Abstract:

During the 1990s, there was a need for establishing centers that gives psychological support services to the university students in Turkey in order to help them for living in their social environment in harmony as well adjusted and socially oriented individuals. For this reason, Turkish universities began to establish Counseling Centers having various organizational structures and processes to respond to the psychosocial needs of their students. Middle East Technical University (METU), Psychological Counseling and Guidance Center (PCGC) is one of the important organization among university Counseling Centers in Turkey as related to its structure, developmental process, diversity of professions, and its variety of activities. The purpose of this study is to present a model for the Counseling Centers in Turkish universities and to explain the implementation of strategic planning that mostly designed and used to help organizations in order to prepare themselves to change environmental conditions in a best way with respect to the results of strategic planning study achieved in 1999 and evaluated in 2004 by METU PCGC. In the 1990s, with the awareness of a need for establishing centers offering psychological support services to university students in Turkey in order to help them live in their social environment in harmony as a well-adjusted and socially-oriented individuals, Turkish universities began to establish counseling centers having different organizational structure and process to respond to the psychosocial needs of their students. Middle East Technical University (METU), Psychological Counseling and Guidance Center (PCGC) is one of the important organizations among university Counseling Centers in Turkey as related to its structure, developmental process, diversity of professions, and variety of activities. The purpose of this study is to explain the implementation of strategic planning process which is a frequently preferred planning process by various organizations and to propose a model for the Counseling Centers in Turkish universities which is developed according to the results of strategic planning study accomplished in 1999 and evaluated in 2004 by METU PCGC. In 1999, administrators and psychological counselors of METU PCGC evaluated their mission and vision of PCGC and defined their organizational strategies by taking into consideration basic stages of strategic planning process in order to determine changing needs and expectations of METU students, to effectively meet these needs and expectations, to use existing resources with the most optimal way, to define activity areas, to define organizational goals by developing their vision and developing some criteria to evaluate their future activities. Furthermore, in 2004, they evaluated their strategic planning made in 1999 to observe developments in their organizational activities through five years, to define strategies helping orientation of the PCGC to changing environmental conditions. Having an agreement on making a strategic planning of their organization, as a team, managers and psychological counselors of METU PCGC made a strategic plan through July-August 1999 by taking into consideration the basic stages of strategic planning defined by Bryson (1989). After examining the legal scope, the team specified their stakeholders and their needs and expectations. Then, the team defined their mission and aims to make clear what PCGC is as an organization, why it exists, what their basic activities are. After stakeholder analysis, they made SWOT analysis to define strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of their organization. Then, the team defined strategic issues and solving strategies for these issues considering all the analysis they made. Finally, they developed their organizational vision for the future. In 2004, the team evaluated their strategic plan of 1999. As a result of the evaluation, it was observed that strategic issues related to the organizational limitations, administrative structure, performance evaluation, effective use of technologies have been solved. Observing such issues in 1999 and solving these issues in 2004 can be seen acceptable when taking into consideration the PCGC was established in 1997. Among implementation of solving strategies of strategic issues defined in 1999, the organizational structure scheme was the most important one with regard to organized organizational processes and also being a model for other psychological counseling centers which were established or have been established. With the strategic planning made in 2004, the team observed that their organization achieved higher status of institutionalization process. Also, the team observed that as a result of strategic planning, a team spirit among employees, an effective coordination mechanism among psychiatrists, psychologists and psychological counselors was developed, quality in their services was improved, and coordination between other centers in the university was enhanced.

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