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A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gerald P. Koocher completed his B.A. degree in Psychology at Boston University (1968), and his MA (1970) and PhD (1972) in clinical psychology at the University of Missouri.  From 1971 through 2001 he served successively as an intern, post-doctoral fellow, and ultimately as Chief of Psychology at Boston's Children's Hospital and Judge Baker Children's Center. During this period he also served as a full time faculty member (Associate Professor) at Harvard Medical School. In June, 2001 Dr. Koocher became Professor of Psychology and Dean of the School of Health Sciences at Simmons College (Boston). In July, 2010 became Associate Provost at Simmons. He currently holds appointments as Lecturer in Psychology at Harvard Medical School and Senior Associate in Psychology at Children's Hospital Boston.

Dr. Koocher was elected a Fellow of twelve divisions of the American Psychological Association (APA) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He became the first person to earn five specialty diplomas from the American Boards of Professional Psychology (Clinical, Clinical Child /Adolescent, Family, Forensic, and Health Psychology).  He has been licensed as a psychologist in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and the District of Columbia and holds the Certificate of Professional Qualification from the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards..

Currently Editor of the journal Ethics & Behavior, Dr. Koocher previously served as Editor of the Journal of Pediatric Psychology and The Clinical Psychologist. He has published more than 200 articles and book chapters and authored or edited 14 books.

Areas of his expertise include:

• Adaptation to chronic and life-threatening illness in childhood (especially cancer, cystic fibrosis, and diabetes).

• Coping with bereavement and loss, psychological assessment.

• Professional and scientific ethics, and mental health malpractice.

Very active in professional affairs, Dr. Koocher served as President of the Massachusetts and New England Psychological Associations and of three APA divisions (Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Children, Youth, and Family Services). He served as President of the APA (2006).  He will serve as President of the Society of Pediatric Psychology in 2011. He will also serve as the American Psychological Association Council Representative from the Massachusetts Psychological Association 2010-2012.

Dr. Koocher lives in Brookline, Massachusetts where he has served more than two decades as an elected member of town government and for more than a decade as President of the Brookline Community Mental Health Center. His hobbies include photography and psittacine aviculture.

Download Dr. Koocher's complete curriculum vitae by clicking on his photo to the left.

Dr. Keith-Spiegel regularly taught professional ethics and ethical leadership classes in her 35 years as a university professor and as the Director of the Center for Teaching Integrity at Ball State University, where she is the Voran Honored Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Emerita.  She also taught at California State University, Northridge, where she was awarded the California State Trustee's Award for Outstanding Professor across all state university campuses and disciplines.  She is also a recipient of the Distinguished Professor Award from the American Psychological Foundation.  She was a visiting Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Visiting Professor and Senior Research Associate at Simmons College. 

Keith-Spiegel served as President of the Western Psychological Association and as President of the Division of Teaching Psychology of the American Psychological Association.

Joan E. Sieber, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Psychology (California State University, East Bay), Senior Research Associate at Simmons College, Senior Research Associate at the Center for Public Policy, University  of Houston, and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. She began her professional and research career with the goal of using applied experimental research on decision skills to develop tools for teaching decision-making under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity. In 1975, she turned to developing methodological solutions to ethical problems in human research. She had been discovering ways to teach elementary and middle school students how to determine when it is warranted to be uncertain, but she became discouraged that curriculum developers were disinterested in applying her discoveries. This time, however, her work immediately found practical applications. She has been involved in one aspect or another of researching and teaching ethical decision making ever since.

During the last 35 years, she has specialized in empirical research on questions of scientific ethics, culturally sensitive methods of research and intervention, data sharing methodology, and whistle-blowing. She served as Acting Director of the National Science Foundation program Societal Dimensions of Engineering, Science and Technology in 2001-02. She has served on six IRBs, having chaired one in academe and three in industry. She is a site visitor to IRBs seeking accreditation, sat on the Accreditation Council of the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP), and serves on various editorial boards and grant review panels. She is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the international peer-reviewed nonprofit educational journal, the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics (JERHRE), which is published by University of California Press, and can be found on MEDLINE and at http://caliber.ucpress.net/loi/jer .