Dr. Morgan T. Sammons has been selected as the new dean for the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP) at Alliant International University. Dr. Sammons will begin his tenure in January of 2008.

Interim Dean Dr. Steven Bucky will continue to lead CSPP until that time.

Dr. Sammons, who currently serves as President of the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology and Specialty Leader for US Navy Clinical Psychology, accepted the prestigious position after a series of campus interviews with CSPP faculty, students and staff who expressed strong support for his candidacy. Dr. Sammons will oversee the largest school of professional psychology in California, which has graduated more than one-third of the licensed psychologists in the nation’s most populous state.

Dr. Sammons also teaches as adjunct faculty in CSPP’s ground-breaking post-doctoral program in clinical psychopharmacology. “I’m tremendously pleased and honored to have been offered this position,” Dr. Sammons said.  “Through my previous association with Alliant and history of work in psychopharmacology, I’m familiar with the cutting-edge nature of many of CSPP’s programs.  I’m extremely optimistic about the future of our profession and of CSPP.”

Dr. Sammons accepted the position while serving in Fallujah, Iraq, where he was deployed in support of the First Medical Battalion, First Marine Division. Prior to his deployment to Iraq, Dr. Sammons served as Director for Clinical Support for the United States Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, directing policy implementation and service delivery for US Navy shore based military treatment facilities.

Dr. Sammons additionally serves on the National Centers for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Educational Advisory Board and the American Psychological Association’s Policy and Planning Board. He is also an associate editor for the APA journal Psychological Services. His forthcoming book “Psychopharmacology: An Integrated Approach” will be published by Oxford University Press.

He has edited two volumes and published over 40 journal articles, book chapters and reviews, including many that focus on his specialties of pharmacotherapy and psychopharmacology. He has presented at over 70 conferences and conventions, traveling throughout North American, Canada and as far as Iceland to present mostly in the areas of prescriptions and psychopharmacology.

Dr. Sammons received both his MC and PhD from Arizona State University and completed a Fellowship in Psychopharmacology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 1994. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology (clinical).

Numerous honors and awards have been bestowed on Dr. Sammons. In 1994, 1995 and 2000 he received a Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association (APA), and in 2005 he received their award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Practice in the Public Sector.

Sammons has worked at the U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, the National Naval Medical Center, and naval hospitals in Maryland, Japan and Iceland. He has worked with diverse groups of patients, including Vietnamese refugees in foster programs, incarcerated sex offenders, and drug and alcohol abusers. He is a Captain in the United States Navy’s Medical Services Corps.

About Alliant

Alliant International University, a nonprofit with six California locations, a Mexico City campus and programs in Hong Kong and Tokyo, provides professionally-oriented degree programs in business, education and psychology. Alliant serves an exceptionally diverse student body of more than 3,600 students: last year Diverse Magazine ranked Alliant 6th for awarding doctorates to minority women and 14th for doctorates to minorities (all disciplines combined) while US News & World Report rated Alliant #1 in international diversity among national doctoral universities. Alliant was formed in 2001 by the combination of the California School of Professional Psychology and United States International University.