Professional Biography
A native New Yorker, I completed my B.A. in psychology at Loyola University Maryland (LUM). It was at Loyola that the foundations were laid for my approach to mentorship (the Jesuit idea of Cura Personalis influences me to this day), social justice, and research in diversity issues. From 2004 to 2010 I completed my M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Alabama (roll tide!), focusing on clinical psychology with emphases in psychology-law and quantitative methods. During my time at UA, I took part in a National Science Foundation Fellowship (East Asia and Summer Pacific Institute), spending a summer in Adelaide, South Australia. This experience fostered a global perspective on science and practice. After leaving Alabama, I completed my pre-doctoral clinical psychology internship with the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Department of Psychiatry, which formed the foundation for suicide and community violence work.
From 2010 to 2015, I spent 5.5 years as an Assistant Professor at both Sam Houston State University (Department of Psychology, member of the clinical-forensic psychology Ph.D. program), and the University of Alabama (Department of Criminal Justice with a joint appointment in the Institute for Social Science Research). Working with a variety of partnering scholars and agencies, these 5.5 years allowed me to adopt an interdisciplinary approach informed by community health, criminal justice, law, and social-clinical psychology. Additional professional endeavors include consulting and provision of trainings in both trial consulting and suicide prevention. I have also served as visiting faculty at Schola Empirica (formerly Prague Centre for Public Policy; Prague, Czech Republic) in 2014 and the Griffith University Criminology Institute (Brisbane, Australia) in 2015. Since the beginning of 2016, I have been fortunate to serve as an Associate Professor in the School of Community and Environmental Health at Old Dominion University where I teach and mentor in the Health Services Research Ph.D. program and joint MPH program with the Eastern Virginia Medical School. I also serve as an affiliate faculty member and research mentor for the Virginia Consortium Program in Clinical Psychology. In the summer of 2016, I served as a distinguished visiting scholar with the University of Central Lancashire Forensic Research Group, and was awarded an honorary continuing faculty status. I am typically open to recruiting doctoral students for both Ph.D. programs! Don’t hesitate to contact me if you are interested. A 2017 development in my professional development is membership in the Military Suicide Research Consortium, a group doing amazing work to which I hope to contribute.
I am very grateful to mentors from Loyola, Alabama and UCSF, as they have shaped my continued teaching, research, advocacy and mentoring efforts to this day. Of the many folks I have been fortunate enough to train with, I am especially thankful for the influences of Charlie LoPresto, David Powers, David Crough, Stan Brodsky, Steve Prentice-Dunn, Lee Keyes, Jamie DeCoster, and Dale McNiel.
I invite interested collaborators, students and anyone else to learn more using the website here, or the information below. You can contact me by email at rcramer@odu.edu, by phone at (757) 683-3350, or on social media: Twitter @DocRobPhD23.
CV (Updated June 2017)
Cheers,
Rob