Wilma Busse, Director, Psychologist

 

I received my training in Clinical and Counseling Psychology, as well as in Higher Education Administration, at Western Michigan University. I attended Marquette University as an undergraduate, where I pursued a double major in psychology and sociology. Prior to working at Suffolk University, I worked as a psychologist in Michigan, Maryland and at the University of California, San Diego. While living in San Diego, I obtained certification in Gestalt Therapy from Miriam and Irving Polster. I am a licensed psychologist in MD, CA, and MA. In addition to my academic and clinical work, I serve as the training director for our doctoral interns. I really enjoy meeting and learning from each intern class, as well as, facilitating in their growth as professional individuals. I have learned a lot from my work with interns and I hope to continue to do so in the years to come.

Several years ago I designed and taught a course entitled, "Psychology of Genocide," focusing on the Nazi Holocaust and how individuals and groups become marginalized and/or become perpetrators. This class grew out of my personal experience and work with an organization called One By One, Inc. A major function of the organization is to offer Dialogue Groups in which descendants of the Holocaust and Third Reich are brought together in an attempt to open dialogue. 

On the lighter side, I enjoy bird watching, nature walks and traveling. I feel I have learned many lessons as a result of my travels to Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Poland, Germany and, most recently, Africa. No matter the language, I love to engage in the universal language of laughter and to hear the laughter of others.

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Lynda Field, Psychologist

Lynda D. Field, Ph.D. is the Training Director for the Counseling Center's APA accredited Doctoral Internship in Profession Psychology.  She is currently President-Elect of the National Latina/o Psychological Association.  As a Puerto Rican psychologist, she is committed to multicultural approaches to understanding human development.  Although Dr. Field is not fully bilingual, she comprehends and speaks Spanish.  In the past, she has conducted research in order to better understand the factors that impact upon the academic achievement of Latino adolescents and the self-concept of biracial adolescents.

Dr. Field received her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Denver. She subsequently completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Field went on to become a staff psychologist specializing in the field of child, adolescent, and family forensic psychology which also granted her an academic appointment as Instructor of Psychology in the Harvard Medical School. From 1993 until her departure in the summer of 1998, she supervised Postdoctoral Fellows, taught, provided consultation, offered expert testimony, and conducted psychological evaluations in the context of civil, criminal, and juvenile legal matters. Dr. Field developed expertise in assessment and treatment of individuals who were suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, anxiety, and other serious mental health problems.

In her free time, Dr. Field enjoys outdoor activities, spending time with her family and good friends, and trying out new recipes.

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Kathryn Jackson, Psychologist

As a licensed psychologist, I bring to the Counseling Center experience working with individuals, couples and families. Areas of clinical interest include enhancing self-esteem, relationship development, family dynamics, racism's impact on group and self-identity, career exploration and personality style, and the therapeutic use of poetry, memoir and other creative modalities. I especially value the mutual learning that is inherent in working with "psychologists in training" and look forward to having the opportunity to supervise interns.

In the past I developed and led a graduate ALANA group whose members have continued to meet and expand their circle by reaching out to students from other colleges and universities. I am hopeful that I might be able to share experiences garnered from running this group with students and colleagues at Suffolk.

Educated in the public schools of Brooklyn, New York, I attended and graduated from Goddard College in Vermont where I focused my senior study on the Harlem Renaissance and African American writers of the 1960s. I then went to Reed College in Portland, Oregon where I obtained an M.A.T. in English. After acquiring further work and life experiences, I entered the doctoral program in Counseling Psychology at Temple University, graduating in 1992. Advanced training in family therapy has helped to widen my therapeutic lens by taking into greater account the social context of client concerns.

Nowadays for sustenance, I take yoga and Alexander technique lessons, read and write--more often nonfiction and poetry--and relish sharing stories of laughter and struggle with family and friends.

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Paul R. Korn, Psychologist

As I am completing my thirty-sixth year with the Suffolk University Counseling Center, I am well aware of the yin and yang of my work. There is so much that is familiar -- comforting and predictable -- and there is so much that is new, exciting and challenging. And I like it that way. At times, I can rely on the familiar; and, at other times I can seek the unexplored. These are sentences written by someone whose life is bracketed by Abbot and Costello's "Who's on First?" and the Zumba craze.

The University Counseling Center, my colleagues, and the students here have been both my work site and the foundation for my own learning, development, and maturation. That's not to say that I don't have a life outside my job. It just seems important to start by saying that I am happy and nurtured by what I do as a psychologist at our school.

The Smiling Juggler is a metaphor for how I live my life. I'm not one of those intense performers, gritting his teeth to keep an astounding number of odd objects in the air, demonstrating both prowess and determination. Nope. Juggling is for fun, for focus, and for rhythmic meditation, paying attention to how I feel and moving with comfort and balance, while I remain curious and interested in getting things done. 

