1. INTERCAMHS SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2012
Caroline Claus-Ehlers, Ph.D., Director & U.S. Liaison
Caroline S. Clauss-Ehlers is an associate professor of counseling
psychology and school counseling at Rutgers University. Having grown
up in the United States and Venezuela, her research largely focuses on
understanding resilience within a cross-cultural context. As a licensed
psychologist, she advocates for the provision of culturally and
linguistically responsive mental health services for children and their
families.
Dr. Clauss-Ehlers is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Multicultural Counseling and
Development and the author or editor of such books as the Encyclopedia of Cross-
Cultural School Psychology and Diversity Training for Classroom Teaching: A Manual
for Students and Educators. She is also a print and broadcast journalist who has
worked with Spanish and English media outlets. She received a Rosalynn Carter
Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism, and serves on the Advisory Board of the
Fellowship program.
During her 2012 sabbatical, Dr. Clauss-Ehlers has a dual appointment as Visiting
Special Assistant to the President of Mount Holyoke College and Special Assistant to
the Executive Director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. She is in her second term
as president of the New York State Psychological Association’s Division of Culture,
Race, and Ethnicity, and is on the advisory boards of the Center for School Mental
Health, the REACH Institute, and the International Alliance for Child and Adolescent
Mental Health in Schools Society. She is Director of the Mental Health Advisory Board
at the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and on the board of trustees of Columbia
Greenhouse Nursery School.
Dr. Clauss-Ehlers received her AB in government from Oberlin College and her Ph.D. in
counseling psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University. She lives with her
husband Julian and their two daughters, Isabel (Izzy) and Sabrina (Beanie) in New York
City.
Michael Murray, BA, MSc, DMA, Chartered Fellow FCIPD. Director, Liaison to Clifford
Beers Foundation
Dr. Murray’s special area of interest has been in management and health
promotion, served on international and national committees, provided
consultancy services in a number of countries and was a university
lecturer in the UK.
Dr. Murray is the co-founder and Chief Executive of the Clifford Beers
Foundation. He has over 20 years experience of senior management in
the British National Health Service where he managed a number of
general hospitals and latterly mental health hospital and community facilities, and acted
as a member of the Experts Committee of the European Commission.
1
2. INTERCAMHS SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2012
He is the editor of the International Journal of Mental Health Promotion and Managing
Editor of the Advances in School Mental Health Promotion. Throughout his career
Michael has been recognised for his work and was awarded the Graham Day Award for
Outstanding Management in Mental Health Services and the Economist Prize at the
London Business School for his work on designing mental health services. He has
published on both general management and mental health and wellbeing issues and
presented at international and world conferences.
In 2010 Michael was responsible for the commissioning of the Asia Pacific Centre for
Mental Health Promotion and Wellbeing.
Peter Paulus, Ph. D., Director and European Liaison
From 2002 to 2008, Peter Paulus was the head of research of the initiative
“Anschub.de – Allianz für nachhaltige Schulgesundheit und
Bildung” (“Alliance for sustainable school health and education in
Germany“) of the Bertelsmann-Foundation. Since 2009, he has been the
head of the scientific advisory council of the association “Anschub.de”. He
has also been the head of the nationwide school program “MindMatters –
mit psychischer Gesundheit gute Schule machen”. (“MindMatters – to
make good school through mental health”) since 2002.
Dr. Paulus is Co-Head of research of the nationwide school program “Gemeinsam
gesunde Schule entwickeln” (“To develop healthy schools together”) and also a member
of the steering committee of the Lower Saxony program “die Initiative – Gesundheit –
Bildung –Entwicklung” (“The initiative – Health – Education – Development”) since
2007. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Partnership for Children
(London/Kingston) since 2006. He has been a Board Member of
“Intercamhs” (“International Alliance of Children and Adolescent Mental health and
Schools”) since 2005.
The foci of Dr. Paulus’ work and research include Educational Psychology, Family
Psychology, Health Psychology, Education, Counseling and Health Promotion. His
overarching interest is in the research and promotion of good education in different
educational, socio-pedagogical and social work areas, especially family, kindergarden,
school, college, university and community settings focussed on the preservation and
promotion of health (e.g. “Good healthy school”).
2
3. INTERCAMHS SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2012
A/Professor Louise Rowling, Ph.D., Director and Australia Liaison
(Inaugural President)
Louise Rowling has been a teacher, school psychologist, academic and
consultant. She has established over a 35 year period a National and
International reputation for work on health promotion particularly school
health. Her areas of expertise include drug and alcohol education, health
promoting schools, mental health and wellbeing, and loss and grief. She has worked for
the World Health Organisation on various school health areas and contributed to the
development of materials for the WHO Global School Health Initiative and guidelines for
health promoting schools in WHO South Western Pacific region. She has also co-
ordinated a child mental health promotion and prevention capacity mapping project in
this Region.
