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The "Alumnotes" feature provides members with a place to share information (in several different categories) about what is going on in their lives. Use the criteria below to search for the members whose notes you would like to read.
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To Search for Alumnotes:
1. Specify a set of search criteria. To select a criterion for use in your search, click the the checkbox to the left of its filter name. You must select at least one Note Category to conduct a search.
2. Make any selections or provide any text required by the selected criteria.
3. Click the "Search Alumnotes" button.
NOTE: Clicking the "Search Alumnotes>>" button without defining criteria will generate a list of all existing and approved Alumnotes.
To Submit an Alumnote:
To add a note, click the "Add Alumnote" button.
If you have recently added an Alumnote, it is possible that you will not see it in the results immediately. Each Community has its own rules and time frames regarding Administrator approval of member-submitted content.
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Graduation Date:1991
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Posted by an administrator
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Dr. Stewart I. Donaldson, Dean of Claremont Graduate University’s School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences and an alumnus of the school, has been elected to the Board of the American Evaluation Association for a three-year term.
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Graduation Date:2009
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Posted by an administrator
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M.A. alumna Amanda Hawkins landed an exciting full-time position this spring before even walking in graduation. She is now working for AIDS Project Los Angeles in their education department, doing capacity building and consulting on evaluation projects. She consults all over the country with implementers of HIV prevention programs to help them run more effectively.
With a Masters degree in social psychology and evaluation, Amanda says she felt well-prepared to tackle such a position. “Recently I have traveled to Reno, Atlanta, and Seattle to provide capacity building workshops. I like working at APLA because it allows me to use what I’ve learned about evaluation at CGU.
“More importantly it allows me to teach others about evaluation and how they can use that information to be successful in the community. I was an intern with APLA since the end of my first year at CGU and was asked to stay full-time a few months before graduation. I was inspired to accept this position because I really enjoy evaluation and I was eager to put my new skills to use. My Master’s degree definitely prepared me for the work I have been doing; it gave me a great balance of theory and practical knowledge. But the real test of my preparation will be the Program Evaluation class I will be teaching at Cal State Dominguez Hills this fall.”
We congratulate Amanda on her accomplishments and wish her much success in her career!
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Graduation Date:2007
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Posted by an administrator
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CGU aluma Dr. Naomi Hall is completing her first year as co-editor of the SPSSI (Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues) Newsletter.
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Graduation Date:1993
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Posted by an administrator
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Supplying Low Income Families With Housing and Effective Social Services:
"The number one challenge faced by working families is to find safe, decent, affordable housing,” says alumna Dr. Joelle Greene, Director of Research and Evaluation for National Community Renaissance, or National CORE. “And in California, that can be nearly impossible, especially if you are earning minimum wage. The company I work for not only provides that housing, but supports residents with additional services designed to help individuals and families who want to better their circumstances—whether that be to remain living independently if you are an older adult, to maintain stable housing for your children or to save to buy your own home.”
National CORE, headquartered in Rancho Cucamonga, CA, was recognized as one of the nation’s largest non-profit affordable housing development companies by Affordable Housing Finance Magazine in 2007. The company currently owns over 70 apartment communities with more than 10,000 units housing over 27,000 people in California, Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida and New Jersey. Dr. Greene notes, "One of the most distinctive things about National CORE is that we do it all in house -- we literally develop, construct, manage and provide social services ourselves. We pride our selves not on just creating beautiful apartment communities that are safe and affordable, but our bigger purpose is to transform communities. By working closely with city partners and having a stake in all the phases of the development
of the community, we can have a larger impact than if we were only fulfilling some of the functions ourselves."