If I have learned nothing else over the years, it's the lesson from Baba Ram Dass that therapists and teachers can be helpful only as much as they've helped themselves. Ram Dass also warned (to paraphrase): Half of what I say is brilliant and half of what I say is B.S., and I don't know the difference; so be very careful.

My work as a professor of psychological services and a staff psychologist at the UCC is my first and only full-time job, after holding multiple part-time positions through and directly after graduate school at the University of Connecticut. I was an undergraduate on the banks of the Genesee at the University of Rochester. I've been pulsing to the education rhythm of the year since nursery school.

What I am currently doing will let the reader know something about my interests and my latest juggling act. The clinical clients I have worked with over the past years range in age from 18 to 52. They include: a first year law student, a Latina, who is the first of her family to get an advanced degree and is suffering from the pressure to succeed; a freshman struggling with questions about the impact of reporting her abuse as a child; an African American who has ADHD and is also battling health problems and depression; a Muslim student, dealing with a raft of phobias as well as financial problems; and a student whose struggle with sexual identity and career issues lead to questions about what is normal and what is the way to live that will bring most satisfaction.

As we complete another school year, I am looking forward to September. I am eager to develop a working supervisory relationship with one of the three graduate interns arriving in August. I am continually updating the training seminar that I teach, helping our interns develop skills in outreach, training, and consultation, including more focus on co-leading workshops and learning hands-on consultation skills. I am continuing my work with a committee of people from throughout the university to create a series of training sessions for the Safe Zone program which provides information and education about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students. I am coordinating our ADAPT program, Action for Depression Awareness, Prevention, and Treatment, which we have been running for the past eight years.  I continue to serve as Co-Chair of the President's Commission on the status of AHANA Faculty, Staff, and Students.  And I have just finished participating in the search committee for the Suffolk University Chief Diversity Officer.

I will continue my 22-year involvement with the Society Organized Against Racism in Higher Education (SOAR), a regional network of professionals and students, which, among other programs, is offering regular meetings to students from member campuses to discuss racism, discrimination and anti-bias activities. I am serving on one of the college committees to develop improved criteria for courses that fulfill the undergraduate diversity requirement.

This year, I am teaching for the umpteenth semester a psychology course, "Introduction to Counseling Skills," a skills-based course that is always a pure joy. I will also be teaching another fulfilling course in the spring, "Leadership Skills for a Diverse Society."

Finally, I have just finished reading another novel by local author Dennnis Lehane and, with a brief pause to struggle with some crossword puzzles from the New York Times Sunday Magazines that I have collected, I will probably start a book about the origins of bridge in the United States. I have planted our annual vegetable garden at our home in Gloucester. I am adjusting to the distance I feel from my sons who are growing up and away from me; I am running most mornings on the beach, missing my beautiful black dog, Sheba; and I am working, playing, and dancing with my wife, Sue, who is an independent organization consultant and professional writer.

And all the time, what's important is keeping my balance and not dropping any balls as I juggle, but choosing which ones to put down temporarily, as I continue on my merry way.

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Bryan Mendiola, Psychologist

"You should examine yourself and ask how many times you have tried to connect with your heart, fully and truly...how much have you connected with yourself at all in your whole life?"  (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche)

When asked why we do this work, a supervisor of mine responded simply, "Because we wanted more."  He was not referring to accolades or material success; he was talking about living more fully.  I have long been someone driven to seek more from life.  During much of my life, family art, and religion represented an opportunity to explore the range of experience and see life more clearly.  I was blessed with a family that valued achievement, community, responsibility, and faith.  While in art school, I began a practice of meditation and self-exploration that fostered my interest in both psychology and Eastern spirituality.  But especially influential at this time were my close relationships that showed me just how painful and sorrowful like could be.

What I eventually found in both Zen Buddhism and clinical psychology was yet another way of looking at the world and the problem of suffering.  I became intimately concerned about freedom.  Not necessarily freedom from pain and suffering, but rather freedom to be with life and live it more fully.  And the paradox became clearer: perhaps freedom comes when we don't have to be more, when we don't have to have things any different than how they are, when life is exactly how it is.  And in that space, there is nothing wrong; nothing wrong with us or with what we go through.  And in those moments, we are free to be more.

Those people in my life who have shared their struggles (and shared in mine) so intimately have given me a rare gift; the gift of seeing life more completely.  Pain is what makes life full; it tells us that we are alive, that we feel, and that we care passionately.  I see now that one of the great gifts you may offer another is to sit with their pain as it is; to sit with through the unknown and uncertainty of their pain and not move to change.  I believe therapy is an opportunity to be present to life, to wake up to life's realities and possibilities, to understand life's limitations as well as the transcendence of limits.

