George McCloskey, PhD, Associate Professor, Director of School Psychology Research

Dr. McCloskey earned a BS in psychology, magna cum laude, and the Departmental Award for Excellence in Psychology, from St. Vincent College in 1976.  He obtained an MS in school psychology in 1979, and a PhD in school psychology in 1985 from The Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. McCloskey has accumulated a broad range of work experiences in the field of psychology over the last 25 years.  He brings a unique blend of clinical, research, administrative, teaching, and business experience to his position at PCOM.  He has been involved in practical, direct service work in multiple settings, pre-service teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels, teaching for continuing education and in-service purposes including many presentations for state, regional, and national professional associations, research and test development in both university and corporate settings, and administration and supervision in clinical, university, and business settings. 

Prior to his certification as a school psychologist, he worked as a paraprofessional in minimum security prison and community mental health settings.  His experience in the field as a school psychologist included interning in the Lancaster City schools; working full-time for the Pinellas County, Florida public schools; and working part-time for State College Area schools in State College, Pennsylvania and the Parkland School District in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  Dr. McCloskey currently is the Director of the SPARK (School Psychologists Adopting Refined Knowledge) Project for the New York City Department of Education.  This program involves coordinating and providing in-service training activities for more than 1,100 school psychologists and 30 supervisors of school psychologists employed by the New York City DOE.

Dr. McCloskey has been involved in teaching activities since his graduate training days.  While a graduate student at Penn State, he taught courses on statistics for the biological sciences for the Statistics Department, assisted Dr. John Salvia in the teaching of a psychoeducational assessment course for psychologists and teachers, and taught a Psychology of Learning course for St. Vincent's College.  In later years, Dr. McCloskey served as an adjunct faculty member for the School Psychology graduate program at Ryder University in Lawrenceville, and for the PCOM Clinical and School Psychology programs, teaching courses in cognitive assessment, intervention, and research.  As a Clinical Measurement Consultant for The Psychological Corporation from 1993 to 2001, Dr. McCloskey devoted several years to in-service training of school, clinical and neuro-psychologists, educational evaluators, special educators, speech therapists and other assessment specialists in the use and interpretation of assessment instruments.  Dr. McCloskey has been a full-time member of the PCOM Psychology Department faculty since March 2004.

In addition to his clinical and teaching work, Dr. McCloskey has accumulated over 20 years of experience in research and test development activities.  He joined the staff of American Guidance Service (AGS) in 1984 as a research associate in test development.  In 1987, he was promoted to Senior Research Associate, and he served as Associate Director of Development from 1989 to 1993.  While at AGS, Dr. McCloskey was involved in the development of many of the well-known psychological and educational assessment instruments used by clinicians, including the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA), the Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test (KAIT), the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (K-BIT), the AGS Early Screening Profiles, Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning-Third Edition (DIAL-III), Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC), Social Skills Rating System (SSRS), Kaufman Short Neuropsychological Assessment Procedure (K-SNAP), Kaufman Functional Academic Skills Test (K-FAST), the Oral and Written Language Scales (OWLS), the Comprehensive Assessment of Speech and Language (CASL), and the Multidimensional Self-Concept Scale.  As a freelance development specialist, he contributed to the writing of the narrative content and the program logic for the WISC-III Writer, a report writing software program.  During 1992-94, as a consultant to the Pennsylvania Department of Education's Instructional Support Team project, Dr. McCloskey provided research design and data analysis services to analyze the results of statewide IST program effectiveness.  In 1993, Dr. McCloskey took a position as a Clinical Measurement Consultant for The Psychological Corporation, providing consultative and training services throughout the northeast region.  Throughout this period, Dr. McCloskey frequently was called on to assist with test development activities, and in 2001, he accepted a position as Senior Research Director in the Test Development department.  In that capacity, he assisted with the development of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scales of Intelligence-Third Edition (WPPSI-III) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition (WISC-IV), directed the development of the WISC-IV Integrated, and helped to blueprint a revision of the NEPSY: A Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment. 

Dr. McCloskey has served as a consultant to state departments of education, universities, professional associations, and school districts, providing various training and clinical consultation services.  Dr. McCloskey maintains an active practice providing psychoeducational assessment services and consulting on academic and behavioral intervention plans.

Dr. McCloskey teaches courses in Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Assessment, Psychoeducational Assessment and Educational Interventions, and Research Methods and Statistics.

Dr. McCloskey works primarily with children and adults with one or more of the following: ADHD, executive dysfunction, memory problems, reading disability, written expression disability, math disabilities.  His areas of research interest include cognition and cognitive neuropsychology and the relationship of these fields to learning and classroom instruction, and psychological and educational assessment and the link between assessment and intervention.  Of particular interest is the role of executive functions in classroom learning, reading assessment and instruction, and memory processes.
 

Professional Affiliations/Activities