MFP Honors Three Alumni
During the 2012 APA Convention in Orlando, Fla., the APA Minority Fellowship Program held an award ceremony honoring three MFP psychologists.
Dr. Kermit Crawford
Kermit Anthony Crawford, PhD, is the recipient of the James Jones Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Kermit Anthony Crawford (MFP 77-80) is a licensed psychologist and a designated forensic psychologist. He is director of the Center for Multicultural Mental Health (CMMH) and the Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology (CMTP) in the Division of Psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center. CMMH has provided extensive services to family members of the victims that were on the flights into the World Trade Center towers during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and to first responders who were involved in the search, rescue and recovery efforts. Crawford has facilitated and provided disaster behavioral health response training across the nation on behalf of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). CMMH continues to provide training to responders in the aftermath of the Haiti Earthquake of 2010 and the Tohoku Earthquake of 2011 in Japan.
Crawford is in his 13th year as Director of CMTP. CMTP is the oldest multicultural pre-doctoral Psychology internship program in the nation (40 years). To date, more than 270 interns have been trained, 85 percent of which have been from historical minority groups. Crawford has expertise in mental health, psychology training, substance abuse, workforce development and extensive experience in disaster behavioral health response and mental health training. He is principal investigator for several state and federal research and training grants. He has several publications in refereed journals and is recently lead author of a book chapter on the culturally competent practice of disaster behavioral health services. Crawford is recipient of a number of awards including the Commissioner’s Excellence Award (Massachusetts Department of Mental Health) and the 2011-12 Excellence in Diversity Training Award from the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC). In addition to his earned doctorate from Boston College, Crawford is recipient of an honorary doctoral degree of humane letters from the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. He has made featured presentations on evidence-based culturally competent practices in mental health at the Legislative Breakfast of the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses, the National Mental Health Association and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the American Psychological Association, and other national organizations. He serves on several mental health advisory committees. He is a psychologist with the National Football League assigned to the New England Patriots. His career is committed to spanning cultures and to providing quality equitable mental health and behavioral health services to diverse under-served populations.
Dr. Jeanette Altarriba
Jeanette Altarriba, PhD, is the recipient of the Dalmas Taylor Distinguished Contributions Award. Dr. Jeanette Altarriba is a Professor of Psychology, at the University at Albany, State University of New York and a member of the American Psychological Association. She received her master’s and doctoral degrees in Cognitive Psychology from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and then completed postdoctoral research training at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Altarriba joined the Department of Psychology at the University at Albany in 1992 as an Assistant Professor of Psychology. She was tenured in 1998 and promoted to the rank of Full Professor in 2004. Altarriba is also affiliated with the Department of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies, as well as with the Linguistics and Cognitive Science Programs at UAlbany.
As director of the Cognition and Language Laboratory, Altarriba oversees a broad research program in the areas of bilingualism, second language acquisition, semantic processing within and between languages, and the relation between language, memory, perception and emotion. She has published her work in numerous scientific journals including Memory & Cognition, the Journal of Memory and Language, and Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. She has also co-edited four books in the areas of cognition and culture; bilingualism and its relationship to memory and cognition; and bilingual sentence processing.
Together with Dr. Azara Santiago-Rivera, she has worked on pioneering the field of bilingual therapy and use of language switching and language mixing within a therapeutic environment. Their work has been presented at many regional, national and international venues, and Altarriba has been sought after for her presentations on this work. In 2005, she was featured in the flagship publication of the American Psychological Association—Monitor on Psychology—for her work in the field of emotion, cognition and mental health.
Altarriba has also distinguished herself in the realm of teaching and mentoring. She has received various awards for these endeavors, such as the early Career Award for Teaching and Training from the American Psychological Association’s Minority Fellowship Program, created to recognize her outstanding achievements, and Chancellor’s Awards from the SUNY-system for both Teaching and Service.
Dr. E. J. R. David
E. J. R. David, PhD, is the recipient of the Early Career Achievement Award. Dr. E. J. R. David was born in the Philippines by Kapampangan parents and was raised in Pasay, Las Pinas, Makati, and Barrow, Alaska. He received his Bachelor's Degree in Psychology from the University of Alaska Anchorage, and his Master's Degree and Doctoral Degree in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a mental health research fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) Minority Fellowship Program and was a recipient of the APA Division 45 (Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues) Distinguished Student Research Award in 2007. Currently, he is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Alaska Anchorage in the Joint PhD Program in Clinical-Community Psychology that has a Cultural and Indigenous emphasis. His primary interest is on the psychological experiences of Filipino Americans and other minority groups. Using surveys, interviews and experiments, he studies the psychological processes and effects of colonization and contemporary oppression (i.e., colonial mentality or internalized oppression) on historically oppressed groups. Relatedly, he is interested in the worldwide growth of indigenous psychology and postcolonial psychology. In just five years since obtaining his PhD, David has already produced over 20 journal articles, book chapters, and books including “Filipino -/ American Postcolonial Psychology: Oppression, Colonial Mentality, and Decolonization” and the forthcoming “Internalized Oppression: The Psychology of Marginalized Groups.”
