Sheila Ribordy’s 30-Year Career is Punctuated by Commitment and Excellence

DePaul University’s 23rd Annual Cortelyou Lowery Award for Excellence was recently bestowed upon Sheila Ribordy, director of DePaul’s Mental Health Center (DMHC) and a psychology professor who has taught in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LA&S) for 30 years.

In receiving the award from Charles Suchar, acting dean of LA&S, Ribordy was cited for her exceptional professional contributions in teaching and curriculum development, in mentoring and research and in program development and leadership. The Cortelyou-Lowery Award also includes the presentation of a distinguished lecture. Ribordy delivered her talk on “Resilience” before an audience of more than 200 of her peers.

As a teacher of courses, such as family therapy, child development and treatment methods with children, Ribordy distinguished herself early by being an excellent classroom instructor who consistently received outstanding student course ratings. Among her early innovations is the establishment of a video library for clinical psychology courses that is continually updated. A pioneer in curriculum development, she co-created an effective study skills course that broadened students’ academic competencies and increased retention among under-prepared students. While director of the university’s Clinical Psychology Training Program, Ribordy developed a culturally competent training model in child-clinical psychology that was used as a national model for how doctoral training programs should address diversity issues.

A recognized and respected leader in child clinical psychology, Ribordy’s scholarship addresses new treatment approaches, child abuse and training in clinical psychology. She created behavioral treatment for insomnia, has developed and assessed new strategies to help children overcome test anxiety, and has more than 25 years of research and intervention experience in the area of child abuse. She has chaired approximately 100 master’s theses and doctoral dissertation committees during her 30 years at DePaul. Her textbook, written with J. M. Reisman, is widely used in courses on child psychotherapy, and she has contributed more than 30 chapters and articles to a number of publications.

In 1996, Ribordy took the helm of the university’s ailing community mental health center, which works with children and families from economically disadvantaged communities on the Near North Side of Chicago. Under her direction, the center was able to gain national accreditation and triple its programming and external funding.

As a clinical supervisor, Ribordy individually has trained at least 100 doctoral students on how to provide culturally competent psychological services to children and families of color from low-income communities. A visiting team from the American Psychological Association (APA) determined recently that the training doctoral students receive at the center’s clinic was the best the team had ever seen in a university-based clinical program training center. The center went on to garner the prestigious Harry McNeill Award for Innovation in Community Mental Health at this year’s APA convention.

“No one has contributed more to the clinical training and development of our doctoral students in psychology than Sheila Ribordy,” said Christopher Keys, chair of the psychology department, in nominating Ribordy for the Cortelyou-Lowery Award. “As a result of her efforts, hundreds of children and families from low-income neighborhoods have access to high quality mental health services.”

Ribordy, originally from Kansas, holds master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kan. She has received numerous citations for her work, including two National Institute of Mental Health fellowships.

The award is named for the late Rev. William T. Cortelyou, C.M., a former dean of the College of LA&S graduate school, and the late Martin J. Lowery, a former chair of DePaul’s history department and dean of the now-defunct DePaul College.

Editor’s Note: J-PEG photos of Sheila Ribordy are available upon request.