Category: SharkBytes

Andrea Corn, Psy.D., did not follow a traditional route into graduate school, but the path she forged allowed her to combine her passions for sports and helping people.

Corn was drawn to psychology after experiencing the benefits of therapy firsthand.

“I went into therapy to heal my own unresolved emotional wounds,” she said. “I did not ever intend to become a psychologist; this was not a career path.”

Originally from St. Louis, Corn said her parents pressed her to marry at an early age. After having two children, she divorced her husband and went into therapy. It was in therapy that Corn said she finally felt heard, her feelings were validated and understood by someone.

“My parents meant well; they loved me and cared about me, but they never knew how to really listen as feeling were often dismissed or ignored” she said.

According to Corn, her experiences in therapy were transformational and placed her on the path to psychology. She returned to school and earned a bachelor’s in psychology from Florida Atlantic University before beginning graduate school at Nova Southeastern University. Corn credits her faculty advisor, Bernard Eingold, with encouraging her to pursue a doctorate in Clinical Psychology instead of the master’s program. In working through the doctoral program, multiple faculty members were helpful and supportive – notably Robert C. Lane, as they collaborated on four scholarly journal articles. Other professors who were influential included Jan Faust (Child Assessment and Testing), Alan Katell (Interviewing) Eugene Shapiro (Mentoring), and Jim Taylor (Sports).

During this time, she balanced the demands of graduate school with raising two young children on her own. Corn worked with children and adolescents for her clinical practicums and matched at Miami Children’s Hospital for her full year, full-time doctoral internship. Working at the in-patient unit, Corn carried out psychological testing and specialized in emotional/behavioral disorders, eating disorders and PTSD. Corn worked with children from different socioeconomic backgrounds and integrated sports psychology into her practice.

“I’ve played a lot of sports since childhood,” she said. “Sports has always been a part of my practice because I look at it as all the life lessons that children can learn.”

In 1995, she brought sports and children together again with a teen sports network radio show on an AM radio station. Working with 40 high schoolers for six months, Corn produced and hosted the show, which included segments on athletes as role models, plus a mailbag answering questions from teen athletes about their anxieties and problems.

Since her time at NSU, Corn has worked in both group and solo practices across South Florida. She also served as an adjunct faculty member at St. Thomas University, where she taught undergraduate and graduate courses in sports psychology in the business school. Outside of clinical practice and teaching, Corn has given many talks locally (i.e., schools, libraries, bookstores) as well presentations at state and national conferences. And, for years she wrote columns on mental health and parenting topics tor the Miami Herald, Sporting Kid (of the National Alliance of Youth Sports), Lighthouse Point, and South Florida Parenting magazine.

Corn wanted to reach a wider audience for her sports-based work, which led to her teaming up with sports columnist Ethan J. Skolnick to co-write the 2012 book “Raising Your Game: Over 100 Accomplished Athletes Help You Guide Your Girls and Boys Through Sports.” The book featured interviews with over 100 athletes from different fields like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Dan Marino. In each interview, athletes discussed their childhoods, including family structure, socioeconomic background, and culture. Collectively, the book shows parents and children the benefits of participating in sports.

“Sports teaches us so much about ourselves in how you handle victory, defeat, and adversity,” Corn said. “It teaches universal life lessons.”

Corn is grateful for the education she received at NSU and the lasting relationships she built with faculty members. After finding success in the field for many years, and devoting time to her family as an actively involved grandmother has added renewed purpose, Corn feels reinvigorated to shift her focus on giving back to students, the community, and sharing her life experiences of psychology’s invaluable role.

 

Nova Southeastern University alumna Carole Goldberg, Psy.D., recently retired from Yale University after working there for 25 years, but her professional journey has taken her to different careers and places.

In the mid 1960s, Goldberg worked as an elementary school teacher, first at a Native American reservation in Washington state, then in a small town in Alabama, and finally in St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“It’s been a wonderfully rich sociological environment all along the way,” Goldberg said of her time as an elementary teacher. “I learned a lot from my students, getting a glimpse into their lives, what’s important to them, what their family structures are like.”

