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Pacific Graduate School of Psychology
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P3 Professional Speaker Series
The P3 Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Social Action program has organized a professional speaker series for its students and guests. The professional speaker series is designed to bring to campus psychologists and other professionals working in areas of social action to speak about their careers and professional activities.
Students often have difficulty meeting with professionals who are actually working in the fields in which they are thinking about eventually working. The professional speaker series is designed to put a face on these careers and to provide students with an inside glimpse at these professional areas. The speaker series is also designed to allow our guests to speak about their own educational and professional development, to speak about their studies, how they chose psychology as a profession, how they developed their particular interests and specialties, etc. Students are free to ask questions and develop insight into how professional careers evolve.
The speaker series is open to P3 students, the De Anza College community, and to students thinking about entering the program. Please find below the schedule of talks for Spring 2008.
Dr. Becky Jackson, Assistant Professor, Director of Forensic Psychology Certification Program, Assistant Director of Joint J.D. - Ph.D. Program
Dr. Jackson received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of North Texas and interned at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine in the Public Behavioral Health and Justice Policy track. She has an emphasis in forensic assessment including competency to stand trial and sexually violent predator assessment. Her clinical work has focused on chronically mentally ill adults, mentally ill offenders, and civilly committed sex offenders. She also has an interest in the assessment and treatment of severe personality disorders. Her research focuses on criminal forensic evaluation including psycholegal constructs such as competency to stand trial and criminal responsibility, as well as clinical constructs with forensic implications, particularly psychopathy and malingering. A particular interest is the reliability and validity of the psychopathy construct among female offenders. Additional research interests include test validation, personality disorders in forensic assessment, and clinical correlates of psychopathy and sex offending. All De Anza College students are invited.
May 13, 2008 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Ms. Ajaie Sellers, Billy DeFrank Center, Executive Director
Ms. Sellers previously served as the executive director for Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) in Monterey, California. During her three years at CASA, Ms. Sellers increased the agency capacity by doubling the number of child advocates and expanding the annual budget from $150k to $500k. She also secured new private, state, and federal grants totaling over $1 million. Under her watch, CASA received the 2004 and 2005 Monterey Bay Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Award for Outstanding Non-Profit. She personally received the 2005 Child Abuse Preventions Council Award for Outstanding Professionalism, Leadership, and Commitment.
May 22, 2008 12:30pm - 1:30pm in E24
Allison Marie Pua'ali'iokalani Briscoe-Smith, Ph.D.
Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith will be talking about her research and clinical work in the areas of Trauma and Child Abuse. Dr. Briscoe-Smith will speak about her career path and her work in a variety of areas, including how trauma manifests itself in children, cultural variations on corporal punishment and its effects, and how children understand race. She will be giving an informal presentation and then answering questions.
Dr. Briscoe-Smith earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard University. She then received her Ph.D. from University of California Berkeley and she completed her internship and postdoctoral work at the University of California San Francisco/San Francisco General Hospital. Throughout her training her studies were focused on child psychopathology and diversity issues. After her postdoctoral work she was the Program Director of a mental health program serving children as they entered into the Alameda county foster care system. She now serves as the research consultant of that program. In addition, she provides clinical services at Children's Health Council. Her research has focused on two different topics: trauma/Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and how children understand race. With these topics she has had the opportunity to work broadly with many families and schools on issues salient to them. Her current research focuses on the mental health risks and collection of basic information of children who are commercially sexually exploited (prostituted). Clinically her focus is on working with adult victims of abuse and trauma and also working with children. In particular, she focuses on dyadic and relational therapies for young children and behavior disorders for older children. She also has worked as a school and child care consultant and enjoys the opportunities that consultation brings. She hails originally from Hawaii and has also lived and worked in the Caribbean.
Area of Research: Trauma, PTSD, Children's understanding of race, prejudice, commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Area of Clinical Practice: Trauma, behavior disorders of children, dyadic therapy, consultation with schools or community agencies.
June 10, 2008 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Fall 2007
Dr. Sandy Macias, Clinical/Counseling/School Psychologist, Assistant Professor
Treatment of children, adolescents, and their families, couples counseling; interpersonal/relationship problems; childhood abuse or neglect; anxiety disorders; and depressive disorders; evaluation of a police mentoring program targeted at reducing recidivism in juvenile offenders.
October 31, 2007 1:30pm - 2:30pm in the Don Bautista room De Anza College Campus Center
Dr. Rowena Gomez, Clinical Neuropsychologist & Professor
Research and clinical background in aging and neuropsychology. She has also applied these areas to the study of affective disorders, in particular psychotic major depression. She is also interested in the diagnosis and treatment of dementia, and older adults' ability to cope with age-related changes.
