As is the case every academic year, the Child Study Center’s faculty gets renewed as some of our colleagues leave to take on new responsibilities and new colleagues join the department. The academic year 2012-2013 is marked by the departure of Drs. Schwab-Stone, State and, Stover
Dr. Mary Schwab-Stone, a member of the Child Study Center faculty since 1987, retired after 26 years of valuable service. This May, Mary graduated from the Yale School of Divinity, after completing years of post-graduate study complementing her training as a child psychiatrist and epidemiologist. Mary’s tenure at the Center included her key role in several important epidemiological studies, including launching and sustaining the Social and Health Assessment (SAHA), an annual school-based epidemiological survey of behavioral risk and resilience factors in New Haven school district students. Over the years, the SAHA became a rich trove of data to learn about changes affecting inner-city youth, such as their hitherto unknown, epidemic exposure to traumatic events, as documented in her classic ‘No Safe Haven’. Mary’s work on the SAHA went on to expand internationally in her productive collaborations with Vlad Ruchkin and others. During the last five years of her long tenure at the Center, Mary became one of the attendings on the Consultation Liaison service, where she provided excellent clinical care and supervision. Mary leaves the Center but will remain in the New Haven area, where she will have a private practice and continue exploring the optimal integration of her expertise in child psychiatry and religious studies. We will miss our dear friend and colleague Mary, but are reassured in knowing she will not be far from us. Godspeed, Mary!
Dr. Matthew State has been a member of the Child Study Center faculty since 2001 and the Donald J. Cohen Professor of Child Psychiatry, Psychiatry and Genetics since 2011. In March of this year, he began a new chapter of his career, becoming the Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. Since beginning his career at Yale, Matt has become widely known as a model clinician, an innovative scientist, and a valued mentor. Those who have had the privilege of working with him can attest to his keen ability to quickly identify and hone in on the crucial element of a problem or question. In the realm of research, this ability has obviously contributed to his enormous success in high profile scientific findings and publications in the genetics of autism, Tourette’s, and other neuropsychiatric disorders. However less visible to the outside observer is how this quality has been recognized by numerous trainees and faculty members at the Yale School of Medicine, leading many to seek him out as a valued confidante and advisor. His enthusiasm for psychiatric genetics and for the importance of developing talented early-career researchers has surely inspired many trainees to become clinician scientists and to mentor others. In short, Dr. State has been the perfect role model for the clinician, teacher, and physician scientist, whose unyielding commitment to developing and mentoring talent in the early formative years of one’s career is having a tremendous impact on the field of child psychiatry in ways that will be evident for many years to come. We all wish him the very best in his new role at UCSF.
Dr. Carla S. Stover has been a member of the Child Study Center faculty since 2001 and an outstanding mentor and colleague. Carla's passion for her work has shown through every day, both in her care for the fathers of families with special needs coming through her research and in the level of detail she has applied to the data her group collected. As of the next academic year, she will continue her work at the University of South Florida. Carla has taught both her senior and junior colleagues many valuable lessons through her dedication to the complex problems of family life, which we all will carry throughout our careers. We all wish her the best success in her future endeavors.