School Psychology Newsletter

Transcription

1 School Psychology Newsletter June 2011 Issue 11 Departmental Awards This year the students of the School Psychology Program really had the opportunity to shine. The department would like to recognize the achievements of the following students: Heather Merner, a first year student in the School Psychology Program, received the Jonathan Davis Memorial Scholarship. Heather attended JMU as an undergraduate student, where she conducted research on suicide awareness for JMU undergraduate students. Now as a graduate student, she will continue her research on suicide awareness and prevention and will serve as an advocate for children and families who have been impacted by suicide. Congratulations, Heather! The department would like to congratulate Lindsey Visbaras, a soon to be intern in the School Psychology Program, for receiving the Outstanding Teaching Award. Lindsey worked with the Psychology Learning community as an outstanding Teaching Assistant for two years. Congratulations, Lindsey! The department would like to recognize Francine Torres, a soon to be intern in the School Psychology Program, for receiving the Tina Kauten Memorial Award for Service. Francine was a driving force behind the service work that the School Psychology program students were involved in. She also served as a mentor in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program, and as the program representative on the Psychology Graduate Students Council (PGSC). Congratulations, Francine! 1

2 A Change in Faces This year was a busy time full of transitions for the faculty of the department. In the midst of comings and goings it is always good to take a moment and reflect upon the changes going on around us. Addition to Psychological Sciences Faculty: Trevor Stokes In 2010, Dr. Trevor Stokes was invited to become a faculty member of JMU s Psychological Sciences Masters Program. As the Program Coordinator of the Clinical Research Concentration, Dr. Stokes is responsible for overseeing the curriculum and mentoring students who choose this particular concentration, many of whom will go onto pursue doctoral degrees in clinical or school psychology. In addition, Dr. Stokes is also the Director of the Alvin V. Baird Attention and Learning Disabilities Center. The mission of this center is to create and advocate for evidence based interventions for children with learning and behavioral difficulties and to work with families and educators to help implement these interventions. His expertise lies in creative interventions and support for children with autism. Did we mention he is also an Aussie? Thank you for all the work that you do! New Neuropsychologist Faculty Member: Bernice Marcopulos This past spring, Dr. Bernice Marcopulos was chosen to join the psychology graduate faculty as the new Neuropsychology professor. Dr. Marcopulos received her Ph.D. in Clinical Neuropsychology from the University of Victoria in Canada. Before joining JMU, Dr. Marcopulos has had a wealth of experience in academia, most recently working as an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia and at Western State Psychiatric Hospital in Staunton. This summer she is teaching a course on Psychopharmacology and will be teaching Introduction to Child and Adolescent Neuropsychology to graduate psychology students in the fall. Welcome, Dr. Marcopulos! Retirement of Ed McKee Ed McKee, a Professor with a career at JMU spanning three decades, retired last year. Retirement has done little to reduce his passion for teaching as Dr. McKee continues to teach classes within the counseling program. He does find time to 2

3 create beautiful woodworking projects and compose poetry. He continues to be a common sight around the department and seems to have no intentions of becoming scarce any time soon. This is a situation that students, both new and old, and his colleagues, can all be thankful for! learning project in which students participate in a rural community program; students will be involved with both individual home visits and group leadership. The class is expected to function as a capstone experience, serving to synthesize and examine the training and skills obtained throughout the program. Changes in Curriculum The School Psychology Program has taken steps towards including Professional Practice Issues in Rural School Psychology in the curriculum of their training. As a part of the standard curriculum the class will continue to be taught during the summer session of the program s second year prior to internship. The course focuses on investigating the unique professional issues associated with providing school based psychological services in rural settings. This topic is explored through class discussion, interaction with content experts, and literature reviews. The class also includes a rewarding service Establishing a Scholarship in Memory of O. Ashton Trice By Ashton D. Trice Over the last decade many of you met my father, O. Ashton Trice, Junior. For most of you, he probably was merely a quiet, perpetually smiling figure who sometimes came along with me to work. Dad died last October. I m sure most of you remember my telling you that he was a psychology professor and a school psychologist. My father was born on the family farm in the small town of Howardsville, in Albemarle County, Virginia, on March 19, 1920, the sixth 3

