assignments that caused students to put this exploration into writing.  Writing has several advantages.  It forces the students to think (probably more clearly), it provides evidence of their thinking, and it can be used for grading and evaluation of exercises.  Finally, it can help the students improve their writing fluency and writing skills.  Since the writing was done mostly outside of class, it was a way of directing student thinking and learning during additional hours of the week–increasing course impact.  Having to perform for course grades also provided an additional incentive to work and focus not present in counseling sessions.

 The class structured groups

        Each class was divided into groups of 10-12 students, each led by a group leader who was being trained and supervised by a counselor or advanced graduate student.  Almost all group leaders used structured activities for each group session from our group leader manuals.  The group leaders were volunteers from the class or from the counseling masters program. The sections generally enrolled about 40 to 50 students, so they were lower cost than the average university class.   While the groups involved administrative and supervision cost, it allowed us to deliver much more individualized attention and help in fairly large classes.  If the classes had been limited to 20-30 students, instructor costs would have been much higher.

        Did the groups create more impact?  It appeared from our data that the increased sense of connection with the university and its academic goals and the help the groups provided were a substantial part the class’s reduction of attrition.  It seems to me the groups were a very valuable component of the class and were cost-effective.

 A new goal and way of thinking

        A major part of this paper’s theme is hoping that vice-presidents, counseling center directors, and counselors will think differently.  One of the best ways to make a difference is to start making cost-effective impact a major institutional and personal goal and constantly examine each activity from this point of view.  I suggest we should all be continually asking ourselves the key question, “What can I do to increase impact and/or reduce cost? “ In addition, we should be seeking to facilitate development of cost-effective activities and programs that will  increase impact.  Give priority to programs that can potentially be institutionalized. They will have impact over many years–often beyond the career of the developer.

        Using volunteers, media, computers, and the clients themselves to deliver services can save money and may even have some advantages over using professionals from counselor-faculty.  What programs have worked in other places to help create more impact? You may wonder how you will fund this new program. Sometimes, if the potential impact is strong enough (or in line with administration or grant-agency goals) you may attract outside funding.  In many cases identifying those people and goals can be critical.  If you can’t find them, then you must make the most of the resources you have. Start small and hope that success will increase support. If not, stay small if it is a helpful, cost-effective program.  One of the keys to finding staff time may be finding creative ways of meeting the needs of those students seeking individual counseling.  It is a challenge, but I believe that the payoff to our students, our universities, and possibly the long-term funding of our centers is worth it.   Return to index

  

Recommendations For Creating A Counseling Center That Balances Individual Counseling With Ongoing, Effective Student Development Programs

 

Recommendations To A Student Services Vice-President

* Make it clear that you want balance between individual counseling and ongoing programs impacting larger numbers of students.   

 * Make program development a top-priority in hiring–both counseling center directors and counselor-faculty. Hire someone with experience, interest, and intention to develop and facilitate development of ongoing programs for students to help them achieve academic, career, and personal success.

 * Insist that the counseling center provide data on numbers of actual student contacts categorized by type of contact. Have them distinguish between different types and lengths of contact. 

* Provide financial incentives or disincentives for future positions and programs to encourage program development.  

* Meet with program directors yourself, encourage them, and provide resources for their programs.  Your recognition and support sends a strong message to everyone in your division that you  support constructive programs.  

* Use your position to help get program approval and support from agencies within your division, in other divisions, and wherever else it is needed.  You are in a powerful, high status position and people will listen to you when they won't give the program director the same attention or priority.   Return to index

 

Recommendations To A Counseling Center Director

        First, recognize that you are the key person for development of programs in your center.  I have a special list of do’s and don’t’s for you. 

DO’s

* Consider my comments about Dr. Ken Weisbrod.   He was an excellent role model.  All of the program directors mentioned above who developed and managed these successful programs would tell you how valuable Ken's support, encouragement, and efforts to help get as many resources as possible to support the program were to the success of each program.  

