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Inaugural Ricardo Grunsten Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Community Given to Three Students From The Chicago School of Professional Psychology - Namesake is Resident of Burr Ridge

Three doctoral students from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology (TCSPP) campuses at Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington D.C. were recently selected to receive the first Ricardo Grunsten Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Community Service. They are: Audrey Milburn, M.A., Los Angeles Campus; Priscilla Cheng, LMFT, M.A., Chicago Campus; and Keri Lynn Doyle, Washington, D.C. Campus. Recipients each receive $5,000. The establishment of this annual scholarship was made possible by Trustees, faculty, staff and alumni of The Chicago School to honor Grunsten’s 22 years as a Trustee and 13 years as Chairman of the Board of Trustees. He retired from the TCSPP Board in May of 2012, and now serves as Trustee Emeritus for the institution. Grunsten is a resident of Burr Ridge (IL).

“There is no better way to recognize Ricardo’s years of service to The Chicago School than to establish this award for students who exemplify the mission, vision, and core values of our institution in their academic and professional endeavors,” stated Michele Nealon-Woods, Psy.D., National President of The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. “These three exemplary students represent the future of the psychology profession.”

Recipients of the Grunsten Award must have demonstrated service learning, volunteerism and community involvement, and must prepare a statement affirming their commitment to working with diverse populations:

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·        Los Angeles Campus Student Milburn is pursuing her Psy.D. degree in the Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) program with a desire to work with impoverished populations globally, providing training and teaching for local counselors, teachers, government officials, and communities to help heal families and individuals.

·        Chicago Campus Student Cheng is pursuing her Psy.D. degree in Clinical Psychology. She is deeply interested in social injustices in overlooked immigrant communities, locally and globally, and the psychological understanding of human suffering and the will to thrive despite unimaginable challenges.

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·        Washington, D.C. Student Keri-Lynn Doyle is a Clinical Psy.D. student. Through her studies she has learned to become more culturally competent, enhancing her work in psychiatric hospitals as she provides assessment and therapy to individuals coping with serious mental illness and comorbid cognitive disabilities, substance abuse and trauma.

One of the nation’s most successful Latino entrepreneurs, Ricardo “Richard” Grunsten is President of GSP Marketing, Inc. in Chicago, a full-service advertising agency founded in 1978 and committed to strategic solutions for a broad range of client marketing challenges. He emigrated from Argentina to the U.S. at the age of 13. After studying physiological psychology at Northwestern University, he worked on HEW/NASA sponsored research studies on brain function at the Neurosurgical Research Laboratory at the Northwestern University School of Medicine. Grunsten also studied art and design at the American Academy of Art, Chicago, and The School of The Art Institute, Chicago. His statistical training, psychological education, and innate artistic sense led to a career in marketing program development.

During Grunsten’s tenure as Trustee and then Chairman, The Chicago School grew from a small regional graduate school with a single campus and fewer than 100 students, to a nationally recognized institution of higher learning with campuses in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., and online, with over 4,500 students, nearly 300 faculty and staff, and more than 20 graduate degrees. 

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