Dr. Greene spends most of her time working as the lead evaluator for National CORE's social services department (also known as the Hope Through Housing Foundation) where she helps program leadership design and implement evaluation systems for three initiatives: Child Development (which includes Head Start and State-funded preschools), Youth Development (which includes after school programs for children and youth in grades K-12) and Senior Health and Wellness. She also supports data
driven decision-making throughout the organization—spearheading projects such as internal customer satisfaction and restructuring the company's key indicators reports. A number of SBOS students have worked with Dr. Greene over the past 3 years. Currently, M.A. student Yoon Elle Uh serves as an Evaluation Analyst working closely with Dr. Greene. (See companion story on this page.)
Implementing and planning the programs that Dr. Greene is evaluating is another SBOS alumna, Susan Neufeld, who works as Director of Youth Development Services. Ms. Neufled, who earned her M.A. in Applied Developmental Psychology, oversees all aspects of National CORE's after school programs, called Hope Through Housing's After School & Beyond. Last year the program served over 900 children and youth from about 25 properties and the number of programs is rapidly growing as National CORE builds and acquires more communities. "These programs are absolutely critical to the families we serve," says Ms. Neufeld. "Most parents are working nonstandard hours at minimum wage jobs, so school-based programs, which require parents to pick kids up by 6 pm, are inaccessible to our kids. Our programs are located where families live—in the Learning Centers located right in the apartment community. We provide a nutritious snack, academic enrichment, homework support and positive role models via our staff. Then kids safely walk home."
"My graduate training in Claremont prepared me well for this work," says Greene. “Whether I'm helping social services colleagues to establish the evidence base for the program, to develop the logic model, or to design evaluation systems, I'm definitely relying on skills I developed while at
CGU. My background in cognitive development has facilitated my understanding of program logic across the lifespan, while the coursework in methods and evaluation has given me an arsenal of different tools and techniques to deal with the real-world evaluation issues I face on a daily
basis. Things move very quickly around here, so I can see the impact of my work immediately."
Greene adds, "It's really an honor to work here, I feel like I play on an all-star team. My colleagues have terrific vision and put a lot of energy into their work; I support their work with evaluation systems that help them know where things are on course and what isn't working. But the most gratifying experience is watching the teams start to ask their own evaluation questions. To me, that's when I've done my job -- when people find the information so useful that they begin to ask questions for themselves."
When we asked what wisdom she has gathered from her experiences, Dr. Greene says immediately, “Be open. I would have never guessed in a million years that this is where I’d end up, but it’s a very exciting and gratifying environment for me, and my skills are very applicable here. I actually had no sense of how valuable my skill set would be outside of academia but the last three years have helped me appreciate the value that critical thinking and analytic skills have in the marketplace."
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Graduation Date:2003
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Posted by an administrator
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Dr. Inga James
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Helping Victims of Homicide Using Organizational Training:
SBOS alumna (2003) Dr. Inga James explains that after running a child abuse prevention program in Hawaii with a staff of 50 people, she became fascinated by the way in which staff members interacted with one another and what motivated some of these individuals to work well with others. She soon realized how diverse Hawaii was. “People come from all over the world and bring with them different styles of working,” she says. This led her to become interested in cultural and ethnic identity. Dr. James came to CGU to learn more about ways that diverse groups of people interact and communicate. After completing two years of coursework, Dr. James moved back to her hometown in Ohio and started looking for consulting work. Using her vast experience in criminal justice, Dr. James began consulting with a victim’s assistance program, providing research and management development services to victim advocates who provided assistance to victims of crime as they moved through the court system.
“The Executive Director was interested in using outcome measures to improve their work. He wanted me to do some research about victim recovery and how the agency's work contributed to victims' recovery process.” Dr. James strived to model how victims of sexual assault might recover differently than a family member of a homicide victim, for example. “If you have someone that has been directly traumatized, recovery will be a slower process than another victim who hasn’t had that experience.” To better understand victim recovery process, Dr. James conducted focus groups and interviews to develop models of recovery for different types of victims. The models were then used to develop management tools such as job descriptions, personnel appraisal forms, and staff training plans.
