The Ackerman Institute for the Family hosted its 2015 graduation ceremony on July 22, 2015. Fifteen graduates received their certificates of completion of Clinical Externship Program in Family Therapy in front of their families, friends, and their clinical supervisors. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to this year’s graduates:
Wendi Dumbroff
Erin Guberman
Susan Lemor
Leslie Roberts
Daniel Rocker
Ruthie Israeli
Marissa Moore
Claudia Narvaez-Meza
Efrat Shaked
Linda Wachtel
Molly Bobek
Carolyn Fulton
Kirsten Rezende Lopes
Virginia Myung
David Vaughns
Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute, stated, “Now at graduation you are in a unique place to bring the finely honed ideas you have developed during this training program about how to help families solve their problems, and about what is means to work from the idea that families are the single most powerful resource available to individuals attempting to cope successfully with major psychological, medical or even societal induced difficulties. You will bring to your practice community, whether it will be private or an agency, ideas from your time here that I hope strengthen your practice and ultimately instill hope both for you and the families you serve.”
Marcia Sheinberg, Director of Training, added “You have opened your hearts and your minds to expand your ability to help people. You have done so based on a belief in the principles and practices of a relational perspective. While most of the mental health community continues to conceptualize problems as located in individuals whose context may or may not facilitate their well-being, you believe that the essence of one’s health is in the context of connection.”
Each Clinical Supervisor, Evan Imber-Black, Fiona True, and Laurie Kaplan, presented penetrating observations and personal gifts to their students.
I witnessed as you became a group – a group dedicated to one another’s learning, to your own developing competence in a demanding field of practice, and above all, to the families. Together you created a space dedicated to just what your families required – respectful curiosity, social empathy, cultural competency, gender awareness, lots of humor, warmth and generosity of spirit. You understood that a model should never be a strait jacket, but, rather, an elastic garment that allows therapist and family to figure out collaboratively just what works.
Evan Imber-Black, Ph.D.
The ceremony concluded by presenting the graduates with their certificates.
Congratulations Class 2015!