November 7, 2007 1:30pm - 2:30pm in Conference Room A Campus Center
Dr. Joyce Chu, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, Assistant Director of Clinical Training PGSP
Her research is focused around understanding and improving mental health services for ethnic minority individuals with mood disorders. She is currently a clinical supervisor at an outpatient mental health clinic, the Gronowski Clinic, in Los Altos, CA. Currently, she also works part time at UCSF developing cultural competence and social behavioral science curriculum for medical student education.
November 14, 2007 1:30pm - 2:30pm in Conference Room A Campus Center
Dr. Nigel Fields, Clinical Psychologist and Professor
Dr. Field's area of expertise is in bereavement, with particular focus on spousal bereavement. He has published extensively on the role of the continuing bond to the deceased in coping with the death of a loved one. More recently, Dr. Field has extended his program of research to Thailand and Cambodia. As part of this, he is examining complicated grief and PTSD stemming from genocide during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. In his clinical practice, Dr. Field focuses on the psychotherapeutic treatment of adults with complicated grief.
November 21, 2007 1:30pm - 2:30pm in Conference Room A Campus Center
Ms. Rolanda Pierre Dixon, JD, Assistant District Attorney of Santa Clara County
Ms. Dixon created and heads the domestic Violence unit for the Santa Clara District Attorney's office. She is single-handedly responsible for changing the domestic violence laws in the State of California.
November 26, 2007 1:30pm - 2:30pm in Conference Room B Campus Center
Sue Ellen Wise, MA, MFT, Licences Marriage and Family Therapist, Professor and Chair of the John F. Kennedy University, School of Holistic Studies, MA in Counseling Psychology program
Sue Ellen is a practicing Marriange and Family Therapist in Berkeley, where she practices couples therapy, sex therapy, and works with adults in life transitions. Her other areas of expertise are in ethics and the law related to mental health and sexuality. She works from an existential perspective. She�ll be discussing her academic and clinical activities and providing information for anyone interested in pursuing Masters level studies in psychology.
December 5, 2007 1:30pm - 2:30pm in the El Clemente Room at the Campus Center
2006 - Spring 2007
November 2006
Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith will be speaking about her research and clinical work in the areas of Trauma and Child Abuse. Dr. Briscoe-Smith will speak about her career path and her work in a variety of areas, including how trauma manifests itself in children, cultural variations on corporal punishment and its effects, and how children understand race.
Dr. Briscoe-Smith earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley. She completed her internship and postdoctoral work at the University of California San Francisco/San Francisco General Hospital. Throughout her training her studies were focused on child psychopathology and diversity issues. After her postdoctoral work she was the Program Director of a mental health program serving children as they entered into the Alameda county foster care system. She now serves as the research consultant of that program. In addition, she provides clinical services at Children's Health Council.
Her research has focused on two different topics: trauma/Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and how children understand race. With these topics she has had the opportunity to work broadly with many families and schools on issues salient to them. Her current research focuses on the mental health risks and collection of basic information of children who are commercially sexually exploited (prostituted).
Clinically her focus is on working with adult victims of abuse and trauma and also working with children. In particular, she focuses on dyadic and relational therapies for young children and behavior disorders for older children. She also has worked as a school and child care consultant and enjoys the opportunities that consultation brings. She hails originally from Hawaii and has also lived and worked in the Caribbean.
Area of Research: Trauma, PTSD, Children's understanding of race, prejudice, commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Area of Clinical Practice: Trauma, behavior disorders of children, dyadic therapy, consultation with schools or community agencies.
Dr. Briscoe-Smith will be giving an informal presentation and then answering questions.
November 1 at from 3:00pm - 4:00pm in room ADM119
December 2006
Dr. William Froming, the Vice-President of Academic Affairs of the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology will speak about his research interests and career path. Dr. Froming's background is in personality and social psychology. He focuses primarily on social development and the process by which social norms are internalized by children. This is thought of as the development of self-regulation. He is also interested in genocide and the common features shared by genocides of the 20th century. He has studied the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, interviewed survivors, and taught and written on the topic.
Dr. Froming taught for eleven years in the University of Florida Psychology Department following undergraduate work at the U of Wisconsin, Madison and a Ph.D. from the U of Texas, Austin. He was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford in 1986. He has also taught for the U of New Orleans in Innsbruck, Austria and at the National University in Butare, Rwanda. He has been at PGSP since 1988. In addition to his faculty role he has served in a number of administrative positions including Chief Academic Officer, Faculty Chair, and Director of the Distance Learning program. He holds PGSP's Nancy Black Cozzens Chair in Psychology.
