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Ronald Crouch

Biography

Summary:  Ronald Crouch, 32, and previously an undergraduate Jack Kent Cooke Scholar, went from his home in Oxford, OH to the Bering Sea off Alaska for his first job as a fisherman, part of a plan to learn by seeing the world. He worked as a diesel mechanic and taught English in Siberia before deciding that he really wanted to help people with emotional problems. Ronald began studying psychology at Prince George's Community College in Maryland and then received a Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Undergraduate Scholarship to continue at George Washington University (GWU). Mr. Crouch, who compiled a 3.82 GPA at GWU, will seek a doctorate in clinical and community psychology at DePaul University in Chicago.

Graduate Scholarship Biography (prepared summer 2004):   Growing up in a college town where he and his family were looked down upon by more privileged students, Ronald decided that higher education was not for him. So he decided to learn about the world by seeing it for himself. He worked as a fisherman in Alaskan waters, guided tourists in New Mexico, built his own cabin, learned welding, and became a well-paid mechanic for heavy equipment. Despite a comfortable life, he felt unsatisfied, and took a job teaching English in Siberia. "A persistent wanderlust haunted me, and I continued exploring," he recalls. The sight of profound human suffering in Siberia changed his life, however, awakening a long-dormant compassion for others.
"I left Russia on fire with the idea of helping people in some way," he writes. "I would sell my tools, quit my job, and turn from the business of fixing engines and machines to the mission of fixing people and their problems." He enrolled in a community college and took psychology classes, but it was working as a volunteer counselor on a crisis hotline that confirmed his career choice. He saw for the first time the magnitude of individuals' problems and the way the public hotline could alleviate them.

Mr. Crouch won a Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Undergraduate Scholarship to continue his studies at a four-year school. He also won a Harry S. Truman Scholarship that allowed him to work as an intern for the policy research institute of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI). His work there was recognized when the federal government's Center for Mental Health Services decided to revise its policies for making block grants to communities on the basis of the NAMI's research. Ron concluded that making social change through research, advocacy, and empowerment is vital to promote psychology in the public interest. "I have a passion now, a purpose in my life," he writes. "I learned that growing up starts with curiosity, with opening one's mind, but growing wise starts with heart-break, with opening one's heart to compassion."

Undergraduate Scholarship Biography (prepared Oct. 2002):  Ron Crouch grew up in Oxford, Ohio, but after graduating from high school in 1990, he traveled and lived in a variety of places. In 1997, he obtained a certificate in ground vehicle maintenance from the University of Alaska and went to work as a heavy equipment mechanic.

It was a heartbreaking train trip through Siberia in 1999, he says, that sent him back to school. "Wherever the train stopped, crowds of people came to the windows to beg or sell what little they had. Disfigurement and deformity seemed common, and it seemed as if I had stumbled onto a place the world had forgotten, a place that continued to suffer while the world progressed," Ron says. "I wanted to help, but for the first time in my life, I felt powerless."

Ron enrolled in the honors college at Prince George's Community College in 2001 where he maintained a perfect grade point average and obtained his associate's degree in psychology. The experience that has most greatly influenced his choice of psychology has been his work as a trained volunteer phone counselor at the D.C. Crisis Hotline. Ron assists callers who are angry, depressed, lonely, afraid, or even suicidal. "As a psychology major, I have found that my work at the hotline has given my education a depth that it otherwise would be missing, and it has given me the confidence to know that I can make a difference in people's lives," he says.

Ron began his study for a bachelor's degree at George Washington University in the fall of 2002 and hopes to integrate his psychology training with the needs of his community. "I do not wish to simply put out my shingle and shut myself away in an office. Instead, I want to take my skills to the policy-makers, the hospitals, shelters, and maybe even to the streets."

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