November 2014: Shari Langer, Psy.D.

Dr. Shari Langer is a distinguished alumna of the LIU clinical psychology community. She graduated SUNY Binghamton magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Human Development. She then attended LIU Post for her PsyD and graduated our program in 2010. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County. There she worked with oncology inpatients and long-term survivors. She also worked in their neuropsychology assessment clinic and worked at the hospital on their on-call service and supervised psychology interns. Dr. Langer currently lives in California and has moved her career out west. In the summer of 2012, she began working at the Children’s Hospital of Central California as a pediatric psychologist. Dr. Langer says that she has learned through her work that she is “inspired and humbled by the resiliency and courage displayed by children/families coping with chronic and terminal illnesses.” At the hospital, she wears multiple hats in her position. Dr. Langer provides many services for hematology, oncology, and pulmonology patients, including liaison services, individual and family psychotherapy, behavioral management and parent training. She also performs general inpatient consults for all types of terminal and chronic patients, and follows them throughout their stay in the hospital. Outpatient psychotherapy is also part of her workload, as she sees patients with comorbid mental health and medical conditions, falling under her focus of pediatric psychology. Dr. Langer is also a committee member of the hospital’s Palliative Care Committee. She also works on program development and educational planning for the Schwartz Rounds Committee, a group that aims to support hospital staff and help relieve burnout from the difficult and often emotionally painful work.

Dr. Langer is very satisfied with her LIU Post education, and believes that “LIU's commitment to providing psychological care to underserved populations continues to resonate with [her].” She sees a diverse group of patients in the hospital, including migrant agricultural workers, and many people with extremely limited access to resources. Dr. Langer is “grateful for the wide breadth of clinical training I received at LIU, as well as the support from faculty members to pursue my interest in pediatric psychology through related class projects, clinical placements, and my dissertation topic, which was a qualitative study on how children experience a pediatric oncology camp.” Though Dr. Langer only graduated from the program four years ago, she has gained significant prestige in the field and continues to make LIU Post proud.