Psychology grad program gets new home
Centre opens at University of Windsor, marking 50th anniversary of program
The University of Windsor’s muchlauded Psychological Services and Research Centre officially moved into its auspicious new digs on Thursday.
A ribbon cutting was held at the historic home at 2629 Riverside Dr. W., which will house the program. It had previously operated in a dilapidated building on Sunset Avenue.
“It’s a place where applied training takes place, that’s sort of the fundamental emphasis of it,” said psychology department head Dennis Jackson.
The program is to psychology students what a hospital internship is to medical students, and Jackson said the program provides the equivalent of $6.3 million in services to the community annually.
This is the 50th anniversary of the graduate student psychology program at the university.
Through its 30 community partners, the centre provides counselling to many in the local community who cannot afford the traditional route.
Most recently the centre has helped to counsel dozens of Syrian refugees who have arrived in Windsor.
University of Windsor president Alan Wildeman recalled the day he visited the program in its former home and almost felt guilty about having to evict them.
“But I saw this incredible program operating in a facility that was past its lifespan significantly and was never built or designed to do what it was doing to meet the needs of our students and our program and all our community partners and I walked away thinking gosh, we’ve got to get this fixed,” Wildeman said.
“But I also walked away very, very impressed with the work that is going on.”
The building will be simply known as The House on Riverside and has 10 clinical rooms, four of which are equipped with one-way mirrors for observation, and all rooms are equipped with stateof-the-art recording equipment.
The home will provide graduate students in the clinical psychology program with a venue for working directly with students and members of the community.
The trainees will work under the supervision of the university’s clinical psychologists and will provide psychological assessments for children, adolescents and adults.
The building was acquired by the University of Windsor from Assumption University several years ago.
“I will now say, I will confess, when we did it we didn’t know what we would use this building for,” said Wildeman.
“We didn’t know. Historically with Assumption this building served as a student counselling centre long, long ago. It’s still continuing to be a place that is in the service of students and our community.”