Dr. Kenneth Schmidt Recipient of the 2015 CECP Outstanding Alumni Award
Dec. 22, 2015
Dr. Kenneth Schmidt (MA ‘03, counseling psychology) is currently in his 19th year serving as the pastor of St. Thomas More Catholic Student Parish in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Beyond his full time role serving as pastor, Schmidt has demonstrated himself to be a true scholar with nearly 40 publications. Several of Schmidt’s publications deal with mental health and social justice issues, including two new books in press for 2015, one dealing with the connection between forgiveness and mental health and the other with trauma recovery.
Since graduating from WMU, Schmidt along with counseling psychology alumna Sharon Froom, co-developed a group counseling program for adult survivors of childhood trauma. Schmidt initially became aware of the need for trauma intervention when completing his master’s internship at the nationally renowned Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital in Dallas, Texas.
During his internship at Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital, Schmidt met psychiatrist Dr. Collin Ross, who introduced him to hospital based trauma work within the context of the individual counseling and psychotherapy. With the support and encouragement of Ross, Schmidt and Froom adapted and manualized the Trauma Model into a comprehensive group psycho-educational treatment strategy as an alternative to expensive individual therapy thus making his model more accessible, affordable, clinically effective and teachable.
Since 2003 this group intervention model has been shared around the world offering training in trauma recovery to hundreds of mental health providers and lay helpers in international sites such as Kenya, Rwanda and Ireland.
Once this program became nationally recognized, Schmidt and Froom formed a not-for-profit organization called Trauma Recovery Associates (TRA) which has extended their work into many underserved groups and communities. For example TRA has received several grants to offer the trauma recovery program to clients who are bilingual as well as those who have recently been released from the Kalamazoo County jail, as well as a program for women who have been sold into slavery.
Over the past seven years, Schmidt has traveled to Rwanda for extended stays, up to two weeks at a time, often staying in mountainous rural areas with a minimum of amenities.
In a country such as Rwanda, where 100 percent of the population has been traumatized by genocide, it is Schmidt’s mission to help begin the healing process by hosting a series of workshops, usually focusing on childhood trauma, but adapting their work to touch the adults who had been personally effected by genocide.
Schmidt was the 2015 recipient of the Department of Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology Outstanding Alumni Award.