Louise was the inaugural President of Intercamhs for five years. In this role she led a
collaboration with the International Confederation of Principals mapping globally for the
first time the perspectives of principals about their needs in the area of school mental
health. In Australia she was co-director of the research and development phase of
MindMatters, a mental health promotion project that has been disseminated nationally
for over a decade. In the dissemination phase of MindMatters she chaired the
Evaluation Committee that had oversight of 5 commissioned evaluation projects on
mental health and wellbeing in schools. Louise is frequently invited as a keynote
speaker at state, national and international conferences. She has published widely and
conducted research in a number of health areas. Louise is an editor of the publication
Mental Health Promotion and Young People: Concepts and Practice. Louise’s PhD
research in schools in the loss and grief field articulated for the first time, the
disenfranchised grief of teachers. A subsequent book Grief in school communities
described a new orientation to loss and grief in schools, a perspective taken up in other
parts of the world.
Louise is currently a Senior Editor for the World School Health Encyclopedia theme on
Implementation, Sustainability and Capacity Building as well as co-editing a book that
explores quality implementation for health promoting schools.
Kathy Short, Ph.D., Director and Canada Liaiaon
Dr. Short’s career has focused in two broad areas: (1) the delivery of
school mental health promotion and prevention services, and (2) the
development of school district capacity for research use and the high-
quality implementation of evidence-based practice across curriculum
domains. Most recently, these areas have merged as she has the
opportunity to explore vehicles for bridging research and practice in
school mental health at the local, provincial and national level.
3
4. INTERCAMHS SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2012
Positioned within a school district setting, she has had the fortunate latitude to reach
into the research literature, select interesting strategies for enhancing school district
capacity for effective mental health implementation, and evaluate the impact of these
innovations “on the ground” through her work in the Knowledge Mobilization Lab at
Hamilton Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) in Ontario, Canada. This role has
offered a unique think-tank environment through which to explore deeply the relational
and contextual influences on implementation and district scale up. The HWDSB District
Mental Health Strategy has been introduced with attention to empirical work in the area
of organizational readiness and implementation science, and has allowed for
consideration of the role of infrastructure, differentiated capacity-building, and tiered
intervention supports.
More broadly, she has worked with the national School-Based Mental Health and
Substance Abuse Consortium, funded by the Mental Health Commission of Canada,
which has provided opportunity to examine strategies for mobilizing knowledge for
educators across provinces with a team of researchers, educators and knowledge
brokers. As lead of the Knowledge Translation and Exchange Team, she has worked
with others to develop a suite of early engagement tools and strategies that work to
ready the field for new knowledge currently being collated at a national level (via a scan
of best practices in districts, survey of the practice landscape and systematic review of
the literature). This team has created an interactive web space for national dialogue
that will lead into a live/virtual symposium in spring 2012 where all of the Canadian
SBMHSA findings will be released.
Currently, much of her work is focused at the provincial level in Ontario. In 2010, as
major collaborator on the policy-ready paper, Taking Mental Health to School, provided
a synthesis of the research and practice landscape in school mental health in Ontario.
The practice scan embedded in this paper, which was based on the International Survey
of Principals Concerning Emotional and Mental Health and Well-Being
(www.intercamhs.net) , has stimulated considerable interest amongst education
professionals, resulting in a number of opportunities to join with school districts, policy
officials, and stakeholder organizations in strategic planning about next steps.
As well, she has recently been very active in the recent development of the US/Canada
Alliance for School Mental Health,
Cheryl Vince Whitman, M.A., Director and Past President
Cheryl Vince Whitman is a senior vice president at the American
Institutes for Research and directs the new program Human and
Social Development Program (HSD). HSD conducts and applies
research to promote overall well-being, reduce disparities and
improve outcomes for children, youth and families. This work takes
place with the education, juvenile justice, child welfare, and mental
health systems. Several HSD projects work with mental health and
4
5. INTERCAMHS SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2012
community=based agencies delivering training and technical assistance or evaluating
initiatives, such as Wraparound services to poor school districts. Prior to joining AIR,
Cheryl led mental health initiative at Education Development Center, Inc. She was the
Principal Investigator of the national Safe Schools/Healthy Students Training and
Technical Assistance Center, working with hundreds of school districts across the United
States in their efforts to being together education, mental health and law enforcement
agencies to implement evidence-based programs to promote positive mental health. As
the Director of the WHO Collaborating Center at WHO, she authored several
publications on ways to integrate comprehensive mental health programs into schools.
