Student Personnel Workers Research Articles

Reverse culture shock in students returning from overseas

The reentry experiences of 66 overseas-experienced American college students were examined to determine if reverse culture shock influenced self-reported problem severity, willingness to see a counselor, and student support service usage. This survey study revealed significant findings that bear upon student services programming conducted by college student personnel workers. First, returnees experiencing a high level of reverse culture shock were more likely to report more personal adjustment and shyness problems/concerns than were returnees experiencing a low level of reverse culture shock. Second, willingness to see a counselor for personal problems/concerns was not necessarily related to one's level of reverse culture shock. Finally, a negative correlation was observed with regard to reverse culture shock and student support service usage; as reverse culture shock increased, service usage decreased. Programming implications are discussed.

ETHICAL STANDARDS of the American Association for Counseling and Development (3rd Revision, AACD Governing Council, March 1988)

PREAMBLEThe Association is an educational, scientific, and professional organization whose members are dedicated to the enhancement of the worth, dignity, potential, and uniqueness of each individual and thus to the service of society.The Association recognizes that the role definitions and work settings of its members include a wide variety of academic disciplines, levels of academic preparation, and agency services. This diversity reflects the breadth of the Association's interest and influence. It also poses challenging complexities in efforts to set standards for the performance of members, desired requisite preparation or practice, and supporting social, legal, and ethical controls.The specification of ethical standards enables the Association to clarify to present and future members and to those served by members the nature of ethical responsibilities held in common by its members.The existence of such standards serves to stimulate greater concern by members for their own professional functioning and for the conduct of fellow professionals such as counselors, guidance and student personnel workers, and others in the helping professions. As the ethical code of the Association, this document establishes principles that define the ethical behavior of Association members. Additional ethical guidelines developed by the Association's Divisions for their specialty areas may further define a member's ethical behavior.

Review of Helping Students Manage Stress: New Directions for Student Services, No. 21, March 1983.

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1984, Vol 29(1), 75. Reviews the book, Helping Students Manage Stress: New Directions for Student Services, No. 21, March 1983 edited by Elizabeth M. Altmaier, Ursula Delworth, and Gary R. Hanson (1983). This book is designed to help the student service personnel worker become acquainted with a wide variety of special findings and techniques. The editor's introduction indicates that the purpose of this volume is to overview critically theory and research on stress to permit their extrapolation to programming designed to reduce stress on the campus. One underlying assumption is that campus life itself contains many elements generating chronic stress among students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

Student Attitudes about the Transfer Process

As early as the mid-1960's the growing numbers of transfers from junior and community colleges alerted administrators and student personnel workers to the special needs of transfer students (National Center for Educational Statistics, 1970). This concern for the transfer student was reflected in an extensive array of research studies on the transfer student. Research suggested that transfer students may have special problems in adjusting to the social environment at a new institution (Cross, 1968; Rose and Elton, 1970), in maintaining grades achieved prior to transfer (Knoell and Medsker, 1965), in dealing with the stress experienced during the first year following a transfer (Anstett, 1972), and in arranging financial matters (Knoell and Medsker, 1965). The experience of transferring may be complicated not only by the academic demands of a new institution (Knoell and Medsker, 1965), but also by the need to find a new role within a larger and more diverse student body.

Effective Psychological Education: A Sample Program with Evaluation

College student personnel and mental health workers need psycholog ical-education programs whose effectiveness can be empirically verified. This report describes such a program in sufficient detail to give profes sionals a clear model for study and application to their particular popu lations. Shostrom's (1963) Personal Orientation Inventory, an instrument specifically designed to measure growth during therapy, was used to evaluate pre- to post-training change. Data gathered give strong support of the effectiveness of this program in promoting actualizing behavior.

Douglas Heath's model of maturing

AbstractUltimately student personnel workers are concerned that students become mature and competent persons. Heath's work offers a comprehensive view of the development of the whole person.

The great American recession … 2

American educators have plenty to worry them in the higher and further education sector. Discussions with administrators and student personnel workers have highlighted a number of topics which have relevance to us in this country. Many young people are asking for their higher education to be more vocationally relevant; so they are questioning the desirability of spending four years in a Liberal Arts College studying subjects which have no bearing upon ultimate careers. There has been over‐production of PhDs in certain subjects, and the economic argument for higher education is much less powerful nowadays than it was a decade ago when young people could be persuaded to aspire to a College education because it would pay off over a lifetime's employment.

