Laurie Westlake
Dr. Laurie A Westlake is currently contributing faculty in the Forensic Psychology MS and PhD programs at Walden University. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and completed her doctoral training in 1982 in Clinical Developmental Psychology at the Department of Psychology, the University of Arizona in Tucson. She has 30+ yrs. of professional experience, and in the past 20 yrs., has specialized in forensic psychology. At Walden, she has been on teams to develop new course or modify existing courses, taught graduate level courses in Forensic Psychology, and served as Chair, SCM and URR on student dissertation committees. Previously, she has worked in state adult and youth correctional facilities, and while with the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, she served 5 years as the Chief Psychologist and acted as liaison to the State’s Attorney General Office to address complex legal issues that involved juveniles. She has had extensive experience developing programs for juveniles in corrections, providing training to correctional officers about adolescent development and mental health problems, and serving as a consultant to the correctional administration to investigate serious organizational incidents. Additionally, she has served as a consultant to juvenile justice agencies throughout the U.S. and Canada. She was on the faculty at the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Arizona for 10 years while working on a grant to prevent alcohol and substance abuse in the Navy. As part of this experience, she traveled to over 40 worldwide U.S. military installations and assisted leadership in developing strategies to increase command readiness by reducing alcohol and substance abuse. Her primary areas of expertise are in juvenile justice, violence risk assessment, post-traumatic stress and assessment/treatment during behavioral emergencies for mental health and alcohol/substance abuse problems. Her research interests include evidence-based risk factors for suicide, homicide and serious aggression, school shootings/mass murders, lone actor domestic terrorism, violent victimization, and juvenile offender program evaluation. She currently lives on the west coast in the U.S. and enjoys nature photography and gardening.
Education
PhD, University of Arizona
MS, University of Arizona
BS, University of Arizona