HAROLD A. KORN
1929-1990

Professor Harold Korn, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Office of Student Services Counseling Services, died on February 5, 1990.

Professor Korn was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929. He received his B.S. and M.A. degrees from the City College of New York in 1951 and 1952, respectively, and subsequent to a two-year stint in the U.S. Army, returned to graduate school, receiving his Ph.D. degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Minnesota in 1958. For the following decade he served as Associate Director of Stanford University's Counseling Center, much of that period simultaneously involved in collaborative research at Stanford's Institute for the Study of Human Problems. In 1969, Professor Korn joined Florida State University as Director of its Counseling Center and Professor of Psychology. In 1978 he came to the University of Michigan as both Director of Counseling Services and Professor of Psychology, and served in those roles until his recent death.

Professor Korn's rich array of interests, talents, and skills permitted him to move comfortably from devoted clinical work with individual students to analysis of entire university systems of advising and mental health services: from fine-grained study of factors influencing student participation in classroom discussion to keen appraisals of higher education in the United States, from the psychometric intricacies of test construction to longitudinal studies of college student development. Always at the center of his vision were college students. His journal articles, conference presentations and books ranged widely in their attention to student drop-outs, student activism, determinants of occupational choice, experiential education, evaluation of learning, personality development, campus stress, the design, structure and missions of counseling services.

His lifework enhancing provision of psychological services to students always sought to link individual counseling to the broader educational experience. In complementary fashion, Professor Korn's research and writing not only extended our understanding of the multi-faceted impact of the university experience on young adults but also made us aware of the implications of students' pressing developmental tasks for the design of university educational experiences. He helped innumerable students directly with his clinical talents and humane commitment; he helped whole universities as well as scholars of higher education recognize and address the inevitable intertwining of curriculum, student development, and student services.

Albert C. Cain