---Bryan is a native of Milwaukee, WI, where both his parents emigrated to form the Philippines.  He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an emphasis on Painting/Drawing and Art Education.  Prior to joining Suffolk, he earned his M.A. and Psy.D. degrees from the University of Denver and trained as a psychology resident at the Bedford VA Medical Center.  Bryan's areas of interest include anxiety and stress, crisis intervention, issues of identity, and addictions, working from an acceptance-, exposure-, and mindfulness-based approach.  Currently Bryan spends his leisure time working on small art projects, attending meditation groups, going for walks, visiting family, eating good food, dancing salsa, sitting still, taking naps, being near water, reading on spiritual practice, trying yoga, wishing he could cook, learning and laughing with loved ones.

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Kinga A. Pastuszak, Psychologist

I find myself being especially contemplative about beginning my role as a staff psychologist with the Suffolk University Counseling Center.  I look forward to offering my clinical strengths in ways that will supplement the diverse yet complimentary clinical perspectives that so clearly have made the counseling center a tremendous resource for the University.  I am also looking forward to continued professional and personal growth through dynamic interactions with staff and students alike.

I come to the Counseling Center as a licensed psychologist with a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the George Washington University where I earned concentrations in child and adult psychodynamic psychotherapy.  I went on to complete an APA accedited  pre-doctoral fellowship at Tewksbury Hospital, Hathorne Mental Health Units, where I worked providing short- and long-term individual and group psychotherapy with an adult inpatient psychiatric population.  I pursued intensive training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy and psychodynamic group therapy during my post-doctoral fellowship at the Two Brattle Center in Harvard Square.  Since completing my fellowship, I have worked as a clinical affiliate at the Two Brattle Center and as a staff psychologist in the Women's Treatment Program at McLean Hospital, where I remain on staff as an instructor in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry of the Harvard Medical School.  Areas of clinical interest include mood disturbances, anxiety, relationship challenges and relational difficulties, as well as affective dysregulation leading to self-harm, maladaptive, or self-defeating behaviors.

I also enjoy maintaining a diverse private practice in Cambridge assisting adults, adolescents, and families with promoting adaptive change and mastery of problems through identifying and understanding difficulties and competencies in diverse aspect of daily living.

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Lucinda Bratini, 2011/12 Doctoral Intern

I was born in New York City and raised between the borders of Sabana de la Mar, Dominican Republic and the Bronx.  My academic journey in higher education began at a State University of New York, where I majored in Human Development and in the process discovered critical conscious theory and social justice paradigms.  My undergraduate experiences inside and outside of the classroom inspired my interests in identity, community, and creative forms of healing.  In pursuit of these growing passions, I completed a master's degree in psychological counseling at Teachers College, Columbia University. 

I am now a Doctoral Candidate in Counseling Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, where I have had the opportunity to engage in training experiences which have added an array with diverse perspectives to my worldview.  I have spent time at community mental health agencies, where I have had the pleasure of working with Latina/o immigrant children, adults, and families.  In addition, I gained experience as a Spanish-speaking therapist at the Bilingual Treatment Program of Bellevue Hospital Center.  I am incredibly passionate about working with diverse populations of young adults, an interest which has evolved through my work with grassroots organizations and community college counseling centers within the City University of New York.  The therapeutic processes I have encountered in these settings have developed an interest for working in the areas of trauma and recovery, through which I have learned about notions of thriving as I have witnessed and have been humbled by how survivors of trauma can flourish in the midst of struggle and oppression.  I come to Suffolk's Counseling Center particularly excited about working with groups of students marginalized by the social positionality that constructions of race, ethnicity, gender, social-class, and sexual orientation ascribe.  Hence, I am very enthusiastic about the opportunity to collaborate with LGBTQ and gender nonconforming people of color and first-generation students.

Throughout my own development I have learned to integrate the cultural, spiritual, feminist, and participatory therapeutic frameworks that most connect to my identity.  I wholeheartedly believe that healing takes place when we speak and share the truth of our lives.  I echo the words of one of the ancestors I most admire, black feminist lesbian poet Audre Lorde, as she proclaims that in the first step towards genuine change must "arm ourselves with ourselves and each other, we can stand toe to toe inside that rigorous loving and begin to speak the impossible-or what has always seemed like the impossible-to one another" (Lorde, 1984, Sister outside).  To me healing comes through mutually empowering, strengths-focused, and growth-producing human connection.  I believe that the therapeutic relationship provides us with the space for this transformation to happen (be it with groups or individuals).  Through the development of a trusting and collaborative relationship, we can begin to speak our truths, become more aware of our strengths, and together face our challenges.  As we nurture a positive and complex relationship, we develop creative tools for healing past wounds.  Hence, while I most often use psychodynamic and relational cultural therapies, I also enjoy the use of arts, writing, poetry, and various forms of expressions.