After graduating from CGU, Dr. James moved to Maryland and joined a team contracted to evaluate a national demonstration project that provides services to child witnesses of domestic and community violence. In August of 2008, she was awarded a fellowship at the US Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime (OVC). She currently works with legal clinics across the country that provide legal representation in criminal proceedings to victims of crime, and conducting organizational assessment and measuring training and technical assistance needs for all OVC grant recipients.
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Graduation Date:1974
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Posted by an administrator
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Dr. Richard Strayer
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A Chat with a Successful Consultant (and CGU Alumnus):
Alumnus Dr. Richard Strayer is giving back to his alma mater in meaningful ways. Not only has he served for many years on the SBOS Board of
Advisors, but Dr. Strayer recently took the time to fly to Southern California and address a packed room of psychology students, eager to learn from a man who has built a successful consulting company, and continues to look for ways to do good through good business. Strayer’s down-to-earth talk painted a picture for students of what a day in the life of an organizational development consultant looks like. As CEO of the Strayer Consulting Group, Strayer has aided over 300 organizations looking for rapid growth, as well as both startup and mature companies managing significant change. Strayer and his co-founder (Dr. Linda Tirado) have also used their 25 years of experience to train and manage over 20 consultants at regional affiliate offices in Seattle, Portland, San Jose, Southern California and Toronto using the “Strayer methodology.” The Strayer Model for teams engages participants in developing vision strategy, understanding styles, defining operating norms, clarifying roles, decision-making and conflict resolution. “The basic things I learned at Claremont are, honestly, still the skills I use on a daily basis today,” he said.
“This is the fourth recession I’ve been through as a professional,” Strayer told one student, when asked about business prospects in an unsteady market. “Making it through always means developing the capacity to deal with the next wave of expansion, and developing that capacity while things are still going well.” With this philosophy, Strayer was able to catch the wave of technology start-ups in the late 80s, with cell phone companies and the explosion of personal computing, and to get into bio-technology when the
third recession came. “People always need surgical devices, so they’re essentially recession-proof,” he says. “This was an important safeguard in 2001 when the tech bubble burst, and a lot of venture companies were hurting.”
Recently, Dr. Strayer has become fascinated with the idea of using entrepreneurial enterprises to help desperate economies. It’s not simply a question of inspiring donors to buy livestock for remote African villages—it’s about creating an economy within those villages to make them economic engines unto themselves. “You help set up a local businessman in a rural African community with a water purifying business,” Strayer says, “And that creates a need for someone to create the filters, someone to distribute them, and possibly someone to distribute the water itself. Suddenly you’ve created a number of jobs that supply a crucial human need while stimulating the flow of product in an area.”
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Graduation Date:2008
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Posted by an administrator
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Erin O'Brien, M.A.
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Health Behavior Graduate Launches Into Bright Future With
Daytop Village Drug Use Intervention Company:
Recent Alumna Erin O'Brien (M.A. 2008) has accepted a position as a Health and Research Coordinator for Daytop Village, whose centeral office is located in New York City. Daytop Village is a non-profit substance abuse organization whose facilities offer residential and outpatient treatment for adolescents, adults, and their family members. According to Daytop, they are "based on the therapeutic community concept: a highly structured family environment where positive peer interaction is emphasized. Over 100,000 individuals have reclaimed their lives with the assistance of the program." Daytop has dozens of facilities nationally and internationally, and gets most of its clients through the correctional system. With such a large program, O'Brien stays busy with numerous tasks in research and evaluation.
O'Brien uses her CGU training to conduct internal program evaluations in addition to applying for grants in the domain of substance abuse treatment. She has also assisted the medical director in writing a book chapter on substance abuse, to be used as a handbook for clinicians. Finally, O'Brien coordinates data collection for a National Institute of Drug Abuse funded study that seeks to compare therapeutic communities that treat substance abuse in the US, China, and Malaysia. "We are looking at cultural differences in the delivery of the program, and trying to determine which elements of the therapeutic community are related to positive outcomes, such as abstinence from substance use."
