A Passion for Public Service: Dr. Ellin Bloch

Professor Ellin Bloch is the Program Director of CSPP’s Clinical PhD program in Los Angeles, and also the LA Director of Professional Field Training. Dr. Bloch was interviewed by writer Nancy Lund in June 2005.
 
Ms. Lund: Talk a little about diversity, internationalism and the “Professional Practice University” concept that Alliant President Dr. Geoffrey Cox has originated.

Dr. Bloch: Academic excellence and real world application is the definition of what our clinical PhD program is all about. We can bring our research, clinical and teaching skills out into the world so we can apply them to community problems. This is our overarching goal for our graduates, so that over the lifetime of their careers, they actually will be performing diverse roles in society. They will be using their research and teaching and providing public service and advocacy and scholarship. We are very different in that we are not dealing in basic research in an artificial setting. That kind of research is extremely useful, but it is not part of our educational and training model.

I believe that the world is your community, so go and live in it. As international connections grow, politically and communication-wise with the Internet, with 24-hour news channels, the world is so interconnected. I believe that at some point, everyone on earth will realize that we are one community and that we need it, not just on our own block and in our own neighborhood. I know it won’t happen in my lifetime, but certainly it would be a goal – lofty, but worth pursuing.

Ms. Lund: What are you passionate about in your career?

Dr. Bloch: When I was in graduate school and somewhat afterward, I thought that my only passion was for clinical practice. Then I became a member of the faculty of the College of Medicine, in the Department of Family Medicine in Cincinnati, for 16 years. I really enjoyed working with physicians, teaching and interdisciplinary work. I had earlier worked with attorneys in the County’s Court of Domestic Relations. I discovered that I liked the interaction across disciplines, attorneys, physicians, social workers, nurses etc.

About 1983, I got into the field of trauma and traumatic stress. That became a passion for me and I made it into my area of specialty. Now I have written a book called Crisis Intervention and Trauma Response (published in 1998). It has been translated into Spanish and two Chinese languages.

I worked with trauma patients individually, and as time went along, I started to discover the importance of responses to trauma at the community level. So that is included in the book. This is really my passion, and I teach an elective focused on trauma every year.

I have done a lot of work with the media on trauma-related events since 1990 during the Persian Gulf deployment. I am a great believer in public education and the best way to do that is through the media.

Ms. Lund: How important is internationalism to your work and the University?

Dr. Bloch: I was brought up in New York City in a family that welcomed the diversity and internationalism that was everywhere in our environment. We traveled and often had a diverse group of people over to our house. I brought my daughter up similarly. She was a correspondent for Time magazine in Islamabad for five years and later its Bureau Chief -- Time’s first Islamabad-based correspondent and also Bureau Chief in Pakistan. So internationalism is in my bones. It is something I have always cherished, and it is why I like being at this University, where we have diversity and international components in our mission. Most important is to give voice to those who have none and to serve the underserved.

We are very diverse here. We interweave diversity into every single part of the curriculum. We not only give specific classes, but diversity is interwoven into every course taught and into our dissertation topics. We are very cognizant of the growing diversity in this country and elsewhere.

Ms. Lund: What drew you to CSPP at Alliant?

Dr. Bloch: People and the diversity component. I knew and respected people who were here.  I also felt that it was very important to forward this mission, for the US particularly, as our population is undergoing change. I have increasingly recognized that this is not being addressed sufficiently in the traditional university curriculum or in research. Most psychology research is done with white undergraduates. So the idea of the diversity component and applying the research in the real world was attractive. Also having so many diverse field training agencies for students to take advantage of was very attractive to me. I felt like it just opened things up for me intellectually as well as personally and professionally. I liked the concept and I saw that it was a concept in action. It wasn’t just lip service. I would say that would be the primary draw.

Ms. Lund: What are your most satisfying contributions to your field?

Dr. Bloch:  I helped organized APAGS for graduate student members of the APA (American Psychological Association). When I became more involved with APA, I found that it really didn’t have an association within itself for graduate students. In 1988, two students asked for my help to develop this branch of the association. A colleague of mine and I mentored the students, who presented their case before the general membership. When we started, there were probably just 1,000 to 2,000 student affiliates of the APA, and now there are 40,000 members. It’s incredible! This ranks up there as number one for me because we are educating our future; these are our future full members of APA. It is so important. Now they have a home.

My community work has also been very satisfying. For a year and a half I worked during the Persian Gulf deployment to deliver psychological support services to families in the military in the Cincinnati and northern Kentucky areas.

On the first night of the 1991 war, one of the local car makers opened up a union hall and we had about 400 adults and 35 children come. With my three colleagues, all volunteers, we talked with the adults and had support groups for the kids. It was an eye opener! Here were four psychologists and 435 upset, sad, stoic, brave family members of the military. What were we to do? We had to be creative and apply our skills spontaneously.

I like this kind of work because I feel like I am providing a community service. I am not labeling anyone as mentally ill. In this case, my personal beliefs about the war were irrelevant. I like this kind of work because I am helping people who need some help for a short period of time, like we all would, if we were faced with a crisis.

I like it because it can’t be scripted ahead of time, so it becomes a matter of your own creativity or making your own mistakes and learning from them. It is unrehearsed. It is challenging and nerve-wracking. You have to be able to think on your feet. It is an opportunity to reach a lot of people at one time, and that is really important to me. I think that it is a really important role for psychologists to play in the future. Most people aren’t going to come for individual therapy for traumatic experiences like this. We are not often on the front line. I think the future of psychology is at the community level because you can get to people more quickly and help them to draw on their own resources.

I think one of the most rewarding things for me in this field is how much I have learned from people who have been traumatized. People are incredible: the resources they have, the ideas they have, the resilience. Not to say they are not suffering. It is a remarkable testimony to human nature.

I learned that there is an endless variety of solutions to a problem. The creativity of groups is amazing. Even on an individual level, I think people function a lot better than they are given credit for. I think we focus too much on psychopathology and mental illness and we forget how marvelously resilient people are. It is remarkable what people can do if you just help them to open up some doors or point out some options they hadn’t considered.

Ms. Lund: What have been the most exciting aspects of being at CSPP at Alliant?

Dr. Bloch: The opportunity to direct the PhD program and to oversee the professional field training. It is an opportunity for me to create the best opportunities for students to play out their potential and follow their passions. It is very rewarding for me. To be able to encourage the faculty to do what they are best at doing, that is really critical to me. Every faculty member does writing, teaching and research. But each faculty member has their own passion, and as their leader, I hope I give them the freedom to develop that. Then they give that to the students.

The people here are incredible. It is probably the most welcoming environment I ever entered. I was overcome. People are warm. The quality of the faculty and students is unusual. A lot of traditional programs take in smaller numbers of students; I feel energized by having more students. I feel they bring more to the table and to the discussion. I love it. I am sure to teach every semester because I love to be in the classroom with the students. We have exceptional staff, and they are as committed to the mission as the faculty and students. They keep coming back year after year. There is a sense of belongingness. I belong here.

Ms Lund: What is unique about CSPP at Alliant?

I don’t think that there is another American program that does all the things we do: the diversity, the internationalism. I don’t think there is another university doing this in terms of clinical psychology.

Every applicant should know that we want them to succeed, and that is our mission. I think our classes are very creative and as interesting as possible. We have adjunct professors that keep coming back again and again because they love the students. We hear that from the field placement agencies too because we let our students be who they truly are and come into their own. They continue their growth and love of learning and service to others for their career lifetimes.