Alumni
Jeff Swanson - Westmont Class of 1985: Jeff’s position is associate professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences with tenure at Duke University Medical School. Since 2002 he has been part of a national research network funded by the MacArthur Foundation to examine the use of legal and social welfare policies to ‘leverage’ community-based mental health treatment in the United States. In 2004, he received an Independent Research Scientist Career Award from the National Institute of Mental Health to pursue a five-year research program on violence, severe mental illness, and psychiatric treatment. Jeff is the principal investigator of the first major study of the implementation of psychiatric advance directives, funded by NIMH and MacArthur. Other work includes a national study of the impact of the American with Disabilites Act Title I in redressing employment discrimination againt people with disabilities.
Christen Krogh - Westmont Class of 2001: Christen currently teaches and runs the Center for Theraputic Education at San Marcos High School in Santa Barbara. She teaches students with emotional/behavioral disabilites. Most of her students have very bad home lives and have disabilities such as schizophrenia, ADHD, Bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, severe depression, etc. She loves her job! Christen chose to teach because she wanted to have more hands on time with the people she worked with and wanted to positively influence their lives. She worked at Devereux for four years while completing her Masters and Credential from UCSB. She also works part time at the Santa Barbar Mental Helath Association where she works with adults with schizophrenia.
Jennifer Eskridge - Westmont Class of 2005: Jennifer is in Uganda with Samaritan’s Purse and living in Lira and visiting rual sites and Kampala. It is an internship which will allow her to complete her required field work for her MPH at UCLA. She will be working with the HIV/AIDS program in Lira doing health education with youth, a photography and story-writing project, grant writing, and working with other NGO’s. She will return to Los Angeles in January 2008.