One-year Program Research Articles

The Impact of a National Service Experience upon Its Participants: Evidence from Ethiopia

The study presents data on the impact of a one-year national service program on the attitudes of the program's Ethiopian university student participants. Attitudes directly related to the service changed significantly. Participants became more positive in their feelings toward the service and identified with their new roles as teachers. More generalized attitudes to peasants and technological progress and attitudes reflecting personality orientations did not change. Participants indicated a number of ways in which they felt they had personally benefited from the program. On the basis of the participants' feelings about how their service experience had changed them, the study concludes that the experience might influence significantly the future lives of many of the participants.

An evaluation of alumni group psychotherapy: for patients discharged from a group living program.

IN RECENT YEARS group psychotherapy has been used increasingly as a treatment modality for discharged psychiatric patients. Coltharp¹briefly discusses the use of group therapy with patients recovering from psychoses. He reports that mass catharsis is noted, but that discussions tend to be impersonal. Others²have also discussed the use of group therapy in posthospitalization treatment. In this report, formal assessments of the results of a one-year program were minimal, but Blau and Zilbach²felt that patients showed improvement in socialization and marital and job adjustment. Both of these articles date back at least ten years to a period when group psychotherapy was only beginning to exercise its present impact. A more current article by Forer,₃based on group therapy with outpatient schizophrenics, develops a theoretical rationale and describes a variety of techniques used by the group therapist. He makes

Education for Electric Power Engineering

This invited paper was presented at the Second Panamerican Congress of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. A one-year graduate program in electric power engineering has been in operation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute since the fall of 1962; it has been quite successful, with the number of participating students increasing tenfold in this five-year period, from three students in 1962 to thirty-five students in 1967. Among a total 10 percent of students from outside the United States in the program, some are from South American countries. This program is based on engineering education, with emphasis on the electrical phase, acquired in studies leading to a first degree on the bachelor level. Completion of the program results in the Master of Engineering degree. The students devote about half of their time to electric power engineering topics, and the other half to advanced studies covering engineering economics, mathematics, and applied physics. A suggested syllabus includes a variety of recommended courses which enable the student to develop a coordinated program that is general enough to provide a well-rounded foundation for continued studies in specialized areas.

Objective evaluation of an activity treatment program for seriously regressed schizophrenic patients.

A controlled study, investigating the effects of an activity treatment program on the behavior of 18 severely regressed schizophrenic patients, indicated that a one-year program produced definite changes toward improved hospital adjustment and a reduction in symptoms of severe pathology. Psychological test results indicate that the changes were fairly superficial, little inroad being made on the schizophrenic process itself. Standard psychological procedures are limited in usefulness as some patients are unwilling or unable to co-operate. However, a highly suggestive relationship was found between co-operativeness and other measures of pathology.

Understanding Self and Organization

THE comments set forth below are based on the following experience with executive development programs for public executives: (1) a three-year program for the federal executives of the Detroit area; (2) a one-year program for the executives of the Michigan Employment Security Commission; (3) a oneyear program for the executives of the city of Detroit; and (4) two separate one-year programs for Michigan state executives.