The Model Merry-Go-Round

(A.C.E., 1949) is accused of defeating as many seekers of help as it has aided. Training programs are criticized for failing to demonstrate professionalism, and it is noted that the field has not demonstrated that its members can make effec­ tive contributions in the processes of institutional leadership and decision mak­ ing. Various counseling approaches are ridiculed for their time-limited charac­ ter, and it is suggested that traditional counseling techniques predispose poten­ tial clients to avoid counseling centers at all costs. Overall, the field is refuted for its lack of systematic approach, cohesive philosophy, and meaningful contribution to student needs. What circumstances lie behind this dismal characterization of the profession? Penney answers this question by suggesting that a fundamental conflict exists the expectations which student personnel workers bring to their jobs from training experiences, and the expectations held for them by administra­ tors, faculty members, and students. These conflicts are viewed to be symp­ toms of a much larger confrontation raging within education between tenants of existentialism and essentialism. It is asserted that the needs of stu­ dents in the 1970s and the years beyond will necessitate the adoption of an existentialist approach to student personnel work; and yet, during this time, essentialists will rule the house, dooming such an orientation to failure. As a result, Penney suggests that student personnel workers will tend to move away from counseling roles toward administrative ones; and, not surprisingly, he is convinced that this is a self-defeating trend that should not be allowed to continue.

Student Personnel Workers in Faculty Collective Bargaining

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsRonald M. AaronRonald M. Aaron is assistant to the dean of students at Baruch College of the City University of New York.

The needs of women returning to school

Many women who have experienced an extended interruption in their formal education find that their decision to return to school is both serious and significant. This article describes the special needs of women returning to school and analyzes these needs on both psychological and practical levels. The author offers suggestions about how colleges in general and student personnel workers in particular might help meet these needs, and she highlights programs and practices developed at one college. The discussion is based primarily on the experiences of women who are regular matriculated day session students at an urban commuter college. Observations are drawn from interviews, group discussions, and a questionnaire.

The intentional democratic community in college residence halls

Residence halls have been one of those great unmined potentials in higher education. To a student personnel worker they have presented a captive community in which all the magic could be worked. But it rarely happened, mostly because we knew more about the process of in loco parentis than about the process of students in situ. Crookston has dangled the carrot once more in his conception of an “intentional democratic community.” Only this time we have an operational model based on Crookston's knowledge of social‐psychological theory. In his model he tells us about 10 elements of the community that must be manipulated, 9 design considerations, and 7 stages of development. The complexity of designing and implementing such a community will—and should—frighten some, but the possible payoff will attract others to experiment and try. Heaven only knows, the events of the past decade have borne out too well his basic thesis that “unfortunately, the goal [effective democracy] continues to elude us.”

Transactional Analysis and the Student Personnel Worker

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsJ. Douglas HickersonJ. Douglas Hickerson is dean of student affairs, Berea College, Kentucky.

Measuring the Benefits of Student Personnel Work

Of the seven words composing the title of this article, five pose problems of definition and application. Since three of the words form a well-known triad (student personnel work), the task implied by the title reduces to answering a series of questions regarding the nature of student personnel work, the character of its benefits, the measurement of those benefits, and the relationship of those benefits to costs. I doubt that we can arrive at a satisfactory definition of what student personnel work is by describing what student personnel workers do. First of all, the tasks subsumed under the term include too many diverse and unrelated specialties, including admissions, records, registration, financial aids, residence halls, organizations, governance, counseling, placement, and student unions. In fact, it has always seemed to me that student personnel folk have attempted to seize upon everything involving students except the classroom and academic matters pertaining directly to it. In addition, student personnel workers have sometimes sought to provide or to control credit courses covering general orientation, study habits, sex knowledge, marital problems, discussion of current issues, etc., etc. The list of student personnel activities given by the Council of Student Personnel Associations

Effect of information on students' perceptions of counseling and their willingness to seek help.