Area of Research: Public and Private Aspects of the Self; The Development of Self-Regulation
Dr. Froming will speak on Tuesday, November 28th at 3:00pm in the Kirsch Center, room 113
January 2007
Dr. Peter Goldblum is a Professor and the Director of Clinical Training for the Ph.D. program in Clinical Psychology at the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology. He received his Ph.D. from the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology and his MPH from UC, Berkeley School of Public Health. He has completed psychology and public health internships at UCSF, Alameda County Mental Health, and the Pacific Center of Human Growth. He is a pioneer in the development of community-based mental health programs serving individuals experiencing distress related to HIV/AIDS. He has contributed to the professional literature related to Gay men's health, AIDS related suicide, end of life issues, HIV and work, and AIDS bereavement. Please visit http://www.thebody.com/ucsf/bereavement.html for a review and excerpt from one of those books Working With AIDS Bereavement: A Comprehensive Approach for Mental Health Providers.
Dr. Goldblum's current research interests include: child on child aggression (bullying), HIV and work, the development of sexual identity, and internalized homophobia. In his role as Director of Clinical Training, he is interested in the development of competency-based clinical curriculum.
Area of Research: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender, psychotherapy, bullying, suicide, HIV and Work
Area of Clinical Practice: LGBT Affirmation Psychotherapy, Bereavement, HIV and Work
Wednesday, January 24th at 4:00pm in the Kirsch Center, room 113
February 2007
Dr. Becky Jackson is a clinical psychologist and an Assistant Professor and Doctor of the Forensic Psychology Certification Program and Assistant Director of the Joint J.D. - Ph.D. Program at the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology. Dr. Jackson received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of North Texas and interned at the University of Washington School of Medicine in the Public Behavioral Health and Justice Policy track. She has an emphasis in forensic assessment including competency to stand trial and sexually violent predator assessment. Her clinical work has focused on chronically mentally ill adults, mentally ill offenders, and civilly committed sex offenders. She also has an interest in the assessment and treatment of severe personality disorders.
Dr. Jackson's research focuses on criminal forensic evaluation including psycholegal constructs such as competency to stand trial and criminal responsibility, as well as clinical constructs with forensic implications, particularly psychopathy and malingering. A particular interest is the reliability and validity of the psychopathy construct among female offenders. Additional research interests include test validation, personality disorders in forensic assessment, and clinical correlates of psychopathy and sex offending.
Area of Research: Forensic psychology
Dr. Jackson will be speaking about her work and her career path in order to provide students thinking about a possible career in psychology with information about the fascinating and growing field of forensic psychology on Wednesday, February 14th at 4:00pm in Kirsch 113.
March 2007
Dr. Robert Reiser is a licensed clinical psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychology at the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology. He is also the Director of the Gronowski Clinic, a community-based psychology training clinic and treatment center located in Los Altos. Dr. Reiser's principal professional interests are in the area of developing and transporting evidence-based treatments into real world practice settings. With a background as an executive-administrator in large mental health systems, over the past several years, he has consulted to California county mental health systems on issues related to quality improvement and clinical guidelines in mental health services. He has been involved with developing and improving treatment guidelines for clients with bipolar disorder and other serious mental illnesses.
In 2001, Dr. Reiser received a grant from The Health Trust to develop a group-based treatment model designed to improve treatment outcomes for clients with bipolar disorder in Santa Clara County. Dr. Reiser has completed a randomized clinical trial with 120 patients with Dr. Larry Thompson as Co-Investigator that compared enhanced clinical treatment services for bipolar disorder with treatment as usual. Clinical sites for the project include the Alliance for Community Care (a large community mental health clinic site) in San Jose, three Santa Clara County Mental Health Clinics and the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology. He was one of the Principal Investigators on a three year clinical trial evaluating a Mentally Ill Offender Crime Reduction Grant (MIORG) in Santa Clara County that provided improved linkage to community services for mentally ill offenders. He is completing an evaluation of a two year "Young Adults in Transition" Health Trust grant involving training community clinicians in evidence-based practices. The two part evaluation involves a survey of changes in clinician attitudes towards evidence-based practices and a client-based feedback survey evaluating changes in clinician behavior. In a related follow-on project, the researchers are working on implementing "desk-top" evidence-based micro-practice strategies.
