Infant/Toddler Mental Health Graduate Certificate - Faculty

Debby Bassett, MA, has been a Lead Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant at Mt. Hood Community College for 16 years. She has provided consultation, facilitation, mediation, program planning, training, and leadership to administrators, managers, staff and parents. She has provided effective clinical interventions to countless children and families impacted by trauma and poverty. Ms. Bassett and Jennifer Cahill created a successful Reflective Supervision model to provide ongoing support and guidance to Early Head Start staff, which other managers are now replicating. Recently Ms. Bassett was selected to serve as a Junior Faculty member of the Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) Learning Collaborative sponsored by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network at Duke University. CPP is a nationally recognized evidence-based early childhood trauma treatment model that incorporates child development, brain research, trauma theory, family systems, and attachment theory. As a core faculty member she will provide a year-long training for 90 clinicians, supervisors and administrators from all over the U.S. Ms. Bassett is a co-instructor for COUN 507 Professional Development I-VI.

Patricia Mulhearn Blasco, PhD, is an associate professor in the department of pediatrics at Oregon Health & Science University. She currently conducts assessments of young children at the Child Development and Rehabilitation Center. She has completed postdoctoral research in early intervention/early childhood education at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her PhD from the University of Virginia is in special education/early childhood education. She is currently on the editorial board of Young Exceptional Children and The Journal of Early Intervention. Dr. Blasco is the author of one book and many articles on early intervention. She has presented at national and local conferences on family-centered, culturally responsive intervention, and the social and emotional development of children birth to three. Dr. Blasco is the instructor for SPED 594 Assessment Methods and Classification in Infant Mental Health.

Kathy A. Bobula, PhD, is currently an instructor of Early Childhood Education and Psychology at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. She began teaching there in 1982, coordinating the Department of Early Childhood Education for 24 years. She has been teaching about child development and working with young children and parents for over 40 years. She has worked directly with infants and toddlers as well as their parents in a college Laboratory Nursery School in Ohio, and at an Early Head Start program and a parent cooperative child care center, both in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Bobula received her bachelor of science and master of science degrees in family and child development from Ohio State University in 1967 and 1969, respectively. She earned a Ph.D. in Urban Studies from Portland State University in 1996, with two field concentrations: Human Development and Policy Analysis. The title of her dissertation is: Characteristics of Administrators' Leadership Style in Quality Child Care Centers. Dr. Bobula's work experience, in addition to college teaching, includes being a teacher-caregiver in both full and part-day early childhood programs with children from birth through six years of age. She has been a teacher of young children in Head Start, Early Head Start, two campus based programs, two parent cooperatives, and a Native American tribal preschool. Dr. Bobula has also administered three programs. She began studying about brain development in the mid-1980s, and has been teaching and conducting workshops about brain development ever since. In 2007, she began a website called Developing Brains: Ideas for Parenting and Education from the New Brain Science (www.developingbrains.org). Dr. Bobula is the instructor for CI 592 Dynamic Models of Infant/Toddler Development.

Jennifer Cahill, BS, has over 20 years experience working in Head Start programs. She planned, designed, and implemented the EHS program for Mt. Hood Community College. She currently oversees all component areas in their Early Head Start home-based program option, the Parents as Teachers program, and she assists with training and planning in the child care and student model. Ms. Cahill is also an Early Head Start Start Up Planner. She is a part-time instructor of Early Childhood Education at Mt. Hood Community College, teaching Infant and Toddler Development; Health, Safety, and Nutrition; and Family Relations. Ms. Cahill is a recent graduate of the Infant Toddler Mental Health Graduate Certificate Program at Portland State University and continues to further her education in the field of Early Intervention. Ms. Cahill is a co-instructor for COUN 507 Professional Development I-VI.

Mary Foltz, BS, is an early childhood specialist at the Early Childhood Training Center at Portland State University. She provides consultation and training to programs serving children from the prenatal period to five years of age, both regionally and nationally. Ms. Foltz has been instrumental in the initiation and development of Early Head Start programs in Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and Alaska. She has presented at and coordinated numerous regional and national conferences and was a co-developer of The Infant/Toddler Caregiver Program. She has provided consultation and early childhood-education professional support for 27 years. During this time, a strong focus of her work has been on assisting programs to develop effective systems that promote reflective practice. Ms. Foltz is a university practicum supervisor.

