2008 Commencement—Welcoming Remarks

Nicholas A. Covino, PsyD, President

Welcome to our 28th Commencement Exercises.

This is a very special day. We gather as family, friends, teachers, staff and trustees of MSPP to recognize the completion of the years of study, clinical training and personal growth of our 48 graduates.

With your applause, please help me to thank Denise Feeley, Julie Rowlings, Alan Beck, Eileen Healy and Kevin Costello who have done their usual, excellent, job of managing the work that is involved in preparing for this Commencement along with the student ushers and staff who have volunteered their time to make this event happen today.

If a Commencement can be seen as the last class to be taken at a school, the point of today’s lecture is that the Culture or Context matters but individuals, if they wish, can have a dramatic effect on the environment.

Today’s Grand Marshall is our VP Finance and Operations Mr. Patrick Capobianco. Pat has been with MSPP for 15 years. He is a most unusual man.

In addition to managing the growth of our business which has quadrupled in the last six years, he has taken pains to ensure that students and staff are taken care of in the process. He develops the detailed business plans that have mapped the growth of our school. He researches and reviews proposals in detail, he negotiated the lease, hired the contractors and managed the construction of our new space. Pat has led the way for improved employee benefits, initiated accounts to aid students in financial emergency, and created a humane work environment for our staff and students. He meets each day with enthusiasm and energy and he is everyone’s ideal of a father, a colleague and a friend.

Pat Capobianco’s values and dedication to MSPP have a dramatic effect on our learning environment. Please help me to thank him for his investment.

Our Commencement speaker Dr. Ruth Balser is a psychologist and a state legislator. She has been in public service for twenty years having served as Newton Alderman for 4 terms and State Representative since 1999.

Several years ago, there was an article in the Globe entitled “In from the Cold” that spoke of Rep. Balser’s early years as an outsider to those in power at the State House. In that culture, when one is a critic of those in power, it impacts committee assignments, media exposure, influence and, not inconsequentially, the size and placement of one’s office. For six years, Ruth was seen as a dissident and she worked out of a cubicle. In a demonstration of commitment, responsibility, dedication and humility, Rep. Balser emerged as a leader in the legislature. She is among the strongest advocates for mental health care and was the leading legislative advocate for creating the Mental Health Parity legislation. Ruth is a diligent, confident and effective legislator who listens as well as she speaks and I am happy to say that she now occupies a large, corner office with windows and comfortable seats.

Ruth Balser makes a difference in Massachusetts. Please help me thank her for her service and welcome her to MSPP.

When someone as old as I am says: I remember watching you on TV when I was young; it isn’t always received as a compliment. But in a time when no psychologist need apply as a mental health expert, this bushy haired, articulate man moved our profession forward with his commentary on local television and his provocative interviews on the national network. Dr. Thomas J. Cottle is a prolific author with 30 books and five hundred articles and essays to his credit. He is an educator and social critic whose life’s work has been devoted to helping us to understand ourselves and to understand each other. An erudite man who is equally at home with the metaphors and insights of the educator John Dewey, the writer Toni Morrison, psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, and the philosopher Yogi Berra, whom we remember for his invaluable insight: “You can observe a lot by watching”!

That our profession enjoys a place of authority among the media is in part the result of Dr. Cottle’s courage, probable chutzpah, and his uncanny ability to understand and poetically articulate human needs and nature.

Dr. Cottle makes a difference in education, the media and in homes across the nation, please welcome him back to MSPP.

When Steve Grossman retired as the head of the Democratic National Committee, the DNC produced a video that asked: “Who is Steve Grossman?” An article in the Boston Phoenix echoed the refrain when Steve was running for Governor of Massachusetts.

While political pundits point to the problem of name recognition for a gubernatorial candidate and his colleagues poke fun at his relative obscurity, we can observe that this man who knows everyone; who knit the state and national democratic party together after financial scandal and defeat; and who has been a confidant to presidents, prime ministers, senators, college boards, and social and civic leaders has a problem with name recognition because his effort is always about the issue, the cause, the good, the work and it is never about Steve Grossman.

Steve lends his name to charities and fundraisers for institutions that he is not even a member, but he helps them because he believes in their mission. He has been president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Chaired the Board of Trustees of Brandeis University, member of Project Bread and has been chair or member of as many committees as Dr. Cottle has articles.

Religious traditions invite us to feed the Poor and to be persons who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness, it is not an exaggeration to say that Steve Grossman is a steward of the world who wakes up every morning with a mission to perfect it.

Please welcome Mr. Grossman to MSPP.

