Meet the LCB faculty

LCB faculty are highly qualified and have extensive experience in helping adult students design their own degrees. This is a sampling of our faculty. Not all are present at each residency.

Mary Bettley MSW LICSW

My current labels for my work are mentor, activist, and social worker, although my life work certainly spans many disciplines. I truly love what I do as I coach others in healing, health care, education and advocacy. Since I believe that education requires passion, I encourage students to discover their passions and voice and to follow both in their studies. I refer to myself as an "educator" who draws knowledge and wisdom out of students rather than a "teacher" who simply imparts information to others. The more I read and experience about transformational education and adult development, the more I am grateful to be at Lesley! Trained as a family therapist and educator, I often work with students in the general areas of psychology, human development, education and writing. I am particularly interested in more specific topics of memoir and non-fiction writing, learning styles and mentoring, the development of spirituality, gay/lesbian issues, and all aspects of the helping relationship in psychology. I have also worked with management students studying systems theory and family businesses. I teach in several programs at Lesley: both LCB, human services/human development in the Adult Learning Division and the thesis course for the Masters program in Conflict Resolution and Peaceable Schools in the School of Education.

My 9-5 job right now is as the Clinical Director for a residential program for young men with significant attachment challenges, trauma reactivity, and problematic behaviors. This role consistently feeds my dual needs to learn something new and to have time to be a Mom. I also am a national trainer/consultant to human service programs and clinical folks. I'm very interested in research and have conducted research on effectiveness of brain-based interventions with young men with attachment challenges, gender bias in the diagnosis of codependency, and effective educational modifications. Prior to my MSW from Boston College, I spent 10 years as a high school educator in English and religious studies and spent much time coaching a speech/debate team that traveled around the country. My academic background also includes an undergraduate degree in psychology pre-medical (chemistry emphasis) and religious studies/spirituality.

On a more personal note, I am the older of two children born to two Canadian citizens who relocated to Cape Cod a year before my birth. After a ten-year connection with a Catholic women's community (yes, I was a nun!), I now live in Plymouth with my partner, Ellen, my daughters, Stephanie and Savanna, and numerous pets. I enjoy all aspects of music and play several instruments. My latest new passion is continuing to learn the "rules" of interior design in different cultures as well as the skills of home repair.

Charles Clayman EdD

Charlie Clayman has been associated with Lesley University since 1964, as an administrator in charge of the undergraduate student teaching program, an Associate Professor of Education teaching courses in the educational foundation disciplines of anthropology, psychology, sociology, history and philosophy; an Adjunct Professor in the school of Management and the Graduate Schools of Arts and Science.

Among his contributions to the development of the university curriculum, he helped develop the undergraduate Core program in Education, the undergraduate Management Studies program, and student teaching centers in urban and suburban schools.

Since 1990 he has represented the University's national and regional outreach teacher education masters programs throughout the United States. His specialty is facilitating courses for teachers in curriculum theory and the capstone course, Educator Inquiry: Seminar and Thesis for Creative Arts in Learning Program and the Literacy program.

His experience outside of academic circles includes a thirty-plus years of management and organizational consulting with a broad spectrum of organizations, large and small, public and private. Clients have included corporations, government agencies, and school systems. He has conducted more than two hundred training programs for senior executives, mid-level managers and supervisors. He is an expert in designing learning programs that emphasize interactive "hands-on" learning and applications of knowledge to participant's workplace environments. Also, he has supervised graduate student internships in the field of training and development for the Lesley University School of Management. Currently he is a consultant and adjunct faculty member at Endicott College where he teaches courses in the MBA and Organizational Management programs.

Charlie has been associated with the LCB program since 1989. His areas of expertise are in leadership and management studies, organizational behavior and change, small group dynamics, work team development, and curriculum design. He is committed to assisting adults in taking charge of their education and redirecting their careers and lives.

He has pursued a parallel career as a jazz musician. He is an accomplished jazz pianist who has studied at the Berklee College of Music, the New England Conservatory of Music, and with private teachers. His musical credits include performance as a pianist with jazz ensembles, large orchestras, and as a soloist. Jazz and teaching have something in common; both are performing arts and require improvisation and invention on themes. In the words of jazz pianist, the late John Lewis, "you're not confined. If you have enough imagination, you don't have to repeat." And as Charlie sees it, the LCB program lends itself to disciplined improvisation in the creation of each student's educational program.

Patricia Cobb MEd

Patsea has taught at Lesley since 1982 in the Learning Community Bachelor's, Creative Arts in Learning, and the Independent Master's programs. She was an Associate Professor at the Art Institute of Boston for 12 years. As an artist and an educator, Patsea has facilitated studies (including theses) in many forms of art from fabric wall hangings to stone alignments, as well as classic painting, sculpture or drawing studies, collage, illustration and photo essays. She also coaches studies in art history, art therapy, art education and elementary and preschool education, including development appropriate to these studies. A bit further a field, Patsea has coached studies in Nature based spiritual tradition, mythology, holistic healing, childbirth, and menopause. She loves to listen and brainstorm with students in order to find the study that is close to the bone for them - close to your joy or to your tears. The study that is dear to you is the one you will be motivated to work on.

