Inside, Jan. 9, 1998

Inside Iowa State
Jan. 9, 1998

Alcohol prevention expert to lead campus workshops

by Steve Sullivan
A national expert on college alcohol prevention programs will speak and conduct workshops on campus Jan. 20-22.
Alan Berkowitz, scholar-in-residence at the University of Scranton, Pennsylvania, will conduct workshops for Iowa State faculty, staff, students and members of the Ames community.
The workshop for faculty and staff, titled "The Role of Faculty and Staff in Alcohol Prevention," will be held from 8:30 to 10 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 22, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. Other workshops during his visit will target those involved in student residence life, Greek life, athletics and student media.
The workshops are intended to educate participants about theories and programs to prevent alcohol abuse on college campuses, and help them find ways to change or eliminate factors that contribute to alcohol abuse by Iowa State students.
Berkowitz will share techniques that have been effective in curbing abuse at other universities, with an eye on beginning to develop a plan for Iowa State.
Berkowitz also will speak on "Changing Campus and Community Culture: New Approaches to Prevention of Problems Associated with Alcohol Use" at 4:10 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 20, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Berkowitz has created a prevention system for addressing campus alcohol abuse. The two emphases of his system are:

Providing accurate information on peer behavior toward alcohol.

Focusing on healthy attitudes and behaviors of community members. For example, he encourages abstainers and responsible drinkers to take a more active and visible role in changing campus attitudes toward alcohol.

Berkowitz previously was counseling center director and assistant professor of psychology at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Geneva, N.Y., where he directed or co-directed a number of programs, including the college's sexual assault prevention/risk reduction program and the Alcohol Education Research Project.
His research there with Wesley Perkins is the basis for the social norms approach, a strategy for addressing binge drinking on college campuses, that has had some success.

Iowa State homepage
Inside Iowa State, inside@iastate.edu, University Relations
Copyright © 1997, Iowa State University, all rights reserved
URL: http://www.iastate.edu/general/Inside/1998/0109/alcohol.html
Revised 1/8/98