Keynote Speaker: Sharon Lamb
Sharon Lamb, EdD PhD, is Professor of Counseling Psychology in the Department of Counseling and School Psychology at UMass Boston where she has also served as Chair of the department and is currently Program Director of the Mental Health Counseling program. Her work spans research on sexual development, gender, sexual abuse and victimization, moral education, and sex education. She has also developed two curricula, the SECS-C, the Sexual Ethics for a Caring Society Curriculum, in its 3rd rendition, and HABIT (Humane Acts Bystander Intervention Training), now being evaluated on college campuses to prevent sexual assault.
Sharon has written, edited, and co-authored 10 books and won two awards: the Books for a Better Life Award, for Packaging Girlhood, and the Society for Sex Therapy and Research’s book award for Sex,Therapy, and Kids. Dr. Lamb was awarded a Spencer Foundation Grant for The New Civics initiative and has published several articles on the conversations of high schoolers in her sexual ethics course. She is a co-author of the American Psychological Association’sTask Force Report on the Sexualization of Girls and speaks to journalists, parents, educators, and girls and boys about sexualization and the media and marketers’ packaging of girlhood and boyhood.
In 2009 she published with Lyn Mikel Brown and Mark Tappan the sequel to Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers’ Schemes, called Packaging Boyhood: Saving Our Sons from Superheroes, Slackers, and Other Media Stereotypes. Her book, Sex Ed for Caring Schools: Creating an Ethics-Based Curriculum, published by Teachers College Press, is an overview of the SECS-C curriculum.
An experienced clinician, she is Board Certified in Counseling Psychology and she sees children, adolescents, adults, and couples at her therapy office in Shelburne, Vermont. She also trains doctoral and masters’ students at UMass Boston in advanced psychotherapy and personality assessment. Sharon does forensic evaluations in the state of Vermont as an expert in the best interests of the child, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and attachment.