Events

Palo Alto University’s Inaugural Tribute Event – Thursday, May 10, 2012, Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport

May 10, 2012

Honoring Leadership That Changes Lives

Palo Alto University is initiating an annual tradition of honoring individuals in our community who have endeavored to improve lives and bring healing to the world. The University is launching this new tradition by honoring Dr. Allen Calvin, President of Palo Alto University for the past 27 years.

Well-known for his passion and commitment in the area of civil rights, Dr. Calvin worked closely with Martin Luther King. Two days after Martin Luther King was assassinated, Dr. Calvin took Martin’s wife, Coretta Scott King, to Puerto Rico to provide her the personal time and space to mourn the loss of a husband. In the late 1960’s, Dr. Calvin triumphed against the wishes of the White community in Mississippi by providing free reading materials to Black students. In New York, he fought Al Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers over the poor quality teachers the union was providing the black neighborhood schools in New York City, and in the 1970’s, he pursued the integration of schools in Arizona, Nevada and California.

During time of war in the Middle East, Dr. Calvin and his wife, Dorothy, did volunteer work in Israeli hospitals. When prominent Palestinians and Israelis worked to achieve progress toward a just, peaceful settlement of the ongoing conflict, Dr. Calvin joined Stanford colleagues at the Stanford Center for international Conflict Resolution in support of their efforts.

In 1962, Dr. Calvin founded the first private sector company to apply the Skinner-based model of behavioral science to primary grade and high school education. The company created hundreds of Programmed Learning textbooks that used "re-enforced experiences" as a technique of teaching new subjects to youth and teens, with higher retention rates over time by students compared with traditional lockstep instruction.

As the Dean of Education at the University of San Francisco (USF) from 1974 to 1978, Dr. Calvin initiated USF’s doctoral education program while doubling the School of Education’s enrollment and dramatically increasing its percentage of faculty and students of color. He launched the School’s multi-cultural program, the first-in-nation Masters degree in Private School Administration, and USF’s first off-campus Masters and credential programs that today are part of the USF regional centers.

In his 27 years as President of Palo Alto University (PAU), Dr. Calvin brought the vision and leadership that transformed a graduate level school into a full-fledged university with a world-renowned faculty. Under Dr. Calvin’s direction, PAU formed collaborative partnerships with Stanford University, Golden Gate University and the Palo Alto Veterans Health Administration at the doctoral level. He instituted Masters level teaching in North America, China, and Argentina, and in partnership with Foothill and De Anza Colleges, pioneered Bachelors degree programs in Business Psychology and Psychology & Social Action.

We look forward to a wonderful night of celebration and reflection on Thursday, May 10, 6:00-9:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport as we honor Dr. Calvin for all he has achieved in our communities, both near and far. For further information, please contact Kemper Mitchell, kmitchell@paloaltou.edu, 650-433-3835.

Palo Alto University is dedicated to reducing suffering and improving lives through education and research anchored in psychology, clinical training and practice in a diversity of cultures, and community service.

PAU Esteemed Lecture Series in Clinical Child Psychology 2012

February 9, 2012

The Esteemed Lecture Series in Clinical Child Psychology is an initiative of the Child and Family Emphasis Area in the Ph.D. Clinical Psychology Program. The lecture series is designed to expose students, faculty, staff and other academic community members/neighbors to cutting-edge thinking and research in clinical child psychology and developmental psychopathology. PAU is proud to join the leading scholars listed below in offering these series. All lectures will held at PAU in the Wisniewski Hall from 12-1 PM.

Feb. 9, 2012 Steven Hinshaw, Ph.D. ADHD: Mechanisms, Development, and Gender Issues

