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. 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 psychological testing, the assessment and treatment of individuals who were suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, anxiety, and other serious mental health problems. Dr. Field also brings to her work experience and training in the area of learning disability evaluations. 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. 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-fourth 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 Wii video games.

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 who is struggling with sexual identity and worries about what is normal.

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 working with my colleague at the Center, Lynda Field, in the fifth year of the Suffolk Samaritan Awards Program, which will grant up to $1000.00 to three applicants who develop community-based activities that address student depression. This award program is part of the ADAPT program, Action for Depression Awareness, Prevention, and Treatment, which we have been running for the past seven years.

I will continue my 20-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 am just finished reading The Son of the Circus, by John Irving and am ready to begin on Unbowed: One Woman’s Story, by 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Maathai.  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 loving the 6 AM walks on the beach with 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

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 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 life could be.

What I eventually found in both Zen Buddhism and clinicial 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 the 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 these 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 them 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.

---Brian is a native of Milwaukee, WI, where both his parents emigrated to from the Philippines.  He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2001.  After years of interest in art, art education, and art history, Bryan changed fields and began studying clinical psychology.  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 prior to joining the Staff at the Suffolk University Counseling Center.  Bryan’s areas of interest include anxiety and stress, crisis intervention, and addictions, working from an acceptance-, exposure-, and mindfulness-based approach.  During personal time, he takes pleasure in creative writing and art, music concerts, meditation, salsa dancing, and spending time with friends and 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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Jodi Coochise, 2009/10 Doctoral Intern

I am a counseling psychology doctoral student at Colorado State University.  I’m originally from Washington and identify as Native American from the Hopi Tribe.  As a clinician, I believe the most valuable element of therapy is having the opportunity to hear and understand a client’s personal story.  My goal is to help clients use their experiences and life lessons to help guide them through life’s obstacles.  I have come to Suffolk University to continue my doctoral training and look forward to working with the students!

My journey began in a suburb of Seattle where I completed my primary and secondary education, I moved to Spokane, Washington to complete my undergraduate degree at Gonzaga University where I majored in Psychology.  From there I moved Phoenix, Arizona where I worked as a counselor for adults who were transitioning to living independently after treatment for a variety of mental health issues.  During this time I also had the opportunity to manage a small outpatient mental health office in the Phoenix area, which allowed me to see a different side of the mental health field.  In the summer of 2004 I relocated to Colorado to pursue my graduate Ph.D. in psychology at Colorado State University.  Throughout these experiences I have learned a great deal and have encountered wonderful people.  My path has led me to working primarily with college students struggling with a wide variety of mental health concerns and substance abuse issues, which I find tremendously rewarding.  My other passion is working with individuals struggling with grief and bereavement.  In this work I utlizied knowledge gained through training along with insights gained from my own experiences of loss. I believe that each person’s grief process is unique to them and my goal is to provide suport and space for my clients to help them navigate their way through a painful experience.  I approach my work with clients primarily from client-centered and interpersonal process perspectives, but my primary focus is adapting to each client in order to provide the most effective treatment.

One of my core values is balancing my professional and personal life.  So when I am not at work you can find me spending time with friends and family and enjoying the pleasures life has to offer.  My personal passion is being in the outdoors.  During the warmer seasons I enjoy hiking, backpacking, and camping; and during the winter my goal is to spend as much time skiing as I possibly can with some other snow activities sprinkled in.  Living in Colorado allowed me ample opportunities to experience the outdoors and I am looking to continue that during my time in the Northeast.  Other hobbies are listening to live music, going to museums or galleries, learning about wine, reading, working out and running with my two dogs whenever I can.  I am so excited to have this oportunity to explore Boston and to embrace all the community has to offer for work and for play.

 

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Stephanie Day, 2009/10 Doctoral Intern

I am a doctoral candidate in the clinical psychology program at the University of Massachsetts Boston.  My experiences as a Korean transracial adoptee growing up in a multiracial family have contributed to my ability to see and value multiple perspectives and connect with individuals from varied backgrounds.  From an early age, I learned that appearances can be misleading which fostered a strong curiosity about and underlying meanings.  That curiosity ultimately led me to pursue a career in psychology, and I am fortunate to come from a program that emphasized issues of diversity and working with clients who are underrepresented in psychology.  Through my training and education, I have developed passion and skills for working with individuals from backgrounds that are both similar to and different from my own.  In therapy, I seek to develop a collaborative relationship which enables each individual to explore and understand his or her unique experiences as well as the social and cultural contexts in which he or she lives.  I utlimately hope that therapy will help empower individuals to make the changes that are most relevant to each of them.

In my personal time, I am an avid multi-crafter and use crafting as a way to relax.  I am always working on several different projects - sewing, crocheting, knitting - and welcome the opportunity to craft with other creative people.

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Kerri Murphy, 2009/10Doctoral Intern

I am a doctoral student in Counseling Psychology at Boston College.  Originally from Boston, I headed west for my undergraduate studies to the University of Michigan before returning to Boston to pursue graduate school.  As a master’s and doctoral student at Boston college, I provided career counseling to undergraduate and graduate students at MIT and also provided mental health counseling to students at Tufts University and Emerson College.  Over the last two years I worked with adults on a partial hospital unit at Massachusetts Mental Health Center and conducted psychological asessments for adolescents.  My heart, however, remained with the young adult population; so it is with great excitement that I begin my year at Suffolk.  I feel privileged to have the continuing opportunity to make a contribution to my clients’ personal and professional lives.

My clinical interests are diverse but are united by a focus upon individuals’ strengths.  Most of all, I respect and value the relationship that I have with each client and the many ways in which our relationship can be used to heal.  I also employ dialectical and cognitive behaviorally based treatment approaches in order to provide practical tools that may help my clients manage anxiety, stress, overwhelming moods, relationship difficulties, academic and career concerns and distressing behaviors.  Less formally, I think that laughter can have tremendous healing powers and have appreciated its presence in my clinical work and life in general. 

In my free time, I value being with my friends and family, cooking at home, and discovering Boston’s newest and affordable neighborhood restaurants.  I also enjoy physically challenging myself through training for local road-races and sprint-triathlons, which incidentally compliments my love for cooking and appreciation for good food.

(revised 8/12/09)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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