The Waynesburg University Psychology students and professors will take part in an upcoming conference sponsored by PESI Incorporated, a non-profit organization, on Feb. 10th and 11.
The conference will be held in the Center for Research and Economic Development on campus.
Professionals in the psychology and counseling fields will also attend.
The topic of the conference will be on brain trauma and the basic therapies that have been created for this particular type of emotional damage.
The use of brain imaging techniques to pinpoint possible areas of damage in a person’s brain is one common practice.
The guest speaker will be Dr. Gale Kelley, a Florida licensed mental health counselor.
Kelley holds many years of experience in the field of trauma, helping clients who live with trauma that stems from neglect in the forms of sexual, physical and emotional abuse.
Dr. Keith Rieder, professor of psychology, said the conference is open to undergraduate psychology and
graduate counseling students, as well as field professionals. He said the conference acts as a continuing education program.
Rieder said that essentially this workshop is “designed to give basic competency in doing trauma therapy.”
The conference was created after a few students from Waynesburg’s Psychology Club took a trip to Los Angeles last year.
They went to a workshop similar to the one being held on campus and “loved it so much that they wished to attend a second.”
Dr. Rieder went to Sarah Bell, academic communications coordinator, who took on the job of contacting PESI and organizing the event.
PESI agreed to the idea and thus the Waynesburg administration began the process of organizing the conference.
“[PESI is] in charge of basically the speaker and the course and the materials,” said Bell.
The university worked to recruit attendees for the conference and arrange housing for the speaker.
At the conference, they can be introduced to the real world of counseling psychology from a professional in the field and obtain a glimpse of future careers.
“Any student that is interested in psychology at all, or is planning to go into counseling, is going to end up dealing with a lot of people who have been through traumatic experiences, so any of the psychology majors on campus who are focusing on counseling will definitely benefit from attending this conference,” said Rieder.
If all goes well, there is a good chance that PESI will return to Waynesburg’s campus and provide more content for future students, Rieder said.
Check in for this year’s conference begins at 7:30 a.m. each day, and the cost of the training is $310.