Trend To Mixed Halls Of Residence

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30631, 23 December 1964, Page 2

Trend To Mixed Halls Of Residence

The building of mixed halls of residence for students at universities in England and the United States was a trend noted by Mrs Frances Allison, a senior lecturer in zoology at the University of Canterbury, during her recent three months and a half study trip overseas.

Men’s and women’s dormitories were in separate wings, which were joined by the communal dining room or cafeteria, and meeting rooms. There was, of course, some supervision, but at universityentrance age, students were

regarded as adults, and treated as such, Mrs Allison said. Mrs Allison saw a tremendous amount of university building going on, including extensions in the older uni-

versities, to cope with the post-war population explosion. One thing she particularly noted was that students’ union building and amenities and staff houses were considered essential parts of the new university, and were erected early in a building programme.

Staff houses at some of the universities provided guest

rooms for use by visiting lecturers.

The use of closed-circuit television for teaching and demonstrating in biology laboratories, as a way of coping with large numbers of students, was of special interest to Mrs Allison.

At Birmingham University, England, where the system had just been introduced, receivers were placed about one very large laboratory, to enable students to follow demonstrations. In a university in Michigan, however, groups of students in several small laboratories, each with

an instructor, received demonstrations relayed from

a central point. The main purpose of Mrs

Allison’s trip was to examine the establishment of integrated biology courses in universities.

The general aim of an integrated biology course was to develop, at the beginning of the period of study at university, an appreciation of the fundamentals of biology—which covers botany, zoology, genetics and biochemistry—leaving the more detailed study of the range of form found in animals and plants to subsequent courses, Mrs Allison said. Current Attitude

This was a reversal of the order which had previously existed. “It recognises that

biology is now more than just the sum of zoology and botany, and has become an integrated discipline within the natural sciences, with branches extending in many directions,” she said. She mainly visited universities where a start had been made on integrating biology courses, or where there were plans to do so. While in America, Mrs Allison also visited the Biological School Curriculum Studies Committee headquarters at Boulder, Colorado, “I spent a profitable day there discussing problems concerned with the biology syllabus for schools.”

Mrs Allison was also able to attend the International Congress of Parasitology, which was held in Rome, and attended by about 1000 parasitologists from many countries. Mrs Allison’s special study is of trematode parasites.