Area of Research: Evidence based Treatment of Serious Mental Disorders in Community Mental Health
Area of Clinical Practice: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Dr. Reiser will be speaking on campus Monday, March 12th at 2:00pm in Kirsch 113
April 2007
Dr. Thomas Plante is professor and chair of psychology at Santa Clara University and adjunct clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. He received his ScB degree in psychology from Brown University, his M.A. and PhD degrees in clinical psychology from the University of Kansas, and his clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship in clinical and health psychology from Yale University. Prior to coming to Santa Clara in 1994, he was a staff psychologist and on the clinical faculty at Stanford University School of Medicine and director of mental health services at the Children's Health Council in Palo Alto, California. He has authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited eleven books, including Sin against the Innocents: Sexual Abuse by Priests and the Role of the Catholic Church (2004, Greenwood), Do the Right Thing: Living Ethically in an Unethical World (2004, New Harbinger), Mental Disorders of the New Millennium (Vols. I, II, and III, 2006, Greenwood), and Spirit, Science and Health: How the Spiritual Mind Fuels the Body (2007, Greenwood). He has published over 150 scholarly professional journal articles and book chapters.
Areas of Research & Clinical Interest:
Dr. Plante's areas of clinical and research interest focuses on stress and coping, the influence of aerobic exercise and perceived fitness on psychological functioning, faith and health outcomes, psychological issues among Catholic clergy and laypersons, and ethical decision making.
Dr. Plante will be speaking on campus on April 19th at 11:00am in G-9
May 2007
Pavel Stranky will be visiting Northern California and speaking at a number of institutions, including De Anza College. Pavel is a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps and speaks about his experience in order to keep people aware of what occurred during the Nazi reign in Europe and of the continued threat of genocide in other parts of the world today. He was a young man in Prague when the Nazi's annexed the Sudetenland in 1938. On December 1, 1941 Pavel was arrested and shipped to Theresienstadt, one of the Nazi concentration camps. It also masqueraded as a "model camp" when the Nazi's wanted to put on a show for the International Red Cross. Two years later, Pavel and his wife were shipped to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they spent over 6 months before being separated and shipped to other camps. Pavel went to Schwartzheide where he had to clean up rubble caused by Allied bombing. In April, 1945 he and 300 others were put on a death march back to Theresienstadt, from which only 200 men survived. In May he returned to Prague, where he discovered his wife, who had also survived. Pavel Stranky's story will move and amaze you.
Mr. Stranky will be speaking on campus on May 2nd. Exact time and location to be announced.
The students in the P3 Bachelor of Science program have organized a talk by Immaculee Ilibagiza, who is a survivor of the Rwanda Genocide and who has written a book about the massacre of her family and friends, her struggle to survive, and her journey to forgiveness. The P3 students recently formed a student council and decided to organize at least one social action event per year in order to raise awareness of human problems and offer solutions. This is that event, and they would like to invite students and faculty to participate. Immaculee has a connection with PGSP thru Professor William Froming, our academic VP. Professor Froming does research on the topic of genocide and has visited Rwanda on several occassions for his research. Last summer, he returned there with a group of clinical psychology students from PGSP to continue his research and to offer psychological support to the survivors. It was there that he met Immaculee. She has recently published a book about her experiences, which you can learn more about by visiting her web site www.lefttotell.com
This is the type of event that we hope to sponsor on a regular basis as part of the P3 program and as a means of making our students aware of pressing social issues. Our students will be organizing an information table at the talk to raise awareness of the current crisis in Darfur. Please join us on Monday evening, May 21st at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, 6:30pm - 8:00pm
June 2007
Please join us for the 7th event in the series of talks by professional Psychologists organized by the Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Social Action program at De Anza College. Professor Leonard Beckum, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Psychology at the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology and Stanford University, will speak to students. Dr. Beckum has a Ph.D. from Stanford in the psychology of education and teaches Ph.D. and Psy.D. clinical psychology students about embedding character in education, cultural competency, educational equity, community involvement, conflict management and mediation, teacher training, early childhood development, and policy analysis.
Dr. Beckum is the Director of the Nevada Character Education Research Project. He was the Director of WestEd's Center for Educational Equity and Director of the Region IX Equity Assistance Center. His professional experience includes: Dean of the School of Education, City College, the City University of New York; Vice President and Vice Provost and Professor of Public Policy Studies, Duke University, where he chaired the Department of African and Afro-American Studies (AAS). Dr. Beckum has also been a high school teacher, a criminal justice instructor, a community organizer, a San Francisco Police Officer and an evaluator and technical assistance provider for the 21st Century Community Centers Program. Dr. Beckum will be speaking to students about his career in teaching, administration, research, and consulting in the areas of education and the challenges facing educators and psychologists for equity and cultural competency.
Tuesday, June 5th at 1:00pm in S-71