University of Arkansas Director of Counseling Assisting Faculty, Staff at Alabama

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Jonathan Perry, director of Counseling and Psychological Services at the Pat Walker Health Center at the University of Arkansas, has been asked to assist with counseling and training for faculty and staff members at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, where a faculty member allegedly shot and killed several of her colleagues during a meeting earlier this week.

Perry made the trip to Huntsville on Tuesday where he is working with faculty members through Saturday.

“Campuses are still extremely safe places in our society, but these incidents tear open the academic fabric,” Perry said. “Campus communities have to come together to respond to such tragedies when they occur.”

Perry was called by Scott Walter, dean of students at UAH, who knew Perry has expertise in this area. Walter is the former director of Greek life at the University of Arkansas. He left the university to take the position at Huntsville.

Perry has helped campuses deal with this kind of tragedy in the past.

Brian Hemphill, vice president for student affairs at Northern Illinois, requested that Perry come to that campus to share insights with faculty and administrators to help them recognize and meet the needs of students in 2008 after a former graduate student shot and killed five students, wounded another 18, and then killed himself during a geology class. Perry was director of Counseling and Psychological Services at the University of Arkansas in 2000 when the campus experienced the murder-suicide of a professor and student. Hemphill arrived at the University of Arkansas as the dean of students shortly after that event. He became familiar with the process that Perry and his team of mental health clinicians had in place to make sure psychological services were provided for those traumatized by the event, assess the effectiveness of that counseling and determine the future needs on campus. Perry served as a member of a team with counseling directors from Virginia Tech, the site of a mass shooting the previous year, as well as counselors from Northern Illinois.

The director of the counseling center at Northern Illinois, Micky Sharma, is also helping at Huntsville. UAH officials have had many conversations by phone and e-mail with their counterparts at both Northern Illinois and Virginia Tech about their response to this tragedy, Perry said.