Gronowski Center Welcomes New Leadership
Palo Alto University’s Gronowski Center has new, interim leadership as it moves to the PAU Mountain View campus. Michael Richards, PhD, is now the Interim Director of the Gronowski Center and Satoko Kimpara, PhD, is the Interim Assistant Director.
The Gronowski Center is PAU’s training clinic dedicated to providing compassionate counseling and psychotherapy services to individuals, children, and families in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. The clinic offers services on a sliding scale basis and services are provided by doctoral level psychology students under the supervision of licensed psychologists.
“PAU’s Gronowski Center is a cornerstone of PAU’s excellence in clinical training and is an important and essential resource in our community,” said PAU’s Provost and Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs Erika Cameron.
Dr. Richards is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and has been a supervisor in the Gronowski Center, working most recently in the Sexual and Gender Identities Clinic. He has clinical experience in college counseling, community mental health, and residential substance abuse treatment. He has clinical interests in LGBTQ issues, social justice–informed therapy, anxiety, depression, and substance use.
“I'm excited about the opportunity to serve our clinic's clients, therapists, and supervisors,” Dr. Richards said. “In the next year, we hope to be able to return to offering in-person services, build support for our training process with therapists and supervisors, and begin to identify ways of growing the clinic's training opportunities and services while maintaining a quality experience for all involved with the clinic.”
Dr. Kimpara has been a long-time clinical supervisor in the Gronowski Center and is also an alumna of the PhD Program in Clinical Psychology. She has extensive experience in transcultural clinical psychology training programs, developing international research programs that foster culture-sensitive interventions, and the Systematic Treatment Selection (STS) approach to enhancing and optimizing psychotherapy outcome/process.
“I am excited about this opportunity with our supervisors, staff, and students to carry on and cultivate the vision of the Gronowski Center over 35 years: promoting the psychological well-being of our community through providing low-cost, evidence-based psychological services to underserved individuals and families in our community,” she said.
To learn more, visit the Gronowski Center website.