David C Morimoto PhD

I am an ecologist who has studied things like bird community structure, behavior, and the effects of forest fragmentation on breeding birds. I have traveled extensively to Central and South America, and have led several trips to the Amazon. In recent years I have been working on small projects in association with colleagues in southeastern Brazil, and in the last year I traveled to Montserrat and saw the volcano erupt and to the Pantanal in Brazil. I've also been to places like Australia, South Africa, the Canary Islands, Cuba, and more. I'd prefer to read forests and fields than books.

I am deeply interested in the complexity of nature, and I hope to write someday about the duality of the diversity and unity of living systems, focusing on evolution, ecology, and new advances in complexity theory like fractal geometry, self-organized criticality and small world network topology. My first course at Lesley was for adult students and built on these interests (Random Walk in a Small World). My view of nature is inclusive of humans and everything humans do at individual, societal, and species levels.

I believe that 'observation is the interface between perception and understanding' (Ahl and Allen) and that 'life can be understood only backwards but lived only forwards' (Kierkegaard). I have taught many different courses, from Anatomy and Physiology, Microbiology, and Developmental Biology, to Ecology, Environmental Field Research, and Tropical Ecology. I believe that teaching and learning are two sides of the same coin, and that context-based, inquiry-driven, multi-level observation is most effective.

I'm also a poet of sorts and have had two poems published.

Robin Roth PhD

I've been at Lesley University for eighteen years in many different places and roles. All have to do with my fundamental interest in creating learning environments that provide students with active learning experiences that further develop their ability to construct their own learning path. I endeavor to provide students with enhanced abilities to critically analyze our social world ultimately to help create positive social change and social improvement. My doctorate is in sociology and my specific areas of specialization in teaching and research are social inequality including inequality with respect to social class, race and ethnicity, gender; family; social policy including social welfare; social problems; and research methods.

Marilyn Solvay PhD

On most days, art is as important to me as food and I fully believe that art is an essential ingredient in our daily lives! Without the awareness of the power and impact of art, we never fully develop our creative capabilities which are key tools to a fulfilling life. I personally dabble in black and white photography, papermaking, journaling and design projects. I find all areas of art very intriguing including: exploring the artistic process; the relationship between the artist and audience; women, art and society; social and political elements of art; the power of images over words; identifying the relationship between arts and crafts; artistic expression and creativity; the term artist as label; art and money in the marketplace; art evoking emotions; ways of looking and seeing; and the role of art today in American society.

I've been actively engaged in the art field for over three decades as a museum curator and director, exhibit developer, art program coordinator, and liaison with art communities. I've worked with art groups including Maine Women in the Arts at Haystack, the Maine Arts Commission, and the Guild of Maine Craftsmen. I have worked for many area art museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Worcester Art Museum, the Farnsworth Art Museum & Library and the Dyer Library & Museum Association. I've been a guest lecturer at the Maine College of Art, taught Introduction to Arts Management at AIB, and several months ago had a small exhibition in Portsmouth, NH of my own work depicting four of my spiritual journeys. I have worked with nationally known artists Andrew and Jamie Wyeth, Bernice Abbott, Louise Nevelson along with emerging student artists who shine just as brightly with their desire to explore themselves as they become immersed in the process of creating art.

Currently I am an adjunct faculty member at Lesley University teaching courses primarily in the American Studies program of the Adult Learning Division. I was a learner at the University of Arizona in art history, history, and anthropology (B.A. and M.A.), George Washington University in museum education (M.A.T.) and earned my doctorate from Lesley in 1999. I still work in the Boston museum community and teach at other area colleges while residing in southern Maine in a 1690 farmhouse filled with art and artifacts!

Barbara Vacarr PhD, Program Coordinator

I am deeply interested in the ways that people transform lives of silence into lives of committed action. In my work as a psychologist, an educator, an interviewer for Steven Spielberg's Visual History of the Shoah Project, and currently for the Cambodian Youth and Missing History Project, I have witnessed the profound effect of speaking our life stories. I feel very fortunate that my work allows me the privilege of witnessing the ways that telling our stories, to a listening audience, transforms lives of isolation and silence into lives of connection and committed action.

The power of stories as vehicles for connection and healing is at the heart of all of my work. In addition to teaching at Lesley, both on campus and in LCB, I am a therapist in private practice. My practice integrates Eastern and Western approaches to life and to healing and builds on my doctoral work in Transpersonal Psychology. I am particularly interested in the contributions of Buddhist philosophy to psychological understandings of human existence and growth. My work in this area continues to develop as I gain a deeper appreciation for the need to bring together Eastern and Western thought to create a more complete psychology.

I have been meditating for the past 25 years and believe that this disciplined practice has influenced and enhanced the way I think about the role of therapist and counselor training. As John Welwood and others have pointed out, western psychology has focused on seeing the pathology in peoples' lives. The cultivation of a meditative presence invites us to see the whole person; the good beneath the pathology. It also deepens our ability to see ourselves as we are in the moment rather than as we exist in our memories.

As I grow older, I am discovering the storyteller who lives inside of me and am enjoying writing short stories. Most recently, I finished "Pickles and Sardines" a story about growing up with immigrants.

I have been teaching adults at Lesley for the past 17 years, and value the important role that experience plays in our learning. I am passionate about working with adults as they recover silenced voices, uncover new parts of themselves, and discover new areas of knowledge. I welcome studies in psychology, counseling and spirituality, human development, adult learning, and narrative/storytelling.