Introduction from Your New Editors

Hello! It’s nice to address the journal readership for the first time as your new editors. As you may have heard or noticed on the masthead, the Journal of College Student Psychotherapy (JCSP) has undergone its second editorial change in its history—this time from Paul Grayson and Phil Meilman to Philip Rosenbaum and Ryan Weatherford. We are very excited to be here and to introduce ourselves, thank our predecessors, and say a few words about where we have been and where we might be going.

By way of introduction, Philip Rosenbaum is Director of Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) at Haverford College. He lives in Philadelphia with his family, which means he has to deal with being a New York Mets fan in a city loyal to the Phillies. Ryan Weatherford is an Assistant Professor and Psychologist in the Department of Counseling and Psychological Services at West Chester University. He lives with his family and grew up outside Philadelphia (so he’s not bothered at all by constant Philadelphia sports everywhere you go).

We’d very much like to take a moment to thank and acknowledge our immediate predecessors, Paul and Phil, as well as the founder of the journal, Leighton Whitaker. We are particularly grateful to Paul and Phil, who have both been very generous and patient with their time during this transition and have given us this great opportunity. Furthermore, readers of the journal will not directly see the incredible amount of behind-the-scenes work Paul and Phil put into editing the journal. They operated with collegiality, incredible speed and organization, and a healthy process of debating submissions.

We’d like to recognize some amazing aspects of their tenure as editors from 2011 to 2015 (and Phil for the first quarter of 2016 with Ryan Weatherford). Paul and Phil have shepherded the journal through a period of rapid growth and change for counseling centers. In their thoughtful, nuanced, and passionate way, Paul and Phil have ensured that the journal has retained its identity as a resource devoted to the entirety of college counseling centers and college counselors’ work with students. Staying relevant has meant focusing not just on current topics, but also the whole of the increasingly complex lives of students and the various ways counseling centers engage with them. They also kept articles and their editorial contributions grounded in the passion and challenges college counselors face, and kept materials focused on practical knowledge and tools for the college counselor.

During this time the journal published 20 issues and some truly exceptional pieces. Notable to us is the attention the journal has paid to issues of race (e.g., Ahmad-Stout & Nath, 2013), suicide (e.g., Shadick & Akhter, 2014; Hess, Becker, Pituch, & Saathoff, 2011), international students (e.g., Yakunina, Weigold, & McCarthy, 2010), and the increasing usage of centers (e.g., Epstein, 2015). They leave the journal as a healthy, vital, and important space for college counseling center professionals, who use the pages to report on clinical and research work, debate ideas and theory, and generally discuss the gestalt of college counseling.

We hope to continue along this path, ensuring that JCSP remains a preeminent journal and a resource for those working in college counseling. At the same time, we will inevitably bring our own unique perspective and voice to the journal as a whole and also to this editorial space. Regarding the latter, you can expect that our editorials will focus on current issues both specific to the counseling center, but also to broader social and cultural context in which our work occurs. We hope to set a tone of thoughtful and reflective engagement, which can stir up, provoke, discuss, and explore the topics that we are passionate about.

We aim for the journal to continue to occupy a place of dialogue and discourse. Towards this end some specific ideas for the future of the journal are:

• Increased interaction within journal issues. We envision having commentaries on target articles and written replies by the author.

• Emphasis on “special issues” and “guest editors” to address particularly important topics. We will be soliciting JCSP readers and AUCCCD members to “guest edit” articles on particular topics. Feel free to reach out to us with any ideas you may have as well.

• Expansion of article reviewers to graduate students, interns, and postdoctoral fellows when possible.

• Establishment of awards for best article in a given year.

• Graduate student/early career professional award designed to increase participation of graduate students and ECPs.

• Broadening our “target audience” through exploring engagement with social media (twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and so forth).

• The journal will be switching to an online submission platform called ScholarOne. This platform will assist with the review process along with streamlining other aspects of issue preparation.

As recent events on college campuses across the country have highlighted, the student population is very much alive and engaged with issues germane to their daily lives. It is a unique and exciting, not to mention complicated, time to be a young person and student, with both opportunities for growth and change, but also very real obstacles and challenges. We hope that the journal meets this energy and continues to reflect the experience for those working with these students.

Lastly, towards this end, we are interested in what you the readers/contributors think and feel. Please feel free to contact us with questions, ideas, concerns, or just to say hi. We can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected]. We look forward to great submissions and a great dialogue about college counseling in the coming months and years!