* Hire people who have the motivation, theoretical orientation, experience, and skills to develop and manage ongoing programs.  Some people enjoy creating, building, and managing programs, but most counselors don't. Key questions include the following:

a. What is their track record?  Successful and happy experience of creating, teaching, and managing is almost essential.  What programs or activities have they initiated and managed in their work, school, and personal life? 

b. How much do they look at the big picture from a system or management perspective as they view the university and the mission of the counseling center?  Most counselors are almost entirely focused on helping individuals and being therapists in a traditional limited role. They feel that individual therapy is their calling, and they often have little interest in teaching or developing and managing ongoing programs.

c. Does their theoretical orientation support program development and especially educational approaches to personal development and overcoming psychological problems? Counselors whose theoretical approach is grounded in contemporary psychological theories such as learning theory, cognitive theory, and experimental developmental theory are much more likely to view psychological disorders as disorders caused by maladaptive learning and experiences that can be overcome by new learning and experiences.  They are more likely to believe in the efficacy of direct instruction type methods that have shown to be so successful in helping people develop their potential and overcome psychological problems. 

Counselors who are grounded in a more Freudian, psychoanalytic, or its more recent child "psychodynamic" approach often have no theoretical model that can relate direct instructional methods to effect change.  They are schooled in a model that views psychological problems and therapy as sets of phenomena somewhat unrelated to natural learning processes (of which experimental psychology knows so much).  Many of these therapists have not actually had intensive learning psychology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, or other more "academic" psychology courses. Many have attended schools where  the curriculum was filled with courses about therapy and courses only providing superficial coverage of the above mainstream psychological topics.  Hiring counselors from major universities with well-rounded psychology departments may help overcome that problem.

d. Does the counselor have teaching experience and enjoy teaching courses and workshops--especially involving self-development topics?  Counselors with this type of background can develop and teach classes, workshops, and other group activities that are probably the best single medium for delivering larger scale help to larger number of university students.  Counselors without teaching experience and interest are unlikely to develop or teach courses or workshops.  My observation is that people who are used to working with large groups are also more likely to think from a system point of view.

e. What I have said in general does not apply to all cases.  Of course there are exceptions to these recommendations, but I suggest that if you are looking at a candidate as a possible exception, you should even more strongly consider his/her teaching and program development track record. 

* Publicly espouse a program-development philosophy and communicate your intention to establish excellent programs. Make it clear to everyone on the staff that you support program development and educate those who don't support or understand it (which may be the majority of the staff).  Be willing to lead and take some risk. 

* Give priority and incentives to program direction activities and needed resources.

a.  Make it clear to everyone that you will trade direct service and other staff time or responsibilities for program direction that will provide more bang for the buck in terms of services to students.  Assign a high amount of direct services time to all and reduce it for those who develop programs.

b. Give released time, secretarial support, money for marketing, and whatever else is needed.  Ask the program director what you can do to help, and tell him/her that you are at their disposal to help whenever you can.

c. Use your position to facilitate contacts with key people, approval, and support in needed areas throughout the university.

d.  Speak positively about the program and its director at all possible opportunities to help raise support from everyone.

e. If giving time for program development means taking some time away from individual counseling, then find creative ways of coping with that situation. Prioritize appointments; use creative scheduling (e.g. biweekly for many); use practicum graduate students, interns, or volunteers to provide services with appropriate clients; and use more groups, workshops, self-help materials, and classes as referrals after a small number of sessions.

f. Give the program director more flexibility to work where and when he/she wants and more freedom to schedule needed appointments, etc. even if it occasionally interferes with other center activities.

g. Resist complaints from staff who view the program development activities as less important than immediate needs of the center, as unwarranted special privileges for the program director, etc.  Explain that this opportunity is available to all staff who provide adequate proposals you approve. 

*  Constantly be on the lookout for student needs and opportunities for meeting them–especially in areas related to academic success and human development.  Try matching staff interests to problems and needs, then providing the time and other types of support they need for development of the program. 

