Clinical & School Psychology Alumni Newsletter 2016

CLINICAL & SCHOOL Psychology SUMMER 2016

Thank You! The Curry School Foundation recognizes the generosity of the following alumni from the Clinical and School Psychology program who made donations in fiscal year 2016 (which ended June 30): Karen Brockenbrough Constance Caldwell John Callahan Margaret Dawson Christos Eleftherios Eugenie Hamilton Lora J. Henderson Nancy Kassam-Adams Andrew Kind-Rubin Allison Knight Lauren Kopans Sandra Jean Kramos Winx Lawrence John Schroll Jeffrey Seltzer Theodore Siedlecki Donna Steinberg Deborah Strzepek These gifts directly benefit Curry students and the quality of their educational experiences.

Save the Date!

Clinical & School Psychology Program’s 50th Anniversary!

MARCH 31 - APRIL 2, 2017

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n 2017 the Curry School’s Clinical and School Psychology program will celebrate its 50th anniversary!

We are planning a big celebration and an opportunity to come together to celebrate the Program, Dick Abidin, recently retired Ron Reeve, and soon-to-be retired Ann Loper. Events will include time to reunite with peers, meet other graduates, have some family fun, and hear about what everyone is up to.

We hope to have a dinner on Friday, then networking, presentations, and a family-friendly picnic spread across Saturday and Sunday. Please plan to attend any or all of the Weekend. The events will be in Charlottesville in the same old places and some new ones.

More information will follow soon.

Curry Alumni at APA State Leadership Conference

CLINICAL & SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY is edited

by Lynn Bell, Director of Alumni Relations, and published by the Curry School of Education, P.O. Box 400268, Charlottesville, VA 22904. Email: lynnbell@virginia.edu #UVACurry Some or our graduates in attendance included the alumni pictured in this photo: (l to r) Peter Oppenheimer, ‘86, Rhode Island; Cathleen (Althaus) Rea, ‘84, Virginia; Peter Sheras, Virginia; Geoffrey Kanter, ‘87, Florida; Nancy Parsons, ‘88, Florida; and Barbara Ward-Zimmerman, ‘85, Connecticut.

Every year since 1984, APA holds the annual State Leadership Conference in Washington, DC. The purpose is to train leaders in state associations and carry the message of psychology practice to the U.S. Congress. The meeting is attended by nearly 500 leaders from the U.S. and Canada and is among the most selective and prestigious meetings of psychologists annually. This past March Curry graduates were well represented as presenters, elected officers, and advocates at the meeting.

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Prof. Ann Loper Retiring

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nn Loper came to the Curry School in 1978 as a research assistant professor in Curry’s Learning Disabilities Research Institute. Now, 39 years later, she will leave behind a rich legacy of previously unplumbed knowledge about incarcerated parenting and its impacts on children.

After seven years on the special education faculty at Curry, Loper took a five-year break to give her three children her full attention.

When she returned to the University in 1990, she joined the Curry programs in Clinical and School Psychology. While pursuing research into the reason women tend to have internalizing disorders like anxiety and depression (compared to men’s more externalizing behavior), she interviewed women in the criminal justice system, who were assumed to exhibit more externalizing behavior. She unexpectedly found more anxiety and depression among incarcerated women than in those on the outside.

This work led her to the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, where she discovered inmates who were mothers.

“When I got there I was just blown away by the kind of courage and commitment the

women, many of whom were sentenced to life, had to their children,” she said.

In recent years, she has collaborated with the regional Girl Scouts Beyond Bars, the Virginia Department of Corrections and the re-entry program for a regional jail. They have worked together to improve a parenting program designed to aid incarcerated parents in making healthy connections with their children during and after incarceration.

She has conducted research concerning the needs and characteristics of female offenders and worked with state correctional professionals to examine how parenting training relates to successful re-entry outcomes. She has also initiated a series of studies regarding children of incarcerated parents using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

“My research regarding incarcerated women, particularly those struggling with how to parent from inside has been rewarding and, I hope, helpful to those who seek to better understand and help out these individuals,” she said.

Working with students has been the most satisfying part of the work here, Loper said.

“I am so proud of my students and what

Student Honors & Awards Nora M. Arkin received a $1500 grant from the Maxine Platzer Lynn Women’s Center at UVA

for her project, “The Body Project: A Narrative and Social Network Analysis.” She serves as the Body Positive, Eating Disorders Education Coordinator at the Center, where she works with Body Positive interns to promote body positivity at UVA and help create an environment that embraces an understanding of “Health at Every Size.”

Paula A. Aduen received the Emerging Leaders in Assessment Award from APA Divisions 5, 12,

40 and the Association of Test Publishers for her poster, “The Impact of Anxiety and Executive Functioning on Visual Memory in Patients with Epilepsy.” She will present her poster at the Assessment Community breakfast during the APA Convention in August.

