Northcentral University

• We recently hired a new full-time faculty member. Dr. Tracy Oliver started full-time on September 26. Half of her faculty load will be focused on facilitating supervision groups, and the other half working with students in the foundations and a few core courses. Tracy comes to us from Nova Southeastern University. She and her family live in Florida. We are so pleased that she has joined us, and warmly welcome her to the DMFS Team. • The research course sequence for the PhD-MFT program is being modified. We will be going from 7 research-focused courses to only 5. The research courses and process are being designed to work in tandem with the new dissertation sequence. As a result of this shift, students in that program will have two elective course options. One new option is the contemporary issues course that was recently written by Shay Thomas (full-time Foundations faculty) with input from many of you – thanks! • The need for faculty to chair dissertations will be growing over the next 12-18 months. If any of you are interested in considering this as an added teaching focus, please let me know. I hope you are having a great start of the fall season! • We are planning to launch a new Master of Science in Forensic Psychology degree in November of this year. The launch of this new master's program is very exciting for us because it is the first MS degree in the Department of Psychology. In addition, we are proud to announce that students in this program will be able to choose at the culmination of their academic journey between a capstone and an internship course. The internship course will provide students the opportunity to gain real life experiences in the field of Forensic Psychology. • We are currently in the process of hiring a new full-time Foundations faculty member who is specialized in Forensic Psychology. • We welcome a new full-time dissertation chair, Dr. Nicole Avena. Dr. Avena has served as an MCM on many dissertation committees. She is a perfect addition to our team. • We are planning to revise the current 36-credit MAPSY specializations in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and Health Psychology to 30-credit MS degrees. Similar to the MS in Forensic Psychology, the new MS Degrees in I/O Psychology and Health Psychology will provide students with the choice of a capstone course or an internship course at the end of their program. This is very exciting. Bettina Shapira, PhD Chair, Department of Psychology

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