Heather L. Servaty-Seib

Heather L. Servaty-Seib is a counseling psychologist and received her Ph.D. from the University of North Texas. She is currently a professor in the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA and is serving as the Associate Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning.

She is well published in the areas of your adults grief, social support and grief, suicidal ideation, and the use of loss as a broad model for conceptualizing significant life events. She is a past president of the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC; www.adec.org), received the 2013 ADEC Death Educator of the Year Award, and was co-principal investigator of ALIVE @ Purdue — a three-year, campus suicide prevention grant funded by the Department of Health and Human Services. She is on the editorial boards of leading academic journals in the field of thanatology (e.g., Death Studies, Journal of Loss and Trauma, Omega) and her work has been highlighted in the New York Times and in the Chronicle of Higher education. Her research was instrumental in building the case for Purdue's Grief Absence Policy for Students (www.purdue.edu/studentregulations/regulations_procedures/classes.html) and she works as a resource/consultant for those seeking to establish similar policies at their institutions.

Dr. Servaty-Seib lives in Lafayette, IN, USA, is married and the mother of two. She enjoys spending time with family, eating excellent meals, hiking, and reading (fiction!).