Rick Richardson

 

Room: 520.20 T

Phone: 212-237-8689

Email:  rrichardson@jjay.cuny.edu

 

Professor Rick Richardson has had a long association with John Jay. He came to the college as an undergraduate interested in the substance abuse program offered at John Jay.  A 1988, PSC Belle Zeller scholar, he graduated from John Jay Summa Cum Laude in 1990, simultaneously earning a graduate degree in Forensic Psychology. He went on to earn a graduate degree in Sociology from Fordham University, specializing in the evaluation and promulgation of minority mental health programs and policy. Professor Richardson also earned an M.S.W. in clinical social work from the Hunter School of Social Work, in 1995.

 

Professor Richardson has been teaching in the Sociology Department at John Jay since 1990.  Along with mainstay courses like Introductory Sociology (Soc-101), and Criminology (Soc-203), he teaches courses that are part of the Substance Abuse Certificate program: Drug Use and Abuse (Soc-110), and Substance Abuse and Family Dysfunction (Soc-161). Other courses he has taught include Evaluation of Social Programs, The Family, and he has developed a new course, Sociology of Mental Illness (Soc-290), which will be presented in the spring term of 2003.

 

Professor Richardson remains a committed activist within the John Jay community. As an undergraduate he served in student government, and continued his involvement over the years serving on the faculty senate and college council as well as numerous college wide policy and evaluative committees. He believes that the fundamental principles of sociology that are imparted to his students will, if utilized, maximize an individual’s, or group’s potential for positive change, in a world that seems to conspire to hold some of its inhabitants back from the goals that they seek.