In a perfect example of community collaboration and cooperation, once again, Bob Meyer, Ph.D., professor of biology, joined with members of the Senior Environment Corps from Germantown’s Center-in-the-Park to host a group of students from the John B. Kelly School in Germantown for a morning of hands-on education about stream monitoring at the creek below the summer house.
Representatives from the Philadelphia Water Department and the Department of Environmental Protection were on hand too.
(Watch for a full story in the fall issue of the Chestnut Hill magazine.)
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APA Accreditation Benefits CHC’s Doctoral Students
The Chestnut Hill College Internship Consortium has been accredited for seven years by the American Psychological Association (APA) for the first time in the history of CHC’s doctoral program.
The accreditation comes after an extensive two-year process of self-study and documentation review in addition to a three-day site visit by members of the APA. The consortium is composed of seven sites in the greater Philadelphia area that are dedicated to training doctoral students, including community mental health centers, a center specializing in those with traumatic brain injuries, another that works with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and autism, a college counseling center, and a site that practices general outpatient psychotherapy.
“We place 11 interns every year at the seven sites,” explains Rosemarie Manfredi, Psy.D., assistant professor of psychology and director of the CHC Internship Consortium. “Every doctoral student must complete a one-year, full-time internship for the sixth and final year of their doctoral program.”
The accreditation is a “big deal for our students,” she adds. “For the last 10 or 15 years, there has been a shortage of internship sites, and in order to earn a doctorate, you have to do the one-year internship, so students were getting all of their coursework done, and then there was a bottleneck. They got so far and then couldn’t finish because they couldn’t do an internship.”
In the fall of their final year, students apply to sites around the country, ranking their preferred location. The sites do the same with their choice of interns, and matches are made by computer in two rounds.
CHC accepts applications only from CHC doctoral students in the first round of the matching process, thereby giving them a good opportunity to get an APA-accredited internship. Interning for a place that has such an accreditation is important, according to Manfredi.
“There are unaccredited internships out there, but when you go to get licensed as a psychologist, or if you want to work for the federal government or for certain hospitals, they won’t accept your application if you don’t have an APA-accredited internship.”
Nearly half of CHC’s doctoral students can be accommodated in the consortium’s internships if they choose to be part of it, she adds.
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Psychology Students Receive Awards
Anthony Powell, M.S., who will receive his Psy.D. next summer, has received two awards. He was the only student in Pennsylvania to receive the 2016 Student Multicultural Award from the Pennsylvania Psychological Association. He won the award for his contributions to the needs of the African American community and greater society. He was one of six recipients of the 2016 Pennsylvania Psychological Foundation’s Education Awards. He will begin an APA-accredited doctoral internship with the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Lexington, Ky., in July.
“Anthony has distinguished himself in our program at CHC, and I predict that he will make significant contributions to the profession and the populations he is committed to serve,” says Cheryll Rothery, Psy.D., A.B.P.P., associate professor of psychology and chair of the Department of Professional Psychology.
Rosalind Lucien, a student in the master’s program in psychology, recently was the first student from Chestnut Hill College to receive the Minority Fellowship Program STAY Award from the American Psychological Association. STAY stands for Services for Transition Age Youth and includes a $6,000 stipend for one year, in addition to a variety of support and training services.
“This is a very prestigious award, an incredible accomplishment at the master's level of training,” says Rothery.
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Chestnut Hill College recently awarded two $20,000 CHC Cristo Rey Philadelphia High School Partnership Scholarships to students at Cristo Rey Philadelphia High School.
The partnership between CHC and Cristo Rey Philadelphia was formed last year and provides two annual scholarships to deserving students. They are renewable for up to four years for full-time enrollment in the School of Undergraduate Studies.
Cristo Rey Philadelphia is one of 28 high schools in the Cristo Rey network, which serves more than 9,000 students around the country. The Philadelphia school opened in 2012 as a partnership between local educators, business and universities, and is an independent, Catholic high school for youth of all faiths in grades 9 to 12. Its curriculum combines rigorous academics with professional work experience and serves high school students who could not otherwise afford a private education. Cristo Rey Philadelphia students work five days per month in real jobs, for real wages, at leading area businesses where they are mentored by professionals.
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Suzanne Conway, M.A., associate professor of art history, presented a colloquium on April 13.
In "The Ayah: Intimate Intersection of Race and Class in British Colonial India,” she examined the lives of young Indian women and girls — ayahs — who provided care to British colonial families in India from the 18th century until Indian independence in 1947. Often treated harshly, the ayahs were sometimes abandoned in England after accompanying a child or family there. In the mid 19th century, the Ayahs' Home was founded in London to provide these women with safe shelter until they could earn money to return to India. Ayahs often were remembered as warm, loving and caring people who framed an idyliic childhood in India by the Anglo-Indian children who had been their charges and later wrote about their experiences, such as Rudyard Kipling, .
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Julian Fernandez ’11, head men’s soccer coach, recently sat down with the National Soccer Coaches Association of America as part of their “30 Under 30 Live Chat: Why I Coach," on YouTube.
“I can remember being about 10 or 12 at a summer soccer camp and looking at all of the coaches and thinking, ‘Wow, these guys get to do what they love every day,’” Fernandez says, in the live chat. “The seed for me was planted that day.”
In addition to talking about his own personal coaching journey, Fernandez also spoke on the topic of overall goal setting as a coach, how to make an impact on the students and youth you are coaching, getting players to care about the program they are involved in, balancing athletics and competition with education and much more.
To see the whole interview, click here.
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A few weeks prior to the stress of finals, CHC’s Student Activities Office hosted its annual Springfest, complete with all kinds of activities, free smoothies provided by Chartwells and various club displays. Springfest took over the Piazza and provided students a chance to have some fun in the sun during their final weeks of the semester.
This year’s biggest attraction was called the Wrecking Ball. A giant inflatable — measuring 40’ x 40’ x 20’ — the Wrecking Ball is considered the ultimate high-energy game involving strength, balance and stamina according to partyvision.com. Four players stand on their inflated pads as one grabs the ball and swings it at their opponents in an attempt to knock them off. Players can grab the ball as it comes at them and fire it back in any direction. The last person standing wins.
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Every year prior to the end of the spring semester, Chestnut Hill College honors its best and brightest at the Spring Honors Convocation. Awards and recognition are given to students making the dean's list, acheiving a spot on the athletic academic honor roll, completing departmental honors and more. Two special awards are also given to graduating seniors in the form of the Dorothea E. Fenton '28 Memorial Medal, which was awarded to Vernon Jeffries, and the Saint Catherine Medal, which was awarded to Joey Galuntuomo. For a full photo gallery from the day's events, click here.
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Every year, a group of student and alumni volunteers travel to Cape May, N.J., to help get the St. Mary’s by the Sea retreat house ready for the summer season. Jennifer Thorpe, director of residence life, continues a tradition that was started by a former student many years ago.
She says, “Our time there involves many varied tasks but mostly waxing the kitchen and dining room floors and landscaping the property. This year was special because we got to scrape the old paint off of the St. Mary statue and repaint her. Our students took great pride in this effort.”
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