As former president of INTERCAMHS, she worked with colleagues to offer a variety of
internal workshops on school-based mental health and to integrate a focus on schools
into international conferences.
Mark Weist, Ph. D., Director, U.S. Liaison and Journal of Advances in School
Mental Health Liaison
Mark D. Weist received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Virginia
Tech in 1991 and is currently a Professor in the Department of
Psychology at the University of South Carolina. He was on the faculty
of the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSM) for 19 years
where he helped to found and direct the Center for School Mental
Health (http://csmh.umaryland.edu), one of two national centers
providing leadership to the advancement of school mental health
(SMH) policies and programs in the United States. He has led a
number of federally funded research grants, has advised national
research and policy oriented committees, has testified before Congress, and presented
to the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. He helped to found the
International Alliance for Child and Adolescent Mental Health in Schools
(INTERCAMHS). Dr Weist has edited four books and has published and presented
widely in the SMH field and in the areas of trauma, violence and youth, evidence-based
practice, and cognitive behavioral therapy. With colleagues from the Clifford Beers
Foundation and the UMSM, he has started the new journal - Advances in School Mental
Health Promotion (see www.schoolmentalhealth.co.uk).
Wells, Gloria B.A., B.Ed., M.A. (Human Services in Education). President
Gloria has had an extensive career as an educator and senior
administrator in the Education and Human Services/Health
sectors in Alberta, Canada. She served for fifteen years until
2010 as the Director of Collaborative Initiatives in Rocky View
School Division in Alberta, Canada, where she led the design,
development, implementation and management of a wide range
of programs and services aimed at reducing nonacademic
5
6. INTERCAMHS SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2012
barriers to learning for students in the K-12 system. These efforts included, but were not
limited to, school based health and mental health initiatives across the service provision
continuum, and were often focussed on initiating and managing system change to
facilitate cross-sectoral collaboration within the Education, Health and Human Services
sectors regionally and provincially. Gloria has also served in the Human Service sector
for ten years as a Supervisor in the Youth/Family and Community Education Services
divisions of the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission, where she obtained her
Addictions Counsellor designation and expertise in community based mental health
promotion. During both of these roles, along with initiating and implementing direct
service programs for youth, their families, allied professionals in schools, service
organizations and the community at large, she has worked extensively in the initiation
and supervision of work in the area of collaborative service delivery design and
implementation with other governmental departments, community organizations and
N.G.O. service providers.
She has been the Canadian representative to the Board of the International Alliance for
Child and Adolescent Mental Health in Schools,(INTERCAMHS), since 2001, and is the
current President of the newly formed Society. She was instrumental in the recent
establishment of the Canada/US School Mental Health Alliance. As well, she is one of
two former inaugural co-chairs of the Canadian Community of Practice in School Mental
Health under the auspices of the Canadian Association for School Health, and she is a
retired member of the College of Alberta School Superintendents, for whom she served
as the provincial delegate to a new K-12 Alberta Health Curriculum development
committee. She consults nationally in Canada and internationally on her interests in
school health, school mental health promotion, and educational leadership development
to support cross-sectoral collaboration through her consulting firm, Wellsprings
Education and Human Service Consulting.
Don Zoellner, M.Ed., Doctoral Candidate. Secretary-Treasurer and Australia
Liaison
Mr Don Zoellner has worked in the school, vocational and higher
education sectors in the Northern Territory since 1973. Mr Zoellner has
held appointments in both Alice Springs and Darwin including acting
principal at Darwin High School, principal Alice Springs High School and
Executive Director of the former Centralian College in Alice Springs. He
has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Enterprise and
Career Education Foundation and Chairperson of the Australian
Principals’ Associations Professional Development Council.
Mr Zoellner is currently a Director on the Board of Group Training Northern Territory and
a former member of the Board of the National Advisory Council in Suicide Prevention.
He was also the Chairperson of the National Reference Group for the secondary
schools mental health resource Mind Matters.
6
7. INTERCAMHS SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2012
Mr Zoellner is a Fellow of the Australian College of Education and member of the
Australian Council of Educational Leaders. His formal qualifications include a Bachelor
of Science in Education, Masters Degree in Educational Administration and a Graduate
Diploma in Senior Executive Public Sector Management. He is also a graduate of the
Australian Institute of Company Directors Course.
Prior to retirement in early 2010, Mr Zoellner provided senior leadership at Charles
Darwin University for training in the VET field for some 14 000 students spread over
nearly one-sixth of Australia. The delivery was achieved through use of technology,
mobile units and fixed assets including a cattle station. About 35% of the students
identify as being Australian Indigenous persons.
As a University Fellow and full time Doctoral student, Mr Zoellner has maintained his
links with CDU and is based in Alice Springs studying how governments go about
implementing policy.
7