Charles C. “Chip” Benight, Ph.D:

Dr. Charles C. Benight is the director of the UCCS National Resilience Institute. He founded and directed the Trauma, Health & Hazards Center at UCCS for over 18 years. He originally joined University of Colorado at Colorado Springs from University of Miami where he completed his postdoctoral training in behavioral medicine. Dr. Benight earned his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Stanford University. Dr. Benight is a Professor of Psychology at UCCS and was the founder and director of the CU-Trauma, Health and Hazards Center for 18 years. Most recently is was named the director of the new National Resilience Institute. Over the past 27 years Dr. Benight has focused research on the utility of social cognitive theory in understanding recovery from trauma. He has focused on development of a web-based intervention systems for trauma based on social cognitive theory. His newest scientific work focuses on a new theory called self-regulation shift theory explaining adaptation to trauma. He has also published on secondary trauma and burnout in military mental health providers including a book titled “Secondary Trauma and Burnout in Military Mental Health Providers: Beyond the Battlefield.”. He has been funded through the National Institute for Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Agency. He is on the editorial board for the Journal of Stress & Health and Anxiety Stress and Coping: An International Journal. He is a reviewer for several primary journals in health and trauma psychology including: Health Psychology, Psychosomatic Medicine, Annals of Behavioral Medicine, Journal of Traumatic Stress, Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, Journal of Applied Personality and Social Psychology, and Clinical Psychology Review. He served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Traumatic Stress. He served as a NIMH Senior Mentor for disaster mental health research and has been a grant reviewer for NIMH and NSF. His funding through NIMH for his web-intervention program My Trauma Recovery and My Disaster Recovery. In 2013, he received CU’s highest honor for teaching and was named a President’s Teaching Scholar. Finally, he recently served on the executive board for the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

Josef I. Ruzek, Ph.D:

Josef is a Director at the Center for M2 Health at Palo Alto University and is a Research Professor at the UCCS National Resilience Institute. Previously he served as the Director at the Dissemination and Training Division for the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He is an editor of the text Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies for Trauma, a writer for the Iraq War Clinician Guide, and co-chair of the Early Intervention special interest group of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Josef was an initial developer of the My Trauma Recovery website.