Beginning with Warman's (1960) study, research has consistently indicated that students (and other campus groups) perceive personal-social problems as much less appropriate to discuss with counselors than do counselors themselves. The present study was the first one which examined the efficacy of speciallydevised information in altering students' perceptions of the of personal problems for counseling and their willingness to seek counseling for such problems. It was found that students who received both written and orally-presented information showed an increment on these dependent variables, while students receiving only written information did not. In light of past research, it was concluded that written information may inform or remind students of the availability of counseling, but, in itself, does not alter their impression of the types of problems appropriate for counseling. EFFECT OF INFORMATION ON STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF COUNSELING AND THEIR WILLINGNESS TO SEEK HELP Over a decade ago Warman (1960) found that college counselors viewed personal adjustment problems as much more appropriate for students to seek help with at a university counseling center than did other campus groups (clients, faculty, student personnel workers). Warman attributed the discrepancy to the fact that counseling psychology had undergone much change over a brief time period. Thus, campus groups other than counselors continued to adhere to the once-valid belief that counselors treated primarily educational-vocational problems. Since this belief was no longer valid, Warman suggested that counselors must better educate and orient their publics about the range of student problems with which they dealt. Because several years have elapsed since WaLman's research, it would seem reasonable to expect that the job of educating the university community about the problems with which counselors should and do work has been largely accomplished. Recent research, however, indicates that the communication gap uncovered by Warman continues to exist (Gelso, Karl & O'Connell, 1972; Resnick & Gelso, 1971; Wilcove & Sharp, 1971). Counselors still view personal problems as much more appropriate for clients to seek help with from counseling centers than do clients, non-client students, faculty, student personnel workers and parents. In addition, students generally feel they have little info -mation about the counseling centers on their campuses (Gelso et. al., 1972; Snyder, Hill & Derksen, 1972). While all studies on appropriateness have underscored the need to inform ore effectively the university community, no research heretofore has examined the efficacy of various modes of information dissemination in correcting the miscommunication between counselors and other groups. Thus, much time and effort have been spent identifying the problem but next to no energy has been exerted in studying means of remedying it. The general purpose of the present study was to determine whether students' perceptions of the kinds of problems which are appropriate for discussion with counselors and their willingness to seek help for various problems can be altered by specially-designed written and orally-presented information. Past research . has typically found that students and counselors agree on the of educational and vocational problems for discussion with counselors (Gelso, et.al., 1972; Wilcove & Sharp, 1971). As indicated, it is in the area of personal-adjustment problems that marked discrepancies exist. Thus, the -specific purposes of the present study were to (a) determine if students' perceptions of the of discussing personal problems with counselors and their willingness to do so can be increased by specially-designed information and (b) compare the efficacy of written information with information that is presented both orally and in writing. Because past research has raised the question of whether perceived knowledge about-a counseling center is related to actual amount of knowledge (Snyder et.al., 1972), a secondary purpose of the study was ;-;o compare the effect of information on students' perceptions of the amount of knowledge they possessed about a counseling center.

Organization Theory and the Preparation of Student Personnel Workers

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsReuben R. McDanielReuben R. McDaniel, Jr. is associate dean of students and professor of business management, University of Texas.

A Molar Model for the Training of Student Personnel Workers

This article describes a molar model for the preparation of professional student personnel workers. Five propositions are presented as a theoretical model. Although full formalization is not claimed, it is hoped that this model will spur further thought and experimentation.

A New Model for the Chief Student Personnel Worker in Higher Education

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn Paul EddyJohn Paul Eddy is associate professor and coordinator of Supervised Experiences in Student Personnel Work in Higher Education at Loyola University of Chicago. William M. Klepper II was formerly at Trenton State College.William M. KlepperJohn Paul Eddy is associate professor and coordinator of Supervised Experiences in Student Personnel Work in Higher Education at Loyola University of Chicago. William M. Klepper II was formerly at Trenton State College.

PPS/SPS: similar but different

Pupil personnel services and student personnel services are compared on organizational patterns, professionalization problems, and relationship to counseling. Both entities have unique problems but are not without commonalities. Student personnel workers fare better in organizational patterning and counseling, while pupil personnel workers have fewer professionalization problems. Future prospects for both services have inherent promise.

Campus unrest: worldwide challenge for student affairs

Student protest is demanding more worldwide attention. The college‐age population is increasing rapidly and a larger segment of this group is enrolling in colleges. Many students are disillusioned with the hypocrisy and outraged by the social ills and injustices they see around them. They are particularly upset that universities, while often failing to provide an educational program and climate that are relevant and personal, also seem to be collaborating with those forces in society which create and perpetuate the ills. Student personnel workers are urged to review their services in light of the protest and to help their institutions heal themselves and provide responsible leadership in the larger society.

Vocational Development of Student Personnel Workers

The vocational development of Student Personnel Workers (SPW) was examined by collecting data on sex, age, present position, degrees held, college major, reason for and age on entering student personnel work, and persons influencing subjects to enter such work. Data were collected on 131 SPW from a diverse group of 10 institutions. Analysis and extrapolation of the data indicated 5 hypotheses: (a) many female SPW bypass or delay marriage in favor of union with an occupation; (b) prior to entering the field, SPW exhibit considerable vocational indecision; (c) persons entering student personnel work do so primarily under the influence of normative social pressures and through the process of identification; (d) most SPW enter the field by accident or because of a desire to nestle in a nurturant environment; and (e) SPW tend to have a non‐intellectual orientation.