One of the best parts about her job, explains O'Brien, is that she can apply for grants that interest her, such as one for a men's health promotion program she is beginning to work on. O'Brien hopes that this grant will provide a much-needed resource to 80% male, high-risk population of substance abusers.
O'Brien says that she was well prepared for the job by her training at CGU. "All of the health papers I wrote were very applied. I learned how to create a study and write a grant application though my classes. In addition to teaching me how to be a good writer, the program taught be to be a methodologist and statistician, all of which are extremely practical in the real world."
In the future, O'Brien hopes to work on designing new health promotion and intervention programs. "I would really be interested in anything where I can apply a creative, nontraditional approach to creating programs," she says.
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Graduation Date:2000
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Posted by an administrator
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Doug Wiegand, Ph.D.
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Monitoring Consciousness Behind The Wheel:
Dr. Doug Wiegand is working to make the road a safer place—but has used his psychology training in a number of meaningful settings over the
past years. After finishing his Master’s at CGU in 2000, he managed a state-wide evaluation of children's mental health services, and then tackled a project that screened recently arrested youth for mental disorders within the county of Los Angeles’ juvenile justice system.
Finally, he found his way to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI), where he works as a Senior Research Associate within the Center for Truck and Bus Safety. Road safety might not be the first thing one thinks of when getting into psychology, but as Wiegand attests, “I have a pretty interesting job. VTTI specializes in using a naturalistic driving methodology, whereby participants drive instrumented vehicles—multiple sensors, like a ‘black box’ in airplanes, video cameras viewing the driver and surroundings of the truck, and so on—that collect data continuously. We look for ‘safety-critical events’ which are flagged by spikes in our data for certain variables: hard braking, swerving, close time-to-collision. Then we go back to review the video data to see what happened. The video data is fantastic for viewing driver behavior and the behaviors of other drivers on the road, so we can determine what the contributing factors are to crashes and near crashes.” By analyzing all of this data, Dr. Wiegand and the VTTI hope to increase the safety of all drivers.
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Graduation Date:1999
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Posted by an administrator
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Todd Blickenstaff
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Luxury Cars Meet Cognitive Psychology:
Todd Blickenstaff (M.A. 1999) is currently planning the next generation multimedia system for Lexus and Toyota. “That includes things like audio, navigation, Bluetooth, rear seat entertainment, backup cameras, and telematics,” he says. “The statistics and research methods classes I took at CGU have prepared me well. I analyze a lot of data (such as JD Power) to see what features customers want, what they're willing to pay, what models the features should go on, etc. I stay on top of what's happening in the consumer electronics industry by attending events like the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and Specialty Equipment Manufacturers Association (SEMA) show in Las Vegas, and work closely with suppliers like Pioneer, Panasonic, Harman Becker, and Denso.”
Todd has been with Toyota for six years, and is loving the urban environment of downtown LA, where he has a loft. “I do miss the CGU campus and the Village, though,” he admits. CGU is excited to be luring him back to campus, along with many other alumni, for our April 4 Alumni-Student Mentoring Day (see page 14 for details).
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Graduation Date:1992
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Posted by an administrator
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Using Culture to Predict HIV-Risk Behavior:
SBOS alumna Dr. Valerie Hoffman recently moved to San Francisco, where she is working on a research project at UCSF in the Division of Adolescent Medicine. This is a five-year study of cultural predictors of HIV/STD risk behaviors among African American young adults from three cities: Birmingham (Ala.), Chicago, and San Francisco. She explains, “The participants were asked about their reasons for engaging in sex. After listing all the reasons they could think of, they were interviewed in depth about some of their responses. We aren't asking them what they did, but we are more interested in ‘why’ and the meanings attached to their behavior. During the next year we will be designing a survey based on the cultural concepts found during the analysis of the interviews. The cultural factors, hopefully, will be better at predicting high-risk sexual behavior than the traditional measures used in the past. The findings of the study can also be incorporated into designing culturally-specific HIV prevention programs.”
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