* Manage by objectives and results.  Have program developers supply program mission, goals, semester objectives, and their schedule and budget needs at least once per year.  Once efforts have begun, have them report on outcomes to objectives.  Some of those objectives should relate to numbers of students and numbers of directed learning hours (or other estimates of outcomes and cost-effectiveness).  Subjective user ratings should also be included.  If it is possible to do better types of research as part of the project, encourage research and/or publication. 

* Get the support of your Vice President and/or other key administrators.  Administrators usually think from an administrative-system point of view and look at the bigger picture.  They are more likely to see the value of programs than your staff.  Get support from them and get them to voice support for programs directly to your staff.  They will be impressed by what higher administrators want, and it will make your job easier.       

DON'Ts

* Take credit for the program.  Give it to the program director even if it was initially your idea.  Your payoff will be much greater in terms of program director motivation and appreciation.  Just as with Ken Weisbrod, the word will get out about your key role. 

* Micro-manage.  Do as Ken Weisbrod said, “Find good people and turn them loose.” Establish clear boundaries of control of  your responsibilities and those of your program director. This is his/her program–not yours! But you can be a very big help. 

* Take over the program (or give it to someone else) unless absolutely necessary.  This could be devastating to the program director and may cause lasting resentment and undermining of your pet projects in the future.  It can also scare everyone else who thinks about taking some initiative. 

* Neglect opportunities to take on additional programs because of a fear of making your administrative job more difficult.  It might, but it can also make it much more rewarding, fun, and beneficial to students, your division, and the university. Synergy is a great thing. 

* Tell your program directors how great everything is to their face and take actions that undermine them behind their backs. Examples include sharing your doubts with other staff and  making less than a maximum effort to provide adequate funding and other types of needed support.  It takes all the steam out of your program director(s) and the word gets out to all the staff, so no one will trust you. 

* Pass responsibility for negative actions upward or outward.  In an effort to avoid seeming negative or to avoid confronting staff, don’t tell your staff that some administrator above you gave an unpopular directive that you suggested to that administrator.  If you do it very often, people will find out, and they won’t trust or respect you.  Be clear (but diplomatic) about your reservations or views that conflict with staff. The long-range payoffs are worth the immediate discomfort.   Return to index

 

Recommendations To A Program Director

        You are the key person with respect to the program for which you are responsible.  The buck stops with you.  The good side is that you have the freedom to try to create whatever programs key administrators will let you attempt.  If you are successful, your program, students, the university, and your career can benefit greatly from your efforts.  Even if you are only mildly or moderately successful, you can learn and accomplish a great deal. However, the bad side is that it can be a lot of work, and you can run into barriers from many places–including your own colleagues or administrators. Sometimes, even those who want to help create barriers, because they have their own agendas. 

        After 31 years worth of a variety of successes and not-so-successes, I still look at my projects as the most creative, fun, and impactful things I have done in my career.  I feel that way despite running into many barriers through the years.  To me, the fun and impact was worth the hassle and extra (usually unappreciated) work.  The best moments of my career relate to my program development, and those projects are what defined my own separate identity better than anything else.  At the end of your counseling center career what will you answer when you ask yourself questions like, “What did I contribute that was uniquely different from what any qualified person would have done in my position?” or “How much total impact did I have on the lives of people during my career there?”  If you have developed successful programs, they can be a very satisfying answer to those questions.  Following are a few simple tips for program directors.       

DOs

* Look at the university from a system perspective.  Focus on needs of many students that are related to your own mission and competencies. 

* Listen to what key administrators view as priorities.  Try to find connections between their priorities and student needs with which you have program-development ideas.  Then try approaching those administrators and asking for support or use that theme as a selling point within your own office. Ask for their ideas and listen with respect.  Use them when you can. 

* View students from a cognitive, behavioral, learning, developmental perspective.  Learn how to use behavioral analysis to understand specifically what students need to learn to achieve the desired outcomes. 

* Develop your own teaching, management, marketing, research, and entrepreneurial skills.  These are key skills for program developers.  You won’t have time to systematically develop all of these.  But recognize your pre-existing strengths and weaknesses in these areas. Work on developing underdeveloped skills, and seek collaborative partnerships with others who can complement your skills.   

