Ronald C Comer

Ronald Comer, DSW, founded the Behavioral Health Counseling undergraduate major in the College of Nursing and Health Professions and served as its director from 1996 until 2016. During the eight years prior to 1996, he was a full-time faculty member in the University's Department of Psychiatry, Division of Continuing Mental Health Education. There he developed and taught a variety of behavioral health training courses and served as a consultant to community-based mental healthcare settings throughout Pennsylvania. Comer’s professional experience includes serving as a clinician and director of adult psychiatric outpatient, residential and partial hospitalization programs, as well as in children's partial hospitalization and family outpatient services. During the early 1980s, he served as a policy analyst for a Philadelphia-based advocacy organization where he worked promoting community-based services for chronically homeless persons who have disabling mental illnesses. During the 1970s, while still living in California, he helped organize and run inpatient psychotherapeutic and rehabilitation programs and was a clinician and supervisor of volunteer staff for the San Mateo County Suicide Prevention and Crisis Center.