User talk:Weatherman41

History

Early to mid 1940's: University counseling centers began formal operations, responing to the increasing educational and vocational needs of returning veterans of World War II .

1950: The Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD) was created as a consortium of mid-western counseling center directors, providing an opportunity for consultation and collaboration among colleagues. Presently, the AUCCCD contains members from 677 universities and colleges in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia .

1960s: As outpatient psychiatric clinics and services became more accessible to the general public, university counseling centers also began to provide standard psychological services to college students, including individual, couples, and group psychotherapy; vocational and personality assessment; consultative services to college adminstration, faculty, parents, and students; and crisis management among other services to the campus community .

1978: The Association of Counseling Center Training Agencies (ACCTA) was established to coordinate the trainging objectives of university counseling centers, including creation and maintanance of pre-doctoral internship and practicum programs .

Notes

--Weatherman41 (talk) 13:36, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Lehigh University Counseling and Psychological Services (UCPS)

The Lehigh University Counseling and Psychological Services (UCPS) office is located on the fourth floor of Johnson Hall, on the Asa Packer Campus of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. The UCPS primarily serves Lehigh's increasingly diverse, co-educational undergraduate and graduate student body as well as provides consultation for Lehigh faculty, staff, and parents of students.

History

During the early 1950's, if a Lehigh student needed to discuss a personal issue (e.g., feeling stressed, socially isolated), he would go to a dean, an advisor, a professor, or a friend - - and occasionally to the Placement Office. A counseling center did not exist. The Placement Office staff served some of the personal needs of students, with these primarily defined as: aiding students with job placement after graduation; administering numerous vocational, occupational, and graduate/professional school entrance exams; and providing feedback on testing for effective career decision-making, in addition to providing testing and consulting services to the Lehigh Valley community, including the local Veterans Affairs. Between the years of 1950-1951, the center's staff occasionally provided services for students to improve study habits and reading difficulties.

In the mid 1950s, the primary function of the counseling component of the Placement Office was for testing purposes. Students typically attended one session for vocational testing, and a follow-up session for testing feedback, with testing administered individually or in large groups. In fact, between the years of 1953-1954, a new testing room was built promoted as representing "the frontier of testing room design."

By the early 1960s, Everett Teal, the director of the Placement Office, noticed that discussion of students' personal concerns occupied nearly half of his staff member's time. Often, students reported deficiencies in the social and intellectual components of the campus. There were also complaints that the workload dampened student’s enthusiasm level for other college experiences. Feeling his staff was too small and untrained to provide personal counseling, Teal began hiring "psychological counselors" and created the "Counseling and Testing Service (C&T)" division of the Placement Office during the 1962-1963 academic year. Shortly thereafter, Teal conducted a self-study to compare Lehigh University's provision of mental health services to its students with the counseling services of other universities in the country. It was determined that the ratio of counselors to students in the C&T division was insufficient. In 1968, also in response to the findings of the self-study, the C&T (later called University Counseling Service [UCS]) was officially established as a separate department within the Division of Student Affairs at Lehigh University. The office was moved to a new location, on Webster Street, and soon thereafter moved to the "Health Center Building", now called "Johnson Hall," where it remains today. Andrew Edmiston was appointed as the new director of the C&T [1]. The center also employed an assistant director (Robert Panos), a staff counselor (William Sibley), a psychometrician (J. Crosby), and a secretary (N. White). At the time, the center's services included vocational/academic counseling, personal counseling, research, training of gryphons (resident assistants), psychological/career testing, and graduate/professional school testing (i.e., GRE, GMAT, LSAT. As part of first-year student orientation, students completed a vocational interest test, a personality inventory, and a questionnaire, followed by later discussion of their results and other personal issues during an individual session in the C&T. During the summer, when college students were not on campus, the C&T provided testing and counseling services to high school juniors and seniors in the area.

In the early years, the UCS also sent out a booklet to freshman parents called Life at Lehigh: A Conversation with Parents written by Dr. Edmiston. It garnered praise and written testimonials mailed in from parents and other college counseling center directors who occasionally requested permission to use parts of the booklet for their own schools. The booklet addressed the changes parents were likely to observe in their children while attending college and addressed a range of topics such as homesickness, alcohol and drug use, communication, roommate issues, sexuality, etc.

