TPC-Journal-V3-Issue3

136 The Professional Counselor \Volume 3, Issue 3 during the spring semester. Peace Corps staff expressed an interest in offering year-round services to RPCVs, due to the limited debriefing available to RPCVs (J. Hammer and R. Michon, personal communication, January 8, 2008). As a result, group counseling sessions were a welcome addition during the fall semester. The PCCC coordinator was instrumental in recruiting and screening group members. After counseling students provided a paragraph describing their proposed groups, the coordinator marketed the groups through a RPCV listserv, and flyers were posted throughout the PCCC inviting RPCVs to participate in group sessions. Group members, RP- CVs, chose topic area(s) that were appropriate for their personal career and life-transition challenges; there were no fees for group members to attend the sessions. RPCVs were notified in advance that the psychoeducational group would be recorded for instructional purposes, and both informed consent and authorization of recording were secured in writing at the beginning of the group sessions. Students began their group sessions by briefly describing the limits of confidentiality. Group Composition and Format The group size was predetermined by the instructor(s), and the coordinator at the PCCC screened and en- rolled people accordingly. The preference was to have co-facilitators with no more than 10 RPCVs in each group, with a smaller group number for those groups with only one facilitator (in the instance there was an odd number of students enrolled in the group counseling course). The RPCVs varied in age from mid-twenties to mid-forties and in marital status, although the majority were single. The group members were from varied eth- nic and racial backgrounds (predominantly Caucasian). While most of the RPCVs lived near the PCCC where the structured psychoeducational groups were held, prior to their Peace Corps service they lived throughout the United States. The Peace Corps experience had occurred in a wide variety of geographic locations around the globe, where RPCVs had been immersed in another culture—often a culture in the developing world—for an extended period of time. Most of the RPCV group members had returned from their service within the past year, yet some of them had been stateside for up to 5 years. The number of groups offered to the RPCVs during one semester depended on student enrollment in the group counseling class. Various RPCV group members chose to attend sessions on distinctly different topics and often participated in multiple groups offered by the group counseling students. The structured psychoedu- cational group topics were offered during late afternoon and evening hours to maximize the opportunity for RPCVs to attend a variety of sessions. Group counseling topics often included career decision-making (making career choices), networking cooperatives (building networking skills for a job search), life transitions (process- ing readjustment to life back in the United States), work-life balance (developing coping strategies to create manageable lifestyle), interviewing skills (preparing for the interview), and stress management during the job search (learning stress management techniques). The instructor(s) and the on-site PCCC coordinator orches- trated the flow of sessions, keeping group leaders and group members on schedule. RPCV Feedback About the Groups Students collected feedback from the RPCVs after each psychoeducational group to identify strengths and suggestions regarding the students as facilitators. Additional anecdotal feedback was solicited from the RPCVs about the overall process; RPCVs typically responded very favorably about the experience. Specifically, the positive highlights from the experience tended to be resources and information, universality and cohesiveness experienced by the RPCVs. The most common complaint expressed was that the 1-hour sessions were not long enough, which may indicate the perceived value of the group experience and actual needs of the RPCVs. Likewise, students provided anecdotal feedback that the structured psychoeducational group with non-peers helped them to synthesize their learning of group counseling skills and to decrease their overall anxiousness about conducting group counseling. The authors observed increased student confidence and knowledge of group