Lora Henderson was selected in fall 2015 to serve a two-year term on the APA Graduate Student Convention Committee. This summer she is attending the APA Minority Fellowship Program’s

Psychology Summer Institute. She also received a $1,000 Innovative, Developmental, Exploratory Awards (IDEA) grant from the Curry School Foundation for her dissertation work, “Dissonance Between Home and School: Does It Exist and How Should It Be Measured?””

Pooja Datta completed the University of Maryland’s graduate certificate program in Working

with Survivors of Violence, Torture, and Trauma.

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SUMMER 2016 • CLINICAL & SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY

they have accomplished,” she added. “This is a great program that attracts amazingly talented men and women who are dedicated and hardworking, so working with them was simply a treat beyond description for me.”

Program director Jason Downer thinks the students have been pretty fortunate, as well.

“I have been lucky enough to witness Ann’s remarkable contributions to the program, both as a supervisee and colleague. She was instrumental in helping me transition from a graduate student to a licensed clinical psychologist.

Within supervision, her extensive knowledge helped deepen my understanding of cognitivebehavioral therapy and showcased for me how lucky our students have been to learn the ins and outs of CBT from such a talented clinician.”

Retirement, which officially begins in January 2017 seems both exciting and a bit scary, Loper said. “Fortunately, I am following in the footsteps of several wonderful retired faculty who all report being fulfilled and busy.”

Read more curry.virginia.edu/clinpsychnewsletter

Curry Foundation Monetary Awards to Clin & School Psych Students Supriya Williamson Richard Abidin Scholarship

Elizabeth Coleman Richard Abidin Award for Clinical Excellence Nora Arkin Richard Abidin Award for Excellence in Research Krishtine Phillips Nathan E. Johnson Memorial Scholarship Paula Aduen Marjorie Hare Andrews Fellowship Jaclyn M. Russo Curry Trustees Fellowship

Alumni Features

Janelle Peifer M.Ed. ‘11, Ph.D. ‘15 Assistant Professor Agnes Scott College Decatur, Ga.

The two things I am very passionate about brought me to Curry: women’s empowerment and globally related topics. I fell in love with Winx Lawrence’s Young Women’s Leaders Program and its Global Connections program. I knew it would fit perfectly with my clinical, programmatic, and research interests.

More broadly, I loved the Clinical and School Psychology program’s balanced and interconnected focus on both application and research.

I’ve been at Agnes since July 1, 2015. It has been a wonderful whirlwind! Agnes launched an institution-wide initiative called Summit last year. Through Summit, all students at Agnes Scott engage in an individualized fouryear program focused on global learning and leadership. As part of this, all first year students complete a weeklong global study tour embedded in a course that pushes them to develop essential global awareness and skills. I have loved working with other faculty and staff to develop the content and student learning objectives for this course.

My section focuses on the intersectionality of identity and women’s leadership in Nicaragua and the United States. More broadly, I lead a longitudinal research study that explores students’ intercultural competence development over the course of their college tenure and after they graduate. I also teach courses in abnormal and cultural psychology.

Once a week, as a clinician with the Emory University Department of Psychiatry’s Grady Nia Project, I provide culturally informed, empowerment-based group and individual therapy services to women who have experienced relationship violence and who have attempted suicide.

I am very proud of developing the Global Pathways Study. I look forward to learning more about cultural competence development and how experiences in college can play a role in that process. We live in a world that has a constantly evolving—often troubled—relationship with difference and diversity. Understanding how people foster skills to connect with people who are different than themselves is essential.

Sebastian Kaplan M.Ed. ‘01, Ph.D. ‘05 Clinical Psychologist, Associate Professor Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Section, Wake Forest University School of Medicine

I was an undergraduate psychology major, but my first career was in special education as a paraprofessional and teacher in the greater Boston area. The Curry School was an ideal fit for me due to the opportunity to focus my clinical psychology training on helping children and families, as well as maintaining school-based opportunities.

My clinical work [at Wake Forest], primarily with adolescents and their families, is most rewarding. I have the privilege of meeting some wonderful people who are going through major struggles, and they allow me into their lives to help them get back on track. I have also found the variety of roles in my work to be quite stimulating and precisely what I had envisioned the life of a psychologist to be.

In 2008 I became a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT), an international group of educators, clinicians, and researchers dedicated to the best practice of Motivational Interviewing. Being part of this group has allowed me to grow tremendously as a clinician and educator, not to mention having met some phenomenal people from around the world.

Kaplan has written and presented on the application of Motivational Interviewing for pediatricians, mental health providers, and school personnel. He is co-author of a forthcoming book, “Motivational Interviewing in Schools: Conversations to Improve Behavior and Learning” (Guilford Press), which will be released in September. It is described as a pragmatic book that shows “how to use everyday interactions with students as powerful opportunities for change.

Motivational Interviewing comprises skills and strategies that can make brief conversations about any kind of behavioral, academic, or peer-related challenge more effective.”

