Combining Career and Couples Counseling for College Students: A Narrative Approach

Career and personal counseling have been dichotomized as distinct practices in much of the counseling literature. However, many college students seek counseling for career development and romantic relationship issues occurring concomitantly. A model for addressing career and relationship issues with heterosexual college couples in a group format is presented. An approach grounded in narrative theory is described, and case examples are provided to illustrate the model. ********** Over the past 15 years, repeated calls for the counseling profession to combine career and personal counseling have been made (Betz & Corning, 1993; Hinkelman & Luzzo, 2007). Among college students seeking counseling, 11% of career counseling clients reported also needing mental health counseling, and 20% of mental health clients reported also needing career counseling (Pace & Quinn, 2000). Despite numerous articles on the topic, career and personal counseling often are still viewed as separate and distinct in most colleges. By overly compartmentalizing these two developmental areas of college student development, counselors may potentially reduce their effectiveness in addressing student needs (Engels, Jacobs, & Kern, 2000). This dichotomization is readily apparent on most college campuses, for which the career center and the counseling center are typically separate entities, often housed in separate buildings. In a time when university counseling centers are undergoing substantial changes including staffing reductions, decreased funding, and increased calls to provide crisis management (Davis & Humphrey, 2000), college counselors must focus on strategies for continuing to provide high-quality developmental services in more efficient ways (Hodges, 2001). Correspondingly, because college students have both career and mental health counseling needs, we believe it is efficacious for college counselors to consider offering programs that address these developmental issues simultaneously. For example, many traditional-aged undergraduates are moving through the developmental stage of intimacy versus isolation (Erikson, 1982) and entering into intimate, long-term relationships. At the same time, they are beginning to consider their postgraduation life paths. Previous researchers have demonstrated that couples often are negatively affected by career-related issues (Doumas, Margolin, & John, 2008); this negative influence, combined with students' concerns regarding their entry into the world of work (Fouad et al., 2006), can create problems as students begin to navigate their postcollege careers. In response, the purpose of this article is to present a group counseling model to help college-age couples Melinda M. Gibbons, Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, University of Tennessee; W. Matthew Shurts, Department of Counseling and Educational Leadership, Montclair State University. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Melinda M. Gibbons, Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences, University of Tennessee, 441 Claxton Complex, 1122 Volunteer Boulevard, Knoxville, TN 37996 (e-mail: mgibbon2@utk.edu). proactively attend to career-related issues. The model is grounded in narrative therapy (White & Epston, 1990) and designed to simultaneously address personal and career needs among undergraduates. To date, we have conducted and supervised numerous individual career counseling sessions for college students and couples counseling sessions. In both settings, we have observed the connections between career and relationship issues. Additionally, we conducted many of our sessions from a narrative perspective. The clients have primarily been heterosexual undergraduates, so we have based our article on this population. We present a group counseling model to help college counselors address this need for combining career and personal counseling in an efficient way, and we suggest tasks that we have previously used with clients. …