SHSU Web Sites
Known Far and Wide

A Web site called "Help Screens," developed by Sam Houston State University Counseling Center administrator Carlos P. Zalaquett, offers students tips on such topics as stress, eating disorders, and how to handle relationships.

Another Internet endeavor, "Advancing Women in Leadership," the Web's first online refereed journal on women's issues, was founded in March, 1997 by College of Education and Applied Sciences faculty members and administrators Genevieve Brown and Beverly Irby. In addition to its regular users, it logs 750,000 to 1 million hits per month.

Help Screens provides information to university students about counseling services, specific problems relating to test anxiety or study skills, ways of dealing with those problems successfully, and appropriate sources of help.

The Help Screens site is listed in most of the web sites delivering information on mental health to university students including The Counseling Center Village and The Student Counseling Virtual Pamphlet. Usage of Help Screens continues to grow at a surprising rate, according to Zalaquett, assistant director of the SHSU Counseling Center.

"The phenomenal growth of technology has helped universities and colleges find new ways to delivering information to their students," said Zalaquett. "Wanting to take advantage of this technological growth, I developed the Help Screens concept in 1994."

Five years later, Help Screens has grown from two to 22 screens on topics including test taking strategies, speaker's anxiety, violence in relationships, eating disorders, coping with stress, and attention deficit disorder, among others.

"Last year, we published the results of our first assessment of the students' use and evaluation of the Help Screens," said Zalaquett. "Our findings indicated that the students rated the program as helpful and easy to use, and that they would recommend it to others."

Institutions and organizations that have requested permission to reproduce, link to, or print the Help Screens most recently include the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, George Washington University, State University of New York at Buffalo, Rand Afrikaans University in South Africa, Department of Education (California), The Anxiety Disorders Association of Victoria (Australia) and Houston Community College System.

"We have received several positive comments from the users of the Help Screens," said Zalaquett. "They described the screens as informative, useful, easy to use and navigate, easy to read, creative, colorful, and welcoming."

Brown and Irby were featured recently in a Dallas Morning News story on their enterprise, which was called a "pioneering trek" to "seek out new opportunities for women, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

It was also described as a "cyberspace smorgasbord that offers women networking and monitoring opportunities as well as news and advice."

Including their first issue more than two years ago, the Advancing Women site has published six issues, with approximately 30 articles selected from some 15 to 30 articles submitted to them for each issue, as well as book reviews.

Grants, including one from Sam Houston State University, help pay for student workers and promotional expenses for production of the Advancing Women site .

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SHSU Media Contact: Julia May
August 25, 1999
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