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Stephen Hinshaw is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as Department Chair from 2004-2011, and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Francisco. He received his B.A. from Harvard (1974, summa cum laude), and his doctorate in clinical psychology from UCLA (1983). After a post-doctoral fellowship at the Langley Porter Institute (UCSF), he joined the Berkeley faculty. His work focuses on developmental psychopathology: peer and family relationships, neuropsychological risk factors, pharmacologic and psychological interventions for children with ADHD, assessment and evaluation, conceptual and definitional issues, mental health problems in teenage girls, the stigmatization of mental illness, and international training efforts. He has directed summer research camps and conducted longitudinal studies for boys and (more recently) for girls with ADHD and related disorders, having received over $14 million in NIH funding. Hinshaw has authored over 225 articles, chapters, and reviews plus 7 books, including The Mark of Shame: Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change (Oxford University Press, 2007), and The Triple Bind: Saving our Teenage Girls from Today’s Pressures (Random House, 2009). Two more books are in preparation (ADHD and public policy; a memoir of growing up in a home with severe mental illness). He is editor of Psychological Bulletin, the most cited journal in the field of general psychology, and is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution in Psychology Award from the California State Psychological Association (2009) and the Distinguished Teaching Award, College of Letters and Sciences, UC Berkeley (2001). His 24-lecture series for the Teaching Company, entitled “Origins of the Human Mind,” was released in 2010.

March 1, 2012 12- 1 PM Kathleen Kara Fitzpatrick, Ph.D. Does my Brain Look Fat in this?: How Neuroscience is informing Eating Disorder Treatment

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Dr. Kathleen Kara Fitzpatrick has worked in the Eating Disorders Clinic at Stanford for five years. She specializes in neuropsychological assessment of eating disorders and evaluation of treatments for children and adolescents. Her current research interests focus on the development of Cognitive Remediation Therapy (CRT), which utilizes neuropsychological components to address cognitive and behavioral difficulties associated with eating disorders. In addition to working as a therapist on research treatment studies, she also provides supervision to therapists on different treatment modalities.

April 5, 2012 Michael Tompkins Ph.D., Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Tourette’s Syndrome, and Trichotillomania in Youth

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Michael A. Tompkins, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY 13822), a founding partner of the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy, Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Diplomate and Founding Fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. Dr. Tompkins specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders in adults, adolescents, and children. He is the author or co-author of five books, including My Anxious Mind: A Teen’s Guide to Managing Anxiety and Panic(with Katherine Martinez) (Magination Press, 2010)which is a Magination Press best seller and earned the 2011 Self-Help Seal of Merit from the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. Dr. Tompkins serves on the Advisory Board of Magination Press, the children’s press of the American Psychological Association.

May 29, 2012 12-1 PM Robert L. Hendren D.O., Novel models for understanding and treating Autism?

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Robert L. Hendren, D.O., is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science; Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Vice Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. From 2001-2009, he was Professor of Psychiatry and Executive Director and Tsakopoulos-Vismara Chair at the University of California, Davis M.I.N.D. Institute (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders).Dr. Hendren is Immediate Past (2007-2009) President of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He has published over 100 scientific papers and 4 books and has been listed in “The Best Doctors in America”, each year since it was first published in 1996.

Dr. Hendren took his residency in general psychiatry at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, his child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at the Yale Child Study Center and he is board certified in General as well as Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He has been on the faculty at the George Washington University School of Medicine, the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey - Robert Wood Johnson and New Jersey Medical Schools. His current areas of research and publication interests are translational clinical pharmacology and nutritional trials using biomarkers (MRI, measures of inflammation, oxidative stress, immune function and pharmacogenomics) in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Palo Alto University Hosts 2nd Town and Gown Event

December 12, 2011

PAU Brings Together Non-Profits and Elected Officials to Address Issues Facing Teens and to Identify Areas for Collaboration Among Organizations

Palo Alto, Calif. (December 12, 2011) – Palo Alto University (PAU), a private, non-profit, higher education institution that combines the advantages of a professional school with a traditional university, recently hosted its second Town and Gown event at the StanfordFaculty Club. The gathering focused on many of the challenges facing Santa Clara County youth and discussing ways the university and community could work together to provide greater resources for children and families. A panel of three speakers addressed the group of mostly non-profit organizations and elected officials, including Robert Russell, Ph.D., Director of Clinical Training at PAU, Anne Ehresman of Project Cornerstone, and Jorge Wong, Ph.D., Director of Behavioral Health Services for Asian Americans for Community Involvement(AACI) and PAU faculty member.

“The goal of this month’s Town and Gown was to find out how non-profits and governmental services could collaborate to bring more resources and services to bear on existing, known needs for children and families in the community,” said Town and Gown organizer and PAU’s VP for Business Affairs and CFO June Klein, EdD. “There is redundancy between these groups and we need to collaborate to be more effective and efficient in delivering these services.”

