Melissa M. Pearrow, PhD

Melissa serves as the executive director of the BIRCh Project and has been an professor in the School Psychology PhD Program at UMass Boston for 15 years. As the program director over the last seven years, she has managed courses for the program of study, overseen admissions, secured field placements for practicum students and interns, and obtained program approval to meet state and national credentialing standards. Prior to joining the faculty, she spent ten years as a school psychologist, in which she coordinated the program for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Her training in inpatient, outpatient, and community mental health settings informs her research on school-based mental health, including her partnership with the Boston Public Schools and Boston Children’s Hospital in the development of the Comprehensive Behavioral Health Model. She is a past president of the Massachusetts School Psychologists Association and serves as cochair of the Ethics Committee of the National Association of School Psychologists. She is the author of Identifying, assessing, and treating early onset schizophrenia at school and serves on the Safe and Supportive Schools Commission.