Our Psychiatry Residency Program designates two of our five positions as integrated child track positions in which years four and five are spent in our child fellowship program which features training informed by the Vermont family-based approach. Core training takes place in academic adult general inpatient and outpatient settings with additional rotations in community mental health, Veterans Administration settings, and global mental health. Residents take pride in their role of teacher for medical students, and the program provides specialized didactics, faculty development workshops, and Teaching Academy retreats to enhance their skills as educators. Our location in Vermont gives residents exposure to rural practice, practicing in under resourced areas, and to academic medicine that is strongly community focused. The cultural background of our patients is primarily white/non-Hispanic based on the demographics of our rural New England state; however, Vermont offers a wide range of socioeconomic diversity. Burlington has been a site for refugee resettlement for over twenty years and also has a large and growing LGBTQ+ community.
Message from the Director
Welcome and thank you for your interest in our wonderful Vermont program! After growing up in a small rural town in Central New York, and attending college and medical school in New York, I fell in love with the Burlington area when I first interviewed for residency in the fall of 2004. I had the privilege of completing my adult and child psychiatry training here at UVM and in 2011 took a faculty position within the department. My wife (also a psychiatrist), my twin children, and two dogs love spending time on the shores of Lake Champlain and we all look forward to welcoming you into UVM’s psychiatry family.
Clinically, my work centers on providing team-based autism diagnostic evaluations, supporting gender-diverse youth, and seeing patients of all ages in the outpatient setting. For the past handful of years, I was the director of Medical Student Education in our department, overseeing the six-week psychiatry clerkship and facilitating other psychiatry-related teaching across the College of Medicine curriculum. In 2021, I was offered the position of Associate Training Director and in July 2022, officially took on the role of Program Director. It’s an exciting endeavor to be in a leadership position in a program that was so influential for my professional and personal development. My training at UVM was undeniably formative in fostering my clinical and academic interests while allowing me to build collaborative relationships within the Medical Center, the Larner College of Medicine, the broader University, and throughout Vermont.
Academically, I also love teaching and am energized by channeling my creativity and passion to create undergraduate courses focusing on the neuroscience of relationships and psychiatry’s association with pop culture. I’ve also developed a medical student elective centered on Graphic Medicine and am eager to find different ways to incorporate the humanities in medical education.
I have such pride in our program and our department, and I am eager to help instill this pride in our trainees in a manner that appreciates shifting perspectives around mental health, illness, and wellness - perspectives that are embedded in larger cultural and systemic contexts and attend to the psychological, social, and spiritual complexities that define our humanity.
Message from the Program Administrator
We are excited about our residency program and the people in it! I grew up in New Jersey and left many years ago to explore and work. I have lived in Quebec, British Columbia, and have been in Vermont for many years. I have been in this role for 22 years while continuing college part time. Many of our faculty stay including our current PD and Chair who were once one of my residents! I thoroughly love our program, our residents, and faculty who continue to be supportive and genuine. I invest in our program and residents by meeting applicants individually in order to get to know them and stay connected. I met my husband in Vermont, and we have a teen in high school, another starting college in the Fall, and a silly dog. I enjoy walking, hiking trails, music, and enjoying our community. I look forward to meeting with applicants and allowing you to get a clearer picture of what it would be like to work, play and live here in Vermont.