* Develop your own expertise in the program area of interest.  Read relevant research, read about what others have done, talk to anyone with knowledge of the area–especially experts.  Search your own memory for related information.  Create an ideas list and explore many ideas weeks or months before you actually propose the program, if you have the time.  

* Look for successful program and program-director role-models. Look everywhere you can.  Examine the best ones in detail. If possible, interview the program director(s) of these programs with a list of questions for which you need answers. 

* Get suggestions and feedback from key people early in the thinking process.  Approach others with your hypothetical ideas.  “What if we were to develop a program that ...?”  “What do you think it should look like?” “I want your honest feedback, don’t hold back any negative thoughts you have.”  “What do you think about this idea...?” 

* Keep in regular contact (even regularly scheduled meetings) with key administrators or others whose support you need.  Seek their opinions and ideas, and let them know your goals and outcomes regularly.  Present hard evidence when possible. Write reports that state your mission, goals, and outcomes and submit them regularly, at lease once per year. 

* If there is a problem with someone, try to resolve it immediately.  Don’t avoid the problem.  However, you must get to know the personalities of key people, and find what works best with each one. 

* Carefully assess your needs for released time, clerical support, computer support, duplicating, student assistance, staff support, etc. and try to get approval for these needs early.  If you can’t get it, do the best you can.  However, also determine the minimal support needed, and don’t proceed unless you get it.  Otherwise, you will fail and only feel frustrated and look bad. Sometimes you can invest your own time and money in a project initially and get it off the ground.  Once others see benefits, then they may be willing to support it.  That is often a good strategy for starting a program with almost no support or budget.

* Find people who have genuine personal interests that will support your program and recruit their help. They can be students, faculty, administrators, counselors, clerical staff, or others.  Those who believe in your project or who have their own interests in mind (e.g. completing a thesis or practicum, getting research published, getting supervision, etc.) can be invaluable help–especially if you have limited funding, which is normally the case. 

* Give lots of credit and praise to those who help you.  Try to do what you can to see that their own interests and goals are fulfilled.  

* Keep a two-dimensional to-do list to track complex projects.  Write task areas on one axis and days of the week on the other.  Then you can track budget, marketing, personnel, content, research, etc. areas separately.  Use this for effective planning of details and for following up to make sure things get done right in a timely manner.  It is important that you be seen as competent and effective in doing what you say you will do, or your program will suffer.   

* Have a good evaluation plan and report results.  Don’t be overly optimistic about your results in your presentations.  Be conservative and realistic. Unexpected problems will probably arise. If you get better than conservative results you will look good.  If you don’t, you have done what is expected. 

* Have alternative survival and/or escape plans.  What will you do in worst case scenarios?  What if no students show up?  What if you can’t recruit helpers? Plan for these contingencies.  First, contingency plans will help you deal with possible real disasters.  Second, just having those plans in your head will help reduce your anxiety from fears that the worst scenarios might happen. 

* Develop permanent funding sources.  Often programs start small or with outside temporary funding such as grants. If you plan to begin with “soft” money funding and you want the program to continue indefinitely, then it is vital that you develop more permanent modes of financing the program.  

* If you are in an environment where there is almost no support for program development (or it is even seen as a negative activity), then find creative ways to have greater impact that rely almost entirely upon your own efforts.  Don’t depend upon the efforts of those who don’t support or who even undermine your efforts.  Create your own groups, workshops, classes, research projects, or programs that just depend upon you and need minimal or no funding.  Try writing self-help or other materials that can be distributed; or create a web site that can be seen by anyone in the world.  You don’t need others’ support to do them, and these projects can provide satisfaction to you and benefit to many. 

