Coping with the stresses of life in addition to academic pressures can sometimes prove overwhelming, but now engineering students will be able to access counselling from a clinical therapist stationed in right in their home away from home.

Students may have to deal with non-academic challenges, including:

• Emotional difficulties
• Balancing academic and personal lives
• Sleeping problems
• Relationship issues (e.g. family, friends, romantic)
• Adjusting to a new home, city, country, or culture
• Identity issues

Giselle St. Louis, a clinical therapist at the university’s Student Counselling Centre, will be available to help undergraduate and graduate students from 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Mondays and Fridays in room 3004, Ed Lumley Centre for Engineering Innovation, starting October 30.

A meet-and-greet session will give students a chance to meet St. Louis, Wednesday from 12 to 2 p.m. in the CEI atrium.

St. Louis has a Master of Arts in counselling and a BASc in mechanical engineering. She is a registered psychotherapist in Ontario, a certified Canadian counsellor and a licensed professional counsellor in Michigan. After graduating from the University of Windsor with a mechanical engineering degree, she worked in the field, received her Professional Engineering designation and held it for two years before pursuing a career in counselling.

She works primarily in a short-term therapy model in which she teaches students such skills as stress management, emotional regulation, and relationship building. She challenges and helps clients to explore their stress inducing perspectives and takes a collaborative approach with them to identify strengths and resources that they already possess. St. Louis helps them apply these to current life challenges and transform their distress into an experience of increased competence, confidence and fulfilment in themselves and their personal and academic lives.

To set up an initial appointment, go to the Student Counselling Centre, room 293 in the CAW Student Centre, or phone Pat Jolie at 519-253-3000, ext. 4616, for more information about services available.