St. John's News

Professional services provided under the auspices of St. John’s University that are available to the public — psychological counseling and testing, speech and hearing evaluations and therapy, and literacy skills remediation — previously located in separate quarters on the Queens campus, have been relocated to 152-11 Union Turnpike (between 152nd and 153rd Street) as part of the University’s strategic plan which calls for making them accessible to the community from a single location.
 
The new offices are located at street level, on the first floor of the Seton Complex, which includes new University-owned student apartments. The Center’s directors concur that the new setup makes it easier for clients and staff alike because services are all under the same roof.

“The move makes our services more accessible to the community, which is in keeping with the University’s Vincentian mission,” says newly-appointed Center of Psychological Services Director Richard Morrissey, Ph.D., ABPP (member of the American Board of Professional Psychology). “We’re already had some walk-ins who were waiting for the bus.” Dr. Morrissey is the former program director of the Ambulatory Service in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Medical Center.

A Blessing Ceremony and ribbon-cutting, conducted by University President Donald J. Harrington, are slated for Monday, April 10 at 1 p.m., and an Open House to introduce the facility to the community is set for Sunday, May 7. The Center for Community Services is open Monday through Saturday and is accessible by car or public transportation. Hours (listed below) vary by Center.

Psychological Services
The Center for Psychological Services is a multi-purpose mental-health resource that provides service to members of the community who request therapy/counseling for a variety of emotional, behavioral or adjustment problems:  depression, anxiety, marital problems, parenting, and/or learning and behavioral issues.

Individual therapy for children, adolescents and adults, and marital/family therapy, parenting groups and social-skills children’s groups are offered. Psycho-educational and personality testing is available for all age groups, as is neuropsychological assessment. The Center also conducts research under Psychology department faculty supervision; clients are notified if an appropriate study is being conducted in which they might choose to participate.

The Center is affiliated with Jamaica Hospital, where it provides some clinical services. It also is affiliated with six Catholic parochial schools, where it provides services and assessments to students.
 
All psychological testing and counseling at The Center for Psychological Services is provided by St. John’s clinical doctoral students and graduate-school psychology students, and is closely supervised by licensed psychologists. Fees, based on a sliding scale, are low to moderate. Hours range from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday; and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. The Center can be reached at (718) 990-1900.

Speech and Hearing Center
The Speech and Hearing Center is a state-of-the-art facility for the diagnosis and treatment of speech, language and hearing disorders in children and adults. These disorders include voice problems, stuttering, motor speech disorders, articulation and phonological disorders, language disorders, and hearing and auditory-processing problems in children and adults. Programs are also available for children who are developmentally disabled and adults who have had strokes or brain injury. Voice and diction training is available for the foreign-born or persons intent on improving their communication competence.

The Center’s audiology facility provides comprehensive audiological testing. Counseling, hearing-aid evaluation, aural rehabilitation with speech reading and auditory-processing evaluations are also available.

The Speech and Hearing Center’s staff features licensed and certified clinicians, including faculty members of the Speech and Communication Sciences Department, who serve as clinical supervisors of the graduate students who conduct the therapy. All speech and language pathologists and audiologists are certified by the American Speech, Language and Hearing Association (ASHA), and licensed by the New York State Department of Education Division of Professional Licensing. All testing at the Center is performed by licensed practitioners.

The Center also provides screening services to the community-at-large on a scheduled basis. As both a teaching and educational facility, and a not-for-profit agency, the Center maintains that its fees for services are significantly lower than those charged by most other agencies and private practitioners. It also accepts assignment of fees from Medicare for qualified individuals’ audiological evaluations.

The Center treats populations ranging from infants and children to geriatrics with speech, language and/or hearing disorders. Individual or group sessions are available, as is an Early Intervention Program for infants and toddlers with disabilities, and their families.

The Center is open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday. The Center is under the direction of Donna Geffner, Ph.D., CCC-Slp/A. (Certificate of Clinical Competency in Speech/Language Pathology and Audiology). Professor Geffner is also the Director of the Graduate Program of Speech and Language Pathology and Audiology at St. John’s, a past national president of the American Speech and Hearing Association, and the recipient of an honorary doctorate degree from Providence College. Appointments may be made by calling (718) 990-6480.

Reading and Writing Education Center
The Reading and Writing Education Center, under the auspices of St. John’s School of Education, provides for the diagnosis and treatment of elementary- and intermediate- grade students experiencing difficulty with reading and writing. Literacy difficulties may include problems with reading acquisition and comprehension, stages of the writing process, and/or related problems with verbal expression and understanding. Practitioners who have been trained in the Orton-Gillingham Multi-sensory Approach work with clients who have been diagnosed with severe word recognition and spelling problems.

Evaluations of intellect, conducted by a faculty member holding a doctoral degree in counselor education, who is also a licensed School Psychologist, are available, as is a language and literacy evaluation, conducted by a literacy diagnostician who has completed a master’s degree program in literacy education and is a certified teacher.

The Reading and Writing Development program is conducted one-on-one by a clinician with a master’s degree in literacy education who is a certified teacher. Instruction typically focuses around reading comprehension, word recognition, vocabulary development, writing, and oral-language development. Sessions are scheduled after-school hours during the week and/or on Saturday. Richard Sinatra, Ph.D., Professor and Chairperson of The School of Education’s Department of Human Services and Counseling, directs the program. To schedule an appointment, please call (718) 990-6358.