Kirby Wycoff, PsyD, EdM, MPH, NCSP

Mentoring

Dr. Wycoff provides mentoring within the CTC program, as well as within the mental health field. This includes active mentorship of a wide range of students within the program, as well as multiple mentees external to the program. This includes mentorship of junior mental health clinicians, psychology trainees, counselor trainees, public health trainees and early and mid-career researchers. One specific example of Dr. Wycoff’s robust mentorship includes her research team which is composed of one masters level clinician (a CTC graduate), a school psychology graduate student (from her previous institution) and a bachelors level graduate (BS in Psychology) who has also joined the research team. Additionally, Dr. Wycoff regularly mentors and supports community based researchers in learning how to engage in participatory action research.

Supervision

Dr. Wycoff has received specific instruction and training in the provision of clinical supervision. This includes doctoral level course work at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University (606;  631; 632, 689, 690) related to Advanced Supervision and Clinical Practice in Psychology. Dr. Wycoff has provided clinical supervision to masters and doctoral level clinicians in training. Within the CTC program, Dr. Wycoff has provided supervision through the Practicum I and Practicum II courses (now Pre-Practicum and Practicum I). Additional experience in providing supervision includes Director of Clinical Training (2013-2018, Worcester State University) and Director of Clinical Development (2018-2020, Eastern University).

Teaching

In her pedagogy, Dr. Wycoff aspires for students to become critical consumers of knowledge who can contribute to the world around them in meaningful ways and for what she teaches to sustain them far into the future and far beyond the bounds of the classroom.  She want students to not only “know” but to be able to engage in the process of being aware, evaluating, thinking and learning, about their “knowing.” As King and Kitchner (1994) note, the chief objective of higher education is an epistemic cognition or “students’ ability to say not only what they know but also why they know it. It involves them providing the grounds for truth that demonstrate why they have confidence in a piece of knowledge. It also requires them to describe the procedures they have conducted that convince them of the accuracy of those grounds. This kind of cognition can only be developed through an intentional and consistent study of one’s own learning process and reactions.

Courses Taught at Thomas Jefferson University:

• CTC 602 - Practicum I
• CTC 701 - Practicum II
• CTC 605 - Foundations of Trauma Counseling

Courses Taught at Other Institutions:

• Introduction to Counseling Theory, Practice and Psychotherapy
• Advanced Counseling Theory, Practice and Psychotherapy
• Introduction to Practice: Ethical Standards, Legal Issues and Professional Topics
• Child and Adolescent Psychopathology
• Advanced Clinical Counseling in Child and Adolescent Populations
• Personality Assessment: Social, EMotional and Affective Functioning
• Group Processes: Theories and Practice
• Human Development Across the Lifespace
• Family Systems Theory and Practice
• Introduction to Research Methods
• Advanced Research Methods
• Applied Research in Community Settings
• Research, Design and Evaluation
• Educational Psychology
• Doctoral Internship I and II
• Practicum I and II

Research & Scholarship

Areas of Interest

Dr. Wycoff's clinical work informs and guides her scholarship, and her current research agenda focuses on Adverse Childhood Experiences, intergenerational trauma, disparity and inequity, cultural disproportionality, school policy and trauma-informed systems all within the framework of public health and resiliency. She is particularly interested in child, maternal and family health and wellness in school, community and clinical settings.