4 of nine children was an interesting year in which to be born. Europe was recovering from The Great War, not yet called World War I, because a second World War was unimaginable. Sound in movies was a decade away. Women didn t have the vote. Freud was inventing the idea of a superego. Watson was conditioning a boy named Albert to fear rats and fur coats. Dad attended a one-room schoolhouse about a mile away from the farm, often on horseback, sometimes taking a rifle along with him to hunt during recess. He then went to Scottsville High School, where he was valedictorian and captain of the baseball team. At the end of high school, he turned down a scholarship to the University of Virginia to sign a developmental contract with the Cincinnati Reds. His brother Lawrence, already with the Reds, came to town during the summer and convinced him that UVa was a better option. But Dad had waited to the point where he had only two major options, chemistry or physics. He sat on the steps of Jefferson s Rotunda and flipped a coin and chose chemistry. His scholarship required him to tutor the football team in science and mathematics. Dad received his B.Chem. in 1941, taking, as his one free elective, general psychology, because it fit his schedule. Dad served as a Lieutenant in the Navy during World War II. During his military service he was stationed at M.I.T., Sacramento, Honolulu, and Princeton. While he did not see combat, he had an interesting military career that included working on improvements in radar; taking a seminar with Einstein; piloting patrols off the California Coast; teaching machine gunnery; and being stationed for several months in Honolulu without orders, where he learned to play tennis. After the war, my parents returned to Charlottesville. Dad completed his M.A. in 1949 and his Ph.D. in 1951, both in experimental psychology. I was born in My mother worked as a bookkeeper, and my father assumed most of the childrearing duties. While at the University he worked with former GIs who were experiencing both academic and mental health issues. He received an offer to teach at Princeton in 1949, but his advisor recommended that the complete his dissertation first, so he accepted a one year appointment at Mary Baldwin College, where he remained for 37 years. For his first 19 years there, every student at the college took his introduction to psychology course during her sophomore year. In the early years, he taught the entire psychology major, as he was the only member of the department. Dad became involved in local mental health facilities in 1950, as a researcher at Western State Hospital 4

5 in the national effort to evaluate the effectiveness of prefrontal lobotomies. He stayed on as a staff psychologist throughout the 1950s and then was affiliated with the DeJarnette Hospital in the 1960s and 1970s. He worked with spinal cord injured patients at Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center. He was involved in setting up the Head Start programs in Bath and Highland Counties. Dad s career as a school psychologist also came at an interesting time, School districts were not required to teach difficult students, but the superintendent of the Waynesboro schools believed that they should. Most nearby districts sent their students with MR and autism to privately funded local schools and students with emotional and sensory problems to residential state institutions. Older students with behavior problems were simply told to find jobs. Waynesboro decided to teach these children in their schools. Dad did a lot of testing and individual and group counseling and therapy. He visited homes and worked with teachers, and spent a good deal of time in court. While Dad strongly supported the changes that were inherent in PL , he felt that the new law would change the profession of school psychology into an assessment specialist, and so, in 1978, after training the Waynesboro faculty for their new roles under the new law, he retired. After his retirement from Mary Baldwin in 1986, he devoted himself for ten years to the daily care of my mother who had Parkinson s Disease. It seems to me that what my father did as a school psychologist is what the textbooks now describe as the new data-driven problemsolving model. His background in chemistry gave him a great respect for data. He wasn t constrained by volumes of regulations or overly focused by notions of best practices. One of the mottos that he lived by was Skinner s mantra, The student is always right. This did not mean you did what the student wanted, but that the student s behavior in a situation was always the right response to that situation. If another behavior was deemed necessary, then it was the situation that needed to be changed. My father, like myself, went though graduate school at a time when most students were fully funded. He always contributed generously to the University of Virginia, saying that he had gotten ten years of education and three degrees there, and had never paid them a cent. In addition to contributions to UVa, we are setting up a fund to establish an O. Ashton Trice Scholarship for students in the School Psychology program at James Madison. One of our urgent needs is to help students find tuition support 5

6 for the five required summer school courses. The present scholarship will create an endowment which will assist one student with his or her second year summer school courses. Contributions by alumni will allow the endowment to keep up with rising tuition costs and to expand the awards to more than one student. Contributions can be made to the SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY FOUNDATION ACCOUNT. Stay tuned for the first awards to be made this summer!!! To support the School Psychology Program and the training of our students, consider making a contribution to the JMU Foundation specifying Account Number We value your continued support in maintaining our educational excellence by providing funds that go towards testing and materials for student research. Please mail checks to: Advancement Gift and Record James Madison University 800 South Main Street MSC 3603 Harrisonburg, VA

7 Contact Us! Patti Warner, Ph.D. Program Coordinator Tammy Gilligan, Ph.D. Debbi Kipps-Vaughan, Psy.D. Check out the JMU School Psychology website at: Did we miss someone? Please send us e-addresses?? of colleagues who did not receive our newsletter. 7