Dr. Christopher Capuano and I spent a whirlwind weekend, flying to Israel Friday night and returning before dawn on Monday morning, to complete an agreement with Tel Aviv University that establishes the joint FDU/TAU Graduate Center for Professional Psychology. This joint venture was formalized at a signing ceremony on Sunday with Prof. Itamar Rabinovich, former Israeli ambassador to the United States under the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and current president of Tel Aviv University. Also in attendance was Dr. Meir Rosenne, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and one of Israel’s most distinguished jurists and scholars of international law.
 
I congratulate Dr. Capuano, director of the School of Psychology on the Metropolitan Campus, who spent over five years cultivating professional contacts in Israel and creating confidence there in our academic mission and our ability to deliver doctoral level courses in psychology. This partnership between FDU and Tel Aviv University is the result of his diligence and leadership.

Our two universities will now move jointly to define and staff the Graduate Center for Professional Psychology on the campus of Tel Aviv University. The center will offer Israel’s first Psy.D. program in clinical psychology and create a Division for Psychological Services, a community-based, outpatient clinic to serve primarily as the training (practicum/internship) site for students enrolled in the Psy.D. program.
 
The primary mission of the Psy.D. program is to provide doctoral level training to master’s level, practice-oriented clinicians in Israel. Practical experiences for specialty areas will be established in cooperation with psychiatric and mental health agencies in Israel and the U.S., including the Feinberg Child Study Center of Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel and Four Winds Hospital in Katonah, N.Y.

More news about the agreement will be provided in the February edition of Inside FDU on the Web.

Thank you,
Michael Adams