Helping Skills for Working with College Students: Applying Counseling Theory to Student Affairs Practice

A primary role of student affairs professionals is to help college students dealing with developmental transitions and coping with emotional difficulties. Becoming an effective helping professional requires the complex integration of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and professional awareness, and knowledge. For graduate students preparing to become student affairs practitioners, this textbook provides the skills necessary to facilitate the helping process and understand how to respond to student concerns and crises, including how to make referrals to appropriate campus or community resources. Focusing on counseling concepts and applications essential for effective student affairs practice, this book develops the conceptual frameworks, basic counseling skills, interventions, and techniques that are necessary for student affairs practitioners to be effective, compliant, and ethical in their helping and advising roles. Rich in pedagogical features, this textbook includes questions for reflection, theory to practice exercises, case studies, and examples from the field.

Monica Galloway Burke is Associate Professor of Counseling and Student Affairs at Western Kentucky University, USA.

Jill Duba Sauerheber is Professor of Counseling and Student Affairs at Western Kentucky University, USA.

Aaron W. Hughey is Professor of Counseling and Student Affairs and Coordinator of the Student Affairs graduate program at Western Kentucky University, USA.

Karl Stanley Laves is Associate Director of the Counseling and Testing Center at Western Kentucky University, USA.