* When you run into barriers don’t be too discouraged.  Remember, all successful programs run into barriers.  Just pick yourself up and find some new ways of rising above the problem and fulfilling your mission.  Keep your mission of creating maximum developmental impact on  students lives and the broader community in mind constantly.  It will provide you with the energy to keep going even if all those around you seem to not care.  After all, you care and you are the one that will make the difference.  At the end of your career, you may ask yourself if you followed your dreams or just quit when the going got tough. Make others create the barriers, don’t create internal barriers.  If possible, find others who will provide emotional support including a spouse, relatives, or friends who aren’t connected with the university.  Yet to motivate myself, the crucial question I asked myself is,  Do I have integrity to my own mission and goals? 

DON’Ts

* Don’t make enemies.  Treat everyone with respect and kindness–even those who create barriers and treat you badly.   

* Avoid problems or talk behind people’s backs (no passive aggression). However, at the same time be assertive and diplomatically confront negative behavior directed toward you and your program as soon as possible. If you know someone is working against you, go talk with that person, listen to their negatives, and try to assertively and diplomatically negotiate. 

* Hide or be defensive about your own or your program’s problems.  Instead try to find the reasons for the problems and find creative solutions to them.  Make this process as open as possible. 

* Make definite commitments to results you aren’t sure you can produce.  It is far better to be tentative and conservative and not make promises.  Focus on your program goals and potential to help needy students.  Compare to current efforts. Usually, there is nothing that compares to what you are proposing. 

* Brag or over-sell your own efforts.  Give the credit to those who have supported and helped you.  You can talk about your efforts and it is important to present positive outcomes when relevant.   But learn the delicate skill needed in the humility-ability balance.  Learn to present the effects and value of the program without taking personal credit.  Others will learn who is responsible.  When you need released time, be clear about the time this project takes. 

* Lose contact with key administrators or supporters.  Keep meeting with them regularly–although perhaps less often--even after the program is successful. 

  Return to index

 

Real, Life Changing Impact: Are We All Missing Something?

         Up to this point I have only discussed alternate modes and process of delivering psychologically-related content.  I’ve only briefly  discussed the nature of the content itself.  I have a few comments to make about that content .  We psychologists are thoroughly trained through years of exposure to a subculture of psychologists.  Psychologists have our own world view, values, organization(s), laws, literature, etc.  We may often take ourselves so seriously that we depreciate other subcultures that are also involved in human development.  We believe that we are better than the rest.  We have more scientific knowledge, we are more professional, etc.  Yet in terms of impact on the millions of people in our larger society and the entire world, how do we compare to other human development cultures such as religion, 12-step programs, educational programs, and sports-recreational programs?

        What total impact do we have in the U.S. compared to these other programs?  In my many years as a therapist I have been impressed by the number of people I have seen whose lives were transformed by Alcoholics Anonymous, a church, or a motivational speaker-writer such as Dr.Wayne Dyer.  I suspect that many more people believe that a 12-step program or religion transformed their lives than psychotherapy or anything else we have to offer. They would probably say that their anxiety and depression was affected more by their adopting the new world view, value system, and habits of these movements than the help they received from therapy.  Yet 12-step programs and religions are much less expensive than psychotherapy. 

        While we undoubtedly have much to offer clients that these other human development movements don’t, we often fail to recognize that 1) many of our goals overlap and 2) these other movements may be more effective than we are in some respects.  I believe that there are several factors that account for the effectiveness of these programs. However, a full discussion of these factors would go beyond the scope of this paper.  Nevertheless, believe that their content is a dominant factor in these programs’ effectiveness.

         I would like to comment about the content of what we deliver.  I believe that people’s personalities and lives are most effected by their highest, superordinate values, beliefs, and goals.  The great philosopher-theologian Dr. Paul Tillich said that a person’s ultimate concern becomes his/her personal god and that this ultimate concern is the single most important determinant of the person’s personality and behavior.  I support that hypothesis and have seen countless examples of it in therapy.  I have also seen first-hand how people changing top values, beliefs, and goals can change their lives almost instantly and significantly.  That top value or belief change may come from individual therapy, a workshop, a class, a book, or simply by personal reflection.  There is nothing magic about the delivery mode.  The magic is in the content.  Any of these delivery modes can deliver powerful, life-altering content.  A person will be far better off to get great content from a book than mediocre content from an expensive therapy session.