Goldberg also worked as a teacher in New York, but returned to the Virgin Islands and shifted gears to hospitality, working in hotel management and as a retail merchandise manager for jewelry and watches.

“It was a wonderful experience, being able to travel the world with a purpose,” she said.

After getting married, Goldberg relocated to South Florida to live with her husband and his two children. Goldberg decided to take several classes at Florida Atlantic University, but she quickly realized that she preferred to pursue a full graduate degree and applied to the psychology master’s program at NSU. A faculty member named Isabel Streisand encouraged Goldberg to switch to the Clinical Psychology doctoral program.

“One of the things I’ve talked about to a lot of student groups is people who are signposts in my life, like my coach in high school who said, ‘you should go to this college’,” Goldberg said.

Goldberg said navigating through graduate school meant unlearning many things she had learned after being out of school for 25 years. One of her favorite aspects of her time at NSU was the diversity of thought illustrated by the College of Psychology’s faculty members.

“They had wonderful collective experience,” she said. “A diversity of schools of psychology that they ascribed to.”

After graduating with her doctorate in 1996, Goldberg matched to Yale University for her postdoctoral internship, which eventually led to a full-time position as a staff psychologist in the university’s Department of Mental Health and Counseling. Goldberg initially worked in treatment but later took on additional roles as the university sought to increase the profile for its mental health services. Goldberg worked in health education and trained groups of peer counselors tasked with supporting sexual assault survivors. Goldberg also underwent additional training to become a certified sex therapist.

Goldberg found that there was a need for additional university resources for handling sexual assault. In 2006, Goldberg set up the SHARE (Sexual Harassment Assault Response and Education) Center and served as its first director. Goldberg described the SHARE Center at the start as consisting only of herself and a phone, but over the last 14 years it has grown into a full department within the Yale Health building. SHARE has four offices with a private waiting room and is staffed by licensed mental health counselors. The counselors are on call 24/7 and services can be accessed by appointment or walk-in. SHARE also offers orientation programs at the start of each academic year to the undergraduate and graduate student bodies.

“It has helped students come forward because they know someone will take them seriously,” Goldberg said. “There’s been a big shift in a positive direction.”

Wishing to spend more time with her husband, Goldberg began a phased retirement and stepped down from directing SHARE. She still has some involvement at Yale, supervising a psychology fellow in the mental health center and conducting freshman seminars. Goldberg also maintains a small private practice, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic she transitioned into working with clients virtually.

Goldberg urges current graduate students in psychology to open to all opportunities that may come their way.

“I think psychology is a very privileged profession,” she said. “You are invited into people’s stories, their inner lives. I find people infinitely fascinating. It’s a daily education that I don’t think you get anywhere else.”

 

 

 

 

Michael Achankeng Fonkem, Ph.D., graduate of the doctoral program in the Department of Conflict Resolution Studies (DCRS) in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Institute (HCAS) has published an article in the Journal of Comparative Studies & International Education on online teaching. The article is titled, “The Opportunities and Challenges of Online Instruction in Transnational Education and Learning.”

In addition, Achankeng received the Thabo Mbeki Award for Public Service and Scholarship at the 19^th Annual Africa Conference, University of Texas, Austin, in March. “Among other things, the Awards Committee in choosing him for this award noted his community services, his membership in organizations and societies that promote peace, his promotion of African culture, and his ability to merge practice with theories.”

Fonkem, is a professor in the Department of Human Services Leadership in the College of Education & Human Services at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. He has authored numerous articles and was a Fulbright scholar in 1995-1996 at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. Previously he was in the diplomatic service in the Foreign Ministry of Cameroon. His teaching and research interests include refugees, migration and human services; social issues and solutions; and conflict analysis and resolution. Fonkem is an Executive Council Member of The Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.  Earlier he received the Thabo Mbeki Award for Public Service and Scholarship at the 19^th Annual Africa Conference at the University of Texas, Austin.