Leslie J. Munson, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Special Education at Portland State University. Dr. Munson is the faculty liaison for the Infant/Toddler Mental Health program. During her doctoral program at Vanderbilt University, Dr. Munson focused on infant development and parent-infant interaction. Dr. Munson developed the Infant-Caregiver Interaction Scale (ICIS), a tool to assess the interactive behaviors of caregivers and infants during feeding and playing in the home environment. In addition, she participated in the development of the Behavioral Health Screening Tool (BHS). She has worked extensively with young children with special needs in a variety of settings, including hospitals, health departments, early intervention programs, and public schools. Her areas of interest include parent-infant interaction, families, parenting when the parent has a cognitive disability, and grief related to the death of a child.

Nancy Parker, MA, has a certificate in Infant Mental Health from the University of Washington. She has worked as a child and family therapist in a range of settings—private for-profit and non-profit agencies, state hospital, schools, and private practice. She was the clinical director of children’s services for a large community mental health agency and served as a senior administrator overseeing children and adult in-patient and out-patient mental health and chemical dependency services. Ms. Parker is currently the executive director of Columbia River Mental Health Services, and she provides consultation services in the area of system change and development. Ms. Parker is the instructor for SW 596 Development and Utilization of Collaborative Partnerships to Support Infants, Toddlers, and Their Families.

Redmond Reams, PhD, has a doctorate in psychology from the University of Washington and has also earned a postgraduate diploma in infant mental health. He is on the faculty at Pacific University and Oregon Health & Science University. Dr. Reams has presented research on infant/toddler mental health at national conferences and in professional journals. He is in private practice seeing children, adults, and families and in consulting to Early Head Start programs, child care centers, and mental health agencies. Dr. Reams is a university practicum supervisor.

Cynthia Roberts, MS, LPC, is a therapist, consultant, and trainer who specializes in attachment and trauma work. Ms. Roberts has over a decade of experience in the child development field and has been a practicing therapist for several years. She is a graduate of Oregon State University specializing in Community Counseling and is certified as a Circle of Security and Emotionally Focused Therapy Provider. Ms. Roberts maintains a private practice in Eugene Oregon, provides training throughout Oregon in Attachment-Based Caregiving, and she manages the Mental Health Services for the Head Start and Early Head Start programs in Lane County. Currently, she coordinates the Lane County team of professionals who are a part of a state-wide grant with Dr. Bruce Perry. This grant is teaching clinicians to use the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) to tailor therapeutic interventions to a child’s brain development and relational needs.

Donna R. Weston, PhD, is a licensed psychologist with over 25 years of experience in teaching, training, research, and clinical work with young children and their families. After completing her PhD in developmental psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, she interned at the Infant-Parent Program at the University of California, San Francisco for clinical training in infant-parent psychotherapy. Dr. Weston was director of the Graduate Certificate Program in Infant Mental Health at the University of Washington from 2001-2007. Currently, Dr. Weston is co-principle investigator and clinical supervisor for a pilot research project in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington integrating infant mental health practice into the treatment model of the Parent-Child Assistance Program (PCAP), an intensive case management program for mothers in recovery. In addition she is principal infant mental health consultant on a project funded by Group Health Community Foundation that is supporting infant mental health staff development at Childhaven, a child abuse prevention program in Seattle/King County. Dr. Weston is a a graduate fellow of Zero to Three and a member of the Zero to Three DC: 0-3 Training Task Force. She is a graduate of the Child Psychotherapy Program at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society and is a fifth year candidate in the course in child psychoanalysis at the Hanna Perkins Center. Dr. Weston has a private practice in Bellevue, Washington. Dr. weston is the instructor for COUN 597 Strengths, Risk Factors, and Disturbances in Infants, Toddlers, and Their Families.