Grants

• PCORI (Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute) - Grant, $6 Million, (2021-2025) - Title: A Community Driven, Social Ecological Approach to Optimal Perinatal Health for Black Women - PI: Sharon Herring, MD, Temple University. Dr. Wycoff is currently serving as co-investigator on a 5 year grant that has the overarching goal of reducing disparities in perinatal cardiovascular disease and risk factors among Black women, utilizing a community-driven,, social-ecological framework. This project meets the fundamental need for multi-level intervention that emerges from lived experiences of Black women, and provides support from early pregnancy through the end of the first postpartum year.
• HRSA Behavioral Health Work Force Education Grant - $2 Million, (2021-2024) - Title: Child Adolescent Interprofessional Practice and Education (CAIPE) Training Program - PI: Jeanne Felter, PhD. Dr. Wycoff is currently serving as key personnel in supporting the Chair of the Counseling and Behavioral Health Department in recent awarding of 2 Million-dollar, four-year HRSA training grant. The CAIPE Program aims to expand the behavioral health workforce and improve the health of the population by developing, implementing, and evaluating a novel approach to clinical and didactic training for counseling master’s students that prioritizes trauma-informed and social-justice oriented care, integrated behavioral health and interprofessional teamwork.
• American Association of Birth Workers, $5,000, (2021-2022) - Currently serving as the PI on a  multi-phase, mixed methods research study that aims  to: a) explore  perceptions of midwifery and the birth center model of care and b) disseminate educational programming about midwifery and the birth center model of care among low-income, un/under insured, diverse women (n=210)  in a semi-rural county in the United States.
• Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Policy Lab, (2017-2019) - Leadership Education in Adolescent Health (LEAH Fellow), Research and Policy Fellowship, 2017-2019 Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Grant T71MC30798. United States Department of Health and Human Services

Leadership & Advocacy

Dr. Wycoff is committed to leadership and advocacy. She frequently serves as an invited task force and work group member on various legislative and policy initiatives.  Most notably, Dr. Wycoff has been appointed by Governor Thomas Wolf, through the Office of Advocacy and Reform to serve on the HEAL-PA and Trauma Informed Pennsylvania Think Tank Initiative. Dr. Wycoff was one of 25 individuals selected across the entire state who served on the initial Think Tank that was tasked with the development of a “Trauma-Informed PA” plan in 2019. This plan was then formally recommended to the Governor for implementation. At that time, the Office of Advocacy and Reform was charged with creating a long-term executive committee, HEAL-PA. Here, Dr. Wycoff serves as the co-chair of the Data and Evaluation Action Team and is a Member of the Community and Racial Trauma Action Team. A selective list of examples is provided below. Please see CV for full documentation.

• Pennsylvania Psychological Association; Chair of the Colleague Assistance Committee and Member of the Executive Finances Committee ; After being awarded the Pennsylvania Psychological Association Emerging Leader Fellowship for 2020 focusing on mental health and policy, she has been invited to serve in various leadership roles within the organization.
• Co-chair of the Policy Committee of the Pennsylvania School Psychology Association. In this role, she brings a public health lens to her mental health expertise in considering the needs of multiple stakeholders and policy mechanisms related to child and adolescent mental health in the Commonwealth.
• HEAL-PA: Trauma-Informed Pennsylvania, Office of Advocacy and Reform where she serves as a Governor appointed executive team member, co-chair of the statewide Data and Evaluation Action Team and Member of the Community and Racial Trauma Action Team.
• The Trauma-Informed Practices Advisory Group, Pennsylvania Office for Safe Schools where she currently serves on the advisory group responsible for responding to amendments of Act 18 of 2019 (Article XIII-B) and Act 67 of 2019, which included the development of a model trauma-informed approach plan in school and community settings;
• The School Safety and Security Committee,  Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, where she currently serves on the state-wide committee for the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. Article XIII-B (School Safety and Security) of the Public-School Code of 1949 created a committee which has been tasked with developing the criteria that school entities use in performing school safety and security assessments.

Advising

Dr. Wycoff does not currently carry a formal advising role in the CTC program, but in the past has carried active advising loads from 15-25 students per semester across graduate and undergraduate levels.

Counseling

Dr. Wycoff holds a Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) degree from the American Psychological Association approved Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University. The first PsyD program in the country, Kirby had the opportunity to train under the mentorship of Nancy-Boyd Franklin, PhD, Cary Cherniss, PhD and Charles Maher, PhD who influenced her work in counseling, family, community and systems psychology. Kirby earned her Master of Education (M.Ed.) in School Psychology from the NASP approved training program at Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Psychology from Lehigh University. She completed her pre-doctoral training at an APA-approved internship site focusing on counseling, clinical and school related practice for children and families exposed to trauma and adversity in Central Pennsylvania. She completed a two-year post-doctoral clinical fellowship at the same site, focusing on counseling, trauma informed assessment and interventions as well as creating trauma informed school systems and community organizations. She has over fifteen years of experience in the mental health field and is a leader in understanding the intersection of me