Lehigh University saw many changes in staff and services throughout the years. In 1974, the university became a co-educational institution, creating a need for female staff members at the University Counseling Service (UCS). As a result, Deborah Finnegan-Sular was hired as Lehigh's first female staff psychologist. The center also changed directors in 1987, when Edmiston retired and Ian Birky became the new director.

Birky's first decade as director brought many transitions for the center. The name of the counseling center changed from the University Counseling Services to the University Counseling and Psychological Services (UCPS). The services also changed significantly. Birky offered group psychotherapy as a primary treatment modality in the center in addition to the existing individual services. He also expanded the center's involvement in outreach efforts within the campus community, starting with the training of peer educators. The UCPS also moved away from specific career/vocational counseling, given a shift on campus from job placement to career counseling in the Career Services office. The center discontinued graduate/professional student testing and Birky added in-house psychiatric consultation by hiring Dave Schwendeman, M.D. as a part-time consultant. Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) services moved from the Dean of Students Office to the UCPS in the summer of 1995. Birky also introduced sport psychology services and began the training of practicum students.

Past Employees

Directors: Everett Teal, Andrew Edmiston

Assistant Directors: Robert Panos, Beth Golden

Staff Psychologists/Counselors: William Sibley, Deborah Finnegan-Sular, Bruce Sharkin, Joanne Regina, Madeleine Langman, Tori Bronough, Al Shapiro, Anita Sharma, George Zeo, Karen Huang, Christy Yerk-Smith, Tim Munsch, Jeff Van Lone, Joel Ingersoll

Administrative Assistants: N. White, Pat Finady, Pat Kozero, Linda Haviland, Linda Shroi, Gloria Jekels

Current Services

The keystone of UCPS services is group and individual therapy. Group therapy offers students an intensive interaction within a small group of peers (typically 4 to 8 students). Students often benefit from shared experience of their psychological strengths/difficulties, gain insight into their style of interaction, and experience emotional benefits through catharsis and altruism. Group sessions typically last 90 minutes. Full-time students can utilize group therapy on an unlimited basis.

Individual therapy involves a focused one-on-one interaction between student and counselor. Following an initial consultation about the student's needs, individual therapy often involves an exploration of a student's personal concerns. Counselors utilize empirically-supported interventions that are personalized to each student's unique needs. An individual therapy session typically lasts 50 minutes and is offered on a time-limited basis to full-time students, typically not lasting more than 8-10 sessions.

The UCPS also offers Lehigh students Alcohol, Other Drug and Addiction (AODA) services, outreach programs, and peak performance training and sport psychology services. AODA services assist students struggling with addictive substances (e.g., alcohol, cocaine) or behaviors (e.g., gambling, gaming) and provides AOD evaluations - referral and treatment for students sanctioned for alcohol or other drug offenses. Additionally, UCPS staff interacts with Lehigh students through outreach programs, providing information and promoting discussion on various topics (e.g., stress, romantic relationships). Some staff members provide peak performance training and sport psychology services to Lehigh athletic teams and individual student-athletes.

Other UCPS services include assistance in crisis management, helping students who are in significant psychological distress. The UCPS staff is also very active in consultation with parents, faculty, staff, gryphons (resident assistants), students, and administration. Psychological testing (e.g., personality, career, and intelligence assessment) is also used to supplement individual and group therapy. Finally, UCPS staff engage in extensive research and teaching of undergraduate courses in the Psychology Department and graduate courses in the Counseling Psychology program at Lehigh University.

Current Staff

Ian Birky, Ph.D. Director

Laurie Gray Evans, Ph.D. Staff Psychologist

Deborah Gardner, Ph.D. Staff Psychologist

Eric Klein, Ph.D. Staff Psychologist

Aaron Sterba, M.A., ABD Staff Counselor

Anju Kaduvettoor, M.Ed. Graduate Assistant

Sepideh "Sam" Sohelian, M.Ed. Graduate Assistant

Ryan Weatherford, M.Ed. Graduate Assistant

Pattie Kennedy Administrative Assistant

Robyn Paul Administrative Assistant

Notes

--Weatherman41 (talk) 18:33, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Test Pages

Hello, and welcome to wikipedia! I see that you've used your talk page to create a test version of an article. Creating draft versions before posting articles is a great thing to do, though usually one's talk page isn't the best place for it. Instead, create a separate page in your userspace, maybe something like this: User:Weatherman41/University Counseling Centers. Also see the article on Subpages for more info. justinfr (talk) 17:09, 22 August 2008 (UTC)