Faculty & Staff
Faculty
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Rick Weinberg, PhD, ABPPAssociate ProfessorPhone: (813) 974-1916 Fax: (813) 974-8080 Office: MHC 1607 |
Everyone at some point in their lives experiences stress. Although stress can be beneficial in motivating people to adapt to change and develop new skills, too often stress is found in threatening and violent situations that result in trauma, serious injury, or death. Dr. Rick Weinberg, a licensed psychologist, has provided crisis consultation to organizations in which employees have either been killed, witnessed a traumatic event, or taken their own lives; and to public and private schools and school districts on how to organize and mobilize a crisis response team. Dr. Weinberg believes that the most powerful source of healing following trauma comes from a sense of safety, trust, and love from others; and his scholarly and clinical work over 40 years at USF has been based on helping others build these types of relationships—in communities, classrooms, work places, families, and among intimate partners.
An avid advocate for social responsibility and Positive Psychology, Dr. Weinberg has also worked extensively with high school students to develop appreciation and respect for people of all cultures, religions, and sexual orientation, and how to use peaceful means to resolve conflict.
Dr. Weinberg was also the host and co-producer of ‘Issues in Mental Health’, a 30-minute television show broadcast on WUSF television, which addressed current popular and relevant mental health topics.
Dr. Weinberg earned a Ph.D. in Clinical-Community Psychology from USF and completed a Clinical Fellowship at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital in 1980-1981. He was appointed Assistant Professor in 1983, Associate Professor in 1990, and has proudly spent his entire 40+ year career at USF. From 1984 to 2010, Dr. Weinberg was the director of the Predoctoral Psychology Internship Program in Public Sector Psychology, a fully accredited American Psychological Association program, and a member of the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC). Best defined as a training program in public sector service delivery, the program was unique among psychology internships in that 20% of the interns’ time was devoted to training in mental health policy research and empirically-based advocacy, and 80% of their time to providing clinical psychology services in a wide variety of traditional and non-traditional service delivery settings in the Tampa Bay community.
Dr. Weinberg has also been the recipient of a number of grants, including a grant from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration to provide collaborative, culturally competent mental health treatment to racially diverse children, as well as community support grants to enhance social skills competencies and peer facilitator training.
A Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, Dr. Weinberg teaches Family Therapy, Couples Therapy, Group Therapy, Medical Family Therapy, and Spirituality & Counseling in the Department of Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling’s Marriage and Family Therapy Certificate program, and ‘Behavioral Health and the Family’ in the College’s Behavioral Healthcare bachelor’s degree program. For four summers he also taught an undergraduate course, ‘Intimate Relationships’ for the USF World Summer Semester Abroad program in Florence Italy.
Dr. Weinberg has been honored for his community involvement by the Tampa/Hillsborough County Human Rights Council with the Human Rights Award (cited for civil rights advocacy, involvement in local human rights organizations, and community development in the Tampa Bay area), and the Florida Psychological Association’s Public Interest award. He was named RMHC’s Professor of the Year in 2011, Outstanding USF Undergraduate Professor in 2014-15 and again in 2022-2023.