In my time outside of the therapy room, I like to participate in community based participatory action research projects with youth educators and activists.  But I dedicate most of my spare time to my family, as we love coming together, cooking together, and laughing together as much as we possibly can.  My day to day meditations come in the form of long walks around a park or nearby lake in the company of my dog, who likes nothing more than hours spent chasing squirrels.  When I have the pleasure of additional spare time, I love writing short stories and what I call "word photos."  I also very much enjoy traveling in an attempt to locate different aspects of myself in a new sociocultural context and to learn about cultures different from my own.  I love dancing, listening to live world music, and watching documentary films.  But more than anything I love just sitting still with a good and fresh new book at hand.
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Alexis Lamb, 2011/12 Doctoral Intern

Although I am currently a doctoral candidate in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of Rhode Island, I grew up outside New York City.  After completing my undergraduate career at Smith College, where I majored in Psychology and French, I worked for two years in Boston as a research assistant.  Since I began my graduate training six years ago, I have had the opportunity to work with children, adolescents, adults, and families in a variety of circumstances.  However, the most rewarding and enriching experience that I have had during graduate school is the two-year period that I work at the University of Rhode Island's Counseling Center.  I was excited and invigorated by my sessions with the students, and I felt that I had found my niche.  It is for this reason that I am thrilled to be joining the staff at the Suffolk University Counseling Center.

My approach to therapy is based upon the assumption that my clients and I both bring important assets to our work together.  My clients know their histories, thoughts, and feelings better than I do.  I have a fresh perspective on the concerns bringing them to therapy, as well as ideas or strategies that can help address these concerns.  I view therapy as a collaboration, and I often say to my clients, "You are the expert on you.  I bring my knowledge and training in psychology.  Let's put all of this stuff out on the table and see what we can come up with together."

Most often, I operate from a strengths-based perspective.  That is, I assume that my clients have strengths that have helped them succeed in their lives thus far.  My goal is to highlight these strengths and explore how they might be useful in working through whatever struggles my client is having.  In addition, I often incorporate interpersonally-oriented interventions as well as cognitive-behavioral techniques, depending upon the needs of the individual client.  Finally, I feel that humor can be extremely therapeutic, and I look forward to balancing the more serious and sometimes sad moments with laughter and excitement about the work we are doing during our sessions.

My interest in working undergraduate students also extends beyond the therapy room.  My research has focused on the occurrence of deliberate self-harm behavior among undergraduate students.  Recent research has shown that this behavior is far more common in college students than originally believed, and I have been studying the prevalence and characteristics of this behavior, as well as the attitudes and expectations that students who self-harm hold about their own behavior.  I am excited to bring my knowledge in this area to my work at Suffolk.

Beyond my work and school responsibilities, I love to spend as much time as possible with family and friends, including our assortment of pets (a dog and two cats, one of whom is firmly settled in my lap as I type).  Long dog walks, board games with friends, and attending local events are highlights of my days.  In addition, I am an avid baker and love to share with those around me.  I have taken up quilting and am impatiently awaiting the first products of this summer's vegetable garden.  Mostly, though, I try to find joy and laughter in every day.
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Ingrid Sarmiento, 2011/12 Doctoral Intern

As a doctoral candidate at Clark University, I am very enthusiastic to work with a diverse population of college students in an urban setting and expand my clinical skills while effectively treating students.  One of my personal and professional interests is understanding how cultural identity and personal experiences shape who we are and how we perceive the society in which we live in.  As a result of this fundamental interest, I have sought out professional experiences working with diverse clinical populations that have taught me the value of appreciating all individuals from within a greater sociocultural context.

I received my B.A. in psychology from Skidmore College and an M.A. in clinical psychology from Clark University.  I have worked as a clinician in diverse settings that include a cognitive behaviorally oriented depression prevention research program for Latina mothers, a Behavioral Health Partial Program at McLean Hospital, and Y.O.U. Inc., an outpatient community mental health clinic.  Through these invaluable clinical opportunities, I have gained experience treating adult, families and administering group therapy both in English and Spanish.  The diverse clients that I have worked with have taught me the value of human connection, empowerment, and resilience.

The culmination of both my clinical and research experience has inspired me to design a dissertation project that focuses on ethnically diverse college students.  Specifically, my dissertation research examines the relationship between cultural competence, working alliance, and treatment outcome in a sample of culturally diverse college students seeking mental health treatment.

In my spare time I enjoy spending time with family and friends, swimming, cooking, gardening, entertaining and savoring international cuisine.  I love to laugh, learn and be inspired by all of the gifts that life has to offer.

(revised 6/21/11)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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