Are perceived increases in symptom severity in college counseling center clients real or imagined? Counseling center staff, retrospectively, reported that client problems are more severe now than in the past. Yet studies examining client distress levels at intake have found no significant increases. This study examined counseling center client problems across 13 years from the perspective of the treating therapist at the time of case closure. Increases were found for 14 of 19 client problem areas, whereas other areas retained stable levels, and 2 problem areas had a quadratic trend over time. These changes directly affect counseling service practices.

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Student success is at the heart of the educational enterprise. College success helps students to meet long-term personal and career goals and provides a range of monetary, psychosocial, and physical benefits (Baum & Ma, 2007). For years, concern has been expressed about graduation rates (Swail, 2004). Only slightly more than half (57%) of full-time students first going to a 4-year institution seeking a bachelor's degree end up achieving that goal within 6 years (National Center for Education Statistics, 2010, Indicator 21). Furthermore, given the high rate of students who discontinue their education at their original institution, retention is a popular topic within provides a reference list of over 1,400 publications on student retention. In addition, the entrepreneurial market has developed numerous consulting organizations that aid universities in increasing retention.Retaining students until graduation is often a direct fulfillment of the mission of institutions of higher learning. Colleges and universities are concerned with preparing students for productive roles in society. Students who terminate their education prior to graduation lose the time and finances that they have invested in the educational process without gaining the benefits of a degree. Admitting a student into the institution carries with it a certain level of commitment on the part of the institution to support the success of the student. Secondarily, retention is of concern to institutions for financial reasons. When students discontinue, a university is faced with the loss of campus resources that have been invested in the student as well as the loss of future revenue in the form of tuition.Students discontinuing their education may reflect a failure on the part of the institution to support students' progress or respond to students' needs. Colleges and universities have invested a great amount of money in retention services (e.g., preparation courses, first-year seminars, academic success centers, advising interventions, tutorial programs, and counseling) in the hopes of retaining students through graduation. These represent substantial investments to improve student opportunities for success. Seidman (2005) indicated that promoting student success involves early identification of individual needs followed by a prescription for action.Psychosocial learning factors are useful points of intervention for professionals to actively promote student success (Krumrei & Newton, 2009). Institutions of higher education are in need of assessments of psychosocial learning factors that can be used to customize interventions to students' characteristics . Given institutional cost Psychosocial Factors 4 restraints, it would benefit colleges and universities to make use of tools in house rather than allocating substantial funding toward private consulting organizations promising retention results. Measuring College Student SuccessTinto (1987, 2005) observed that efforts to promote student success are hampered when research focuses on student attrition ra...

We used a rigorous case study methodology to examine one supervisory dyad's work together during one semester. We used the "best-worst" strategy of several recent researchers, multiple sources of qualitative and quantitative process data, and the perspectives both of the participants and of observers. A number of findings provide hypotheses to guide future research. For example. Session 2 was identified as best by both participants. That it focused on relationship issues between the participants is consistent with other findings that the supervisor-supervisee relationship was a primary focus during the first several supervisory sessions.Despite its shortcomings, the science of counseling and psychotherapy rests on a solid empirical foundation. Yet the same is not true for the science of clinical supervision, which is still very much in its infancy. In commenting on this, Holloway and Hosford (1983) observed that scientific endeavor progresses through a series of stages, the first of which is observing a phenomenon in its natural environment. They maintained that observation should be the proper research emphasis at this particular stage of the science of supervision.At first glance, this prescription would seem inappropriate, for observational data are amply represented in the supervision literature. For example, Searles (1955) used case material to introduce a phenomenon that others since have called parallel processes; Markowitz (1958) presented a retrospective, comparative account of supervision that he received from each of several supervisors; and Mueller and Kell (1972) used observations of supervision for their rich formulations of supervisory processes. The supervision literature is replete with such examples.

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