Making The Journal for Specialists in Group Work more reader friendly
Janice L. DeLucia-Waack, Ph.D.
As I sit amidst my boxes and unpacked office (it is late September as I write this), I am thinking about how much change has taken place in my life and in the life of the Journal for Specialists in Group Work lately. We have a new home in the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology in the Graduate School of Education at SUNY Buffalo (and no, it is not snowing here yet). Buffalo is a much maligned city; Minnesota winters are much worse. Along with the move comes a new editorial assistant, Allan McConnell, who is a Ph.D. student in Counseling Psychology. We also have a new editorial board as of February 1st. We have included more practitioners on the board this year as well as those with expertise in the range of group work, task/work to psychoeducational to counseling and therapy. We are also trying to increase the depth of the board so that their expertise covers much types of groups and group work populations.
Most importantly, the Association for Specialists in Group Work board and I have been working together to make the Journal for Specialists in Group Work more useful and friendly to our readers. Because of this, we will be adding several new sections. Starting this issue, there will be Brief Reports. Two types of articles will be included here. One will be short articles that describe pilot studies related to group work that might not otherwise be published until a later date. The goal is to inform Journal for Specialists in Group Work readers of new areas of research related to group as quickly as possible. The second type of articles will be descriptions of a specific type of group based on sound theoretical and counseling practice. These articles will describe in detail how to conduct a specific kind of group so that our readers may actually use the article as a research when leading a group. The goals are to disseminate the knowledge so that readers don't have to "reinvent the wheel" each time they plan a new group and to encourage research that examines the effectiveness of these protocols by practitioners and researchers.
In addition, we will be adding a section tentatively called In Our Groups. This will be an in-the-field section where group practitioners are encouraged to share their experiences with group work, successes and failures. It will be a place for ASGW members to reflect on their training and continuing education in this field. My hope is to have this column debut in the next issue.
Please let me know if you have suggestions for how we can improve the journal. Feel free to Email me at jdelucia@acsu.buffalo.edu , FAX me at 716-645-6616, or call me at 716-645-6613. I look forward to hearing from you.