        The current trend toward the medical model that uses the DSM to categorize human behavior and then treat problems with medication  can be helpful in many cases, but it far oversimplifies the description of complex human beings and fails utterly to recognize most important causal dimensions that relate to their happiness and success.  Contemporary psychological research and theory ( including fields such as cognitive, learning, developmental, social, personality, and clinical psychology) have been largely ignored by many practitioners.

Possibly this happens because the DSM and medications are so simple and advertised with billion dollar budgets.  But people aren’t simple, and everything a person does is learned.  We can’t change our heredity, but we can overcome it by learning effective life skills and functional life values and beliefs.  It is our learning that makes the critical difference that we can control. In the university we are in a place of higher learning, and teaching these key beliefs, values, and life skills is our mission to the community we serve.

        The real challenge of maximizing impact is 1) to use a variety of delivery methods effectively and 2) to present the best content to have maximum impact upon students.   In retirement, I am moving on to new challenges.  I leave you with the challenge of going beyond what we have done in both service delivery modes and content to maximize impact and cost-effectiveness.  Keep asking yourself the question, “How can I maximize my impact for human development over a period of years?”   Return to index

 

Appendix A: A Sample of Brief Structured Learning Module Topics

         Developing structured self-development learning modules can be very useful in a variety of settings and can have significant impact through the years.  These learning modules can be in the form of written handouts, chapters, books, web brochures, audio and/or video media, computer programs, etc. They can be a few minutes in length up to several hours.  They can be made available in a self-instructional format that can be given to individuals; or they can be presented as part of a group, workshop, class, or other experience.

        The greatest number of presenting problems in our center over the years have been interpersonal problems like romantic and family relationships and emotional problems with anxiety, depression, and anger. The following list includes many topics covering issues  frequently addressed in therapy.   Many students seeking counseling can greatly benefit from using structured learning modules as adjuncts to counseling. 

        In addition these topics are related to concerns that face almost everyone, and the field of psychology has developed effective means for coping with these concerns.  It is likely that relatively high proportions of our students have low abilities to cope with many of these concerns, and making this important life knowledge available to large numbers of students through courses or other means can have a great impact upon their lives and the lives of those around them.  For many of these topics, I have created written materials available (free) on my web site at http://www.csulb.edu/~tstevens. My Success and Happiness Attributes Questionnaire (SHAQ) at http://www.csulb.edu/~tstevens/success attempts to measure some of these key attributes, provides feedback and research data, and makes recommendations for how users can use on-line or other help. These materials represent my own attempt to address these issues.  Bookstores and the Internet are filled with others’ similar attempts.  Future programs can make better use of the materials available and/or create their own tailored for their own needs.   I suggest to any counselor-faculty member that spending your time developing or finding materials to use with individuals and groups can greatly increase your impact. 

 

Self-Management Skills Focus

* self-exploration techniques

* values clarification

* goal-setting techniques

* time-management

* decision-making

* organizing overwhelming tasks

* self-motivation techniques

* emotional coping strategies

* health habits

* coping with sleep disorders

* managing panic attacks

* dealing with depression

* anger management

* anxiety and stress management

*dealing with loss and grief

* dealing with transition

Interpersonal Skills and Assertion Training Focus

* empathy and listening

* assertive request

* conflict resolution skills

* bargaining and contracting skills

* meeting people skills

* conversational skills

* intimacy

* dating and romance

* other interpersonal areas such as persuasion, humor, and management/leadership can also be approached in a similar manner.

 

General Beliefs and Values

* you can choose to be happy

* routes to happiness

* self-worth (unconditional love of self and others)

* self-confidence (self-efficacy, conditional upon goal-success)

* positive versus negative world views

* deficit versus abundance thinking

* internal versus external control of your life

* resetting goals and expectations underlying negative feelings

 

Other areas like learning and study, career planning, and other areas can be modularized in a similar way.

  Return to index