While these honorees manifest some of the values that we hope our graduating class aspires to, many of our graduates already possess them. While students at MSPP, today’s 43 PsyD graduates have each worked more than 20 hours in clinics, schools, and community mental health centers, for 30-40 weeks, for every one of the 4-5 years of their training; bringing, as a group, more than 154,800 hours of clinical services to people in need (or 3,870 Full Time positions) that would otherwise be absent from our mental health care system.

In this graduating class are Katie Carlson and Daphne Papadopulous who contributed their time along with students Maria Celli and Claudia Cardenas to help us to construct the Lucero Latino Mental Health Training Program; Kristen Hurd, Marge Welch and Betsy Vinton gave up their summer vacation along with a dozen other MSPP students to work in Biloxi Mississippi to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina; and Jim Conway who has been the writer, producer and star of the MSPP Follies for the past three years.

All of our Psychopharmacology graduates are middle- aged people who have successful careers already. While working full-time, they returned to school for two years in order to learn more about mental health medicines, solely to improve their ability to care for their patients.

Many of our graduates are family people who get to their studies when the soccer games are over and the math homework is done. We have single moms and dads who are paying tuition for their children, while they work to attend MSPP. Several of this group have had scares with cancer or were hospitalized like Stephanie Schwartz who will miss these ceremonies today. Married life, while fortunate, brought added challenges to people like Julie Guiher… and Jeff Waitkus not only married (and to an MSPP student), but he had to deal with the extra strain of figuring out how to change the bag in the Diaper Genie when their son Oscar came along.

Lori Parras, among this group, worked diligently on her doctoral project, while she was pregnant. Since my office was in the library then, I can tell you that she was parked there every day for the better part of a year. She completed her work, days before delivering prematurely and spent the next days in the hospital and then the next week separated from her daughter Alexa who remained in the NICU at the hospital. Although she knew she could pass on holding her Colloquium only several weeks later, she felt responsible to her committee and to the work that they had done and she scheduled the date, made her presentation and completed that project on time as well.

Life does not stop when you are a student at MSPP. These graduates have the usual challenges of coursework added to the duties of clinical care and family life. As a professional school, our students have several hours each week of supervision and it is not easy to accept the feedback from senior clinicians about the small and large ways that you might change yourself to improve your ability to help others.

In the crucible that is training at MSPP, character emerges and it is honed. These MSPP graduates before you are extraordinary women and men who are Making a Difference.

Please join me in applause to congratulate them for their diligence, their self-sacrifice, their dedication to others and for their success.

Award for Teaching Excellence

Before presenting our Faculty Speaker, I want to take a moment to thank all of our teachers for their dedication and commitment to our school and our students. The national norm for graduate student attrition is 50%: half of those who begin a graduate program fail to complete it. I am pleased to say that the completion rate for students enrolled at MSPP is 92%.

This is not because we are easy; our admissions standards are like everyone else. But at many schools, by teaching undergraduates and working on faculty research, graduate students serve the needs of the university. And when they get into trouble or stuck in any way, they are often left to fend for themselves.

At MSPP, faculty and staff make themselves available to meet the needs of students. As clinicians our faculty members are experts at helping people to get “un- stuck” and they are motivated to be present, attentive and helpful, not to be concerned about how their needs (or research) or appearance is being met. The relational culture that is the MSPP educational experience is created by an unusual group of bright, experienced and generous individuals.

The best of these are those whom the school wishes to recognize with the MSPP Award for Excellence in Teaching.

In a usual year, our honoree receives the highest course evaluations from students and is praised for presenting creative, energetic and lucid lectures. Advisees feel known, supported and helped. They believe that they have as much a friend in this teacher as a mentor. A person of indefatigable energy, our awardee is ubiquitous. He is as likely to turn up in the computer lab helping a student with data runs, as running to a faculty committee meeting, or performing for the run of the show in a local theater group.

Sadly, this has not been a usual year for our awardee. His son, Kenny, has been seriously ill for the better part of 18 months, requiring transfusions, chemotherapy and numerous, lengthy, hospitalizations. Despite this burden and the hours spent in emergency rooms and overnights in the hospital, this faculty member has been as energetically available, creative and present to his students … as he is every year.

Please help me to recognize this year’s recipient of the MSPP Award for Excellence in Teaching Dr. Brian Ott.

Endnote

Today you meet people: our graduates.. whose values, work ethic and skills we admire and acclaim. Tomorrow, the rest of the world meets them.

You have touched us, some of you quite deeply, and we are changed for the better.

Thank You

Updated 6/13/08