Jodi (Fuchs) Falk, Ph.D.

Humanitarian Concerns

Jodi was recognized for her significant concern for improving the quality of human life.  When Falk entered CLU, she had a vague sense that her career lay somewhere near the field of psychology.  She decided on a career path after completing an independent study at Rancho Los Amigos’ Occupational Therapy Department during her freshman year interim.  There she discovered what she “hadn’t expected,” that most of the young people with whom she worked in the spinal injury and head trauma ward were teenagers coming from dysfunctional homes and dysfunctional lives that, in many cases, had led to the severe gunshot injuries.

The sadness, loneliness and hopelessness that she observed there left a permanent impact on the 18-year-old and, since that time, the path of Falk’s life has led her directly into the maelstrom which constitutes the contemporary issues of child abuse, family violence and dysfunction.  After earning her bachelor’s and master’s in liberal arts and education at CLU, Falk completed her Ph.D. in counseling and educational psychology at Loyola University of Chicago in 1981.  She now directs the Family Violence Research Program at Northern Illinois University and has received a variety of awards, including a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice for Child Abuse and Exploitation Investigative Techniques Training Program.

Falk’s future plans include the effort to “develop research based legislative policy.”  Given this goal, she acknowledges that the legislative “wheels of progress move very slowly,” and she stresses the need for greater education -- of teachers, of legislators and of the general public.    

As to her own education Falk emphatically asserts, “CLU provided me with wings to achieve my professional goals.  I was encouraged by all the professors…they nurtured me and let me find myself.”  Those whose lives have been touched by Falk’s efforts are grateful indeed that she “found herself” and that she found them.