Student counsellors

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32568, 30 March 1971, Page 18

Student counsellors

(By our education reporter) The first full-time student counsellors have been appointed at the University of Canterbury and the University of Otago. Mr A. R. Homblow, formerly assistant clinical psychologist at Sunnyside Hospital, has been appointed to the position at the University of Canterbury, and Mr J. L. Lowery, at present student counsellor at the Christchurch Teachers’ College, to the position at the University of Otago. Both universities have rolls of.more than 6000. Student counselling is seen by university authorities as part of student health schemes. More than 2 per cent of university students require psychiatric treatment during their courses and about 20 per cent also require student counselling. Outside the normal pressures of a large community students must also cope with

a number of unique problems, Mr Homblow said. “This is a group selected on intellectual ability, and society makes certain demands on them. On the one hand they are treated as children expected to do what society says, and on the other they are expected to be

fledgling leaders in the column of progress. “Students are forced oy the very nature of the university system to answer questions that they would not ; have asked themselves on the ; outside,” he said. i Mr Homblow said that : Australian experience indicated that drug taking might be of a major concern in New Zealand universities in the next five years. When society imposed rigid authority in certain areas, such as drugs, it sometimes fostered the very type of behaviour it decried, Mr Homblow said. Mr Homblow, who was educated at Wellington College, is aged 28 and married with two children. He graduated from Victoria University in 1967 with a B.A. and from the University of Canterbury with an M.A. in clinical psychology in 1970. He will continue his studies for a diploma in clinical psychology. Mr Lowery will return to the university where he was chaplain from 1964 until taking up his position in Christchurch in 1969. Bom in Dunedin, Mr Lowery is married with three children. He was educated in Invercargill, at the Dunedin Teachers’ College, and the University of Otago where he graduated B.A. in 1952. He gained his master’s degree at the University of Canterbury in 1953.