Welcome!

Dr. Michael D. Lyons joins the Clinical & School Psychology faculty this summer.

Lyons received his Ph.D. in school psychology with an area of emphasis in quantitative methods from the University of South Carolina in 2014. He has since been a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Houston.

“I am excited to welcome Mike to our faculty this year,” said Jason Downer, program director. “He brings a strong positive youth development approach to understanding mental health and wellbeing of students.”

He has published empirical studies related to positive youth development, school-based mentoring, and individuating treatment based on a person’s unique risk and protective factors. In 2011, his research was recognized by APA’s Division 16 for Excellence in Graduate Student Research, as well as the South Carolina Association for School Psychology.

This year, he received the Society for the Study of School Psychology early career award. It comes with a $20,000 grant that will provide support to study the effect of adding targeted academic and goalsetting activities into an existing school-based mentoring program.

“This project will help us understand when and for whom these activities are most effective for changing students’ academic and behavioral outcomes,” Lyons said.

He plans to test these enhancements in partnership with Professor Winx Lawrence through the Young Women Leaders Program during the upcoming school year.

CLINICAL & SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY • SUMMER 2016

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Clinical & School Psychology Alumni Newsletter P.O. Box 400268 417 Emmet Street South Charlottesville, VA 22904-4268

CLASS NOTES Leila Azarbad (M.Ed. ’02, Ph.D. ’06) continues to love her job as an associate professor of psychology at North Central College, a private, liberal arts college located 30 miles outside of Chicago, Ill. She teaches a variety of courses in clinical and health psychology and continues to focus on research pertaining to disordered eating and obesity. Outside of work, Leila and her husband keep busy toting their two boys, ages 8 and 5, to a variety of sports and activities.

Website: northcentralcollege.edu/facultyprofile/ lazarbad/PSY Mary Alice Fisher (M.A. ’78, Ph.D. ’82) now has four great-grandchildren, which gives her the chance to play with little ones again!

“Professionally, the last few years have been very busy. The Center for Ethical Practice is in its 13th year and is still thriving, providing ethics workshops and ethics consultation.

I also maintain a small private clinical practice in Charlottesville. “This year, the Ethics Committee of the American Psychological Association has honored me with its award for Outstanding Contributions to Ethics Education, which I will receive at the APA Convention in Denver in August. There, I will also be presenting a CE workshop called Keeping Secrets: The Complicated Ethics of ‘Conditional’ Confidentiality, which is based on my second book, which was published by APA this year: Confidentiality Limits in Psychotherapy: Ethics Checklists for Mental Health Professionals.”

Karen Kahn (M.Ed. ’74, Ed.D. ’77) published Daunting to Doable: You CAN Make It Rain.

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SUMMER 2015 • CLINICAL & SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY

Emily Nichols (Ph.D. ’14) finished her postdoctoral fellowship in the Developmental Medicine Center at Boston Children’s Hospital in November of last year. “I got to learn and work alongside fellow Curry alumni Kate Driscoll (M.Ed. ’03, Ph.D. ’07) and Tina Lafiosca (M.Ed. ’87, Ph.D. ’81)! I am now a staff psychologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, working in a primary health care based program, Advocating Success for Kids, providing assessments, therapy, consultation, and school advocacy for kids with learning and developmental needs in the Boston Public School system. Nate and I are loving parenthood and Ezra (19 mos) keeps us on our toes! We hope to return to Virginia one day and think fondly of our time in Charlottesville.”

Anthony Pisani (M.Ed. ’97, Ph.D. ’01) and Daniel Murrie (M.Ed. ’98, Ph.D. ’02) coauthored “Prevention-Oriented Suicide Risk Assessment: Planning Not Prediction” for the Director’s Corner of the Suicide Prevention Resource Center’s The Weekly Spark. The newsletter piece is based on their article “Reformulating Suicide Risk Formulation: From Prediction to Prevention” coauthored with Morton Silverman, which originally appeared in Academic Psychiatry. Pisani is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics in the Center for the Study and Prevention of Suicide at the University of Rochester. Murrie is a professor in UVA’s Department of Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences. He serves as the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, & Public Policy’s Director of Psychology.

Congratulations!

In August Professor Jason Downer will receive the Mid-Career Award for Outstanding Contributions to Benefit Children, Youth and Families presented by the APA Committee on Children, Youth and Families & Divisions 7, 16, and 37 at the APA annual convention in Denver.

He was also invited to join the Society for the Study of School Psychology.

This year the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, Division 53 of the APA, established the Richard “Dick” Abidin Early Career Award and Grant, named in honor of our program’s beloved professor emeritus.

The award recognizes an early career psychologist who has established a program of empirical research having a major impact on the field’s understanding of psychopathology, prevention, assessment, treatment, or public policy relative to child and adolescent development or mental health. The winner will receive a $20,000 grant to continue their

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