Mission and Philosophy

Mission
Our mission is to prepare effective, culturally competent problem solvers ready to serve all children in general public education and children with disabilities. We are committed to preparing professional school psychologists who will:

• Work effectively with children from racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse backgrounds in a variety of settings including urban, urban-rim, suburban, and rural communities. Providing high quality services in urban and urban-rim schools is a program priority.
• Provide flexible, thorough analyses of children's school-based experiences drawing upon multiple sources, frames of reference, and assessment techniques in order to guide and monitor interventions designed to promote children's educational, social, and emotional needs.
• Promote and protect quality educational opportunities and psychological health for all children at the individual, group, school system, community, and policy levels.
• Assume a comprehensive collaborative role necessary to confront the complex problems children face in schools and the systemic nature of the constraints affecting their development.

Philosophy
School Psychology has a vital responsibility in the nation’s schools to promote mental health and secure quality education for all children. Given this responsibility, our program strives to achieve its mission by committing to the following philosophical foundations:

• We are morally and ethically compelled to address the inequities present in our nation’s educational system, such as the under-achievement of racial and linguistic minority children and the misidentification of children with disabilities.
• All knowledge is historically situated. The systemic problems children face in schools exist within a network of social relationships that can be studied and transformed.
• New knowledge and research are generated within a socio-political context. This context is infused in our program via the reflection upon all aspects of practice through a multicultural lens.
• We emphasize an expanded role for school psychologists built upon an eco-systemic and developmental perspective necessary to address the complex nature of contemporary school related problems.