Panelists outlined many of the key issues facing teens, ranging from interpersonal relations with parents and peers, to bullying, to issues of socioeconomic and ethnic diversity. Following the presentations, the group of attendees brainstormed ways they could pool resources to maximize resources to best serve the community.

Ms. Ehresman of Project Cornerstone, tackled the issue of what makes children thrive and explained that kids need “developmental assets” when growing up, or the social and emotional building blocks they need to succeed in life. “Children with 30-40 assets are able to thrive which leads to better performance in school and greater happiness overall,” said Ms. Ehresman. “By contrast, those with 20 or less are vulnerable and move toward the ‘at risk’ category the lower we go.”

Dr. Russell of PAU walked the group through some alarming stats on bullying, revealing one in five to six children or adolescents report being bullied, and stressed the importance of learning the signs that your child may be a victim of bullying. Dr. Russell shared that no children are unaffected by bullying in school, on the playground or in the neighborhood. He explained that the best way to prevent bullying is to talk with your kids and listen to them on a daily basis and be a good example of kindness of leadership. He also noted that it is important to spend time at school during recess, as 67% of bullying happens when adults are not present.

Dr. Wong of AACI focused on the issue of race, disclosing that 47% of Santa Clara County residents are non-white, 36% are foreign-born residents, and 36% are first-generation children of immigrants. “When thinking about how to improve the lives of children in Santa Clara County, it is important to also factor in the population’s ethnic and socioeconomic background,” said Dr. Wong. “You will quickly see the inequities that exist in the Asian population, where 21% of Cambodians and 11% of Vietnamese live below the poverty level, 24% of Asians overall do not have health insurance, and overall Asians have the highest domestic violent death rate.”

At the event, Dr. Klein set up tables of eight, strategically arranging folks so as to have broad representation from stakeholders at each table. For instance, a typical table had a PAU faculty member, a vice president from a community organization, a PAU staff member and an elected official. “To really get the creative juices flowing, I wanted people to stretch beyond their comfort zone and by placing them with folks from different professional backgrounds, we were able to accomplish just that,” continued Dr. Klein.

Some of the ideas generated from the brainstorm included having:

Developing a referral mechanism that would allow various groups to receive referrals based on their expertise and allow people in need to easily get to the right agency
Providing PAU interns for both the Santa Clara County Office of Education and at Santa Clara County public schools

Offering free screenings for depression and anxiety for children and adolescents in the community through PAU’s Kurt and Barbara Gronowski Clinic
Finding ways for PAU to collaborate with more local agencies like HEARD and the YMCA to help teenagers with mental health issues
Offering more preventive services to improve resiliency for teenagers who are at risk.
Creating opportunities for PAU students help with mentoring or advising middle and high school students to talk about struggling with the stress and pressures of becoming adults

Dr. Klein will be working with PAU staff to develop action plans for many of the recommendations.

“These are just a handful of the ideas generated from the brainstorm,” said Allen Calvin, Ph.D., President of Palo Alto University, “and the group could have easily spent several hours more but we ran out of time. It just further illustrates the need for these types of gatherings, and I commend June for adeptly pulling together such an outstanding group to tackle these important issues.”

For more information about future Town and Gown events, please contact Dr. Klein at jklein@paloaltou.edu. For more information on PAU, please visit http://paloaltou.edu.

About Palo Alto University

Founded in 1975, the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology reincorporated to Palo Alto University in 2009. A private, non-profit, higher education institution that combines the advantages of a professional school with a traditional university, Palo Alto University provides undergraduate and graduate students small class sizes with renowned faculty and impressive clinical training resources through the university's cooperative relationships with Stanford University, Golden Gate University and Palo Alto Veterans Health Administration. The positive results of this strategy can be seen in students' placement in high quality internships, outstanding test scores on the licensing examination, and successful careers.

About the Kurt and Barbara Gronowski Clinic

The Kurt and Barbara Gronowski Psychology Clinic at the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology (PGSP) is a community-based psychology training clinic and treatment center dedicated to providing high quality, evidence-based, clinical services to adults, older adults, adolescents, children, and families in our community.

Media Contact: Elena Arney Palo Alto University, 530.386.5932, elena_arney@yahoo.com.

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Honoring Leadership That Changes Lives