Contemporary Sexuality - April 2009 - (Page 3) Member Spotlight Eric Garrison, MAEd, MSc (London), ACS (New York, N.Y.) Member Spotlight is a monthly column offering an opportunity for AASECT members to get to know more about each other. Each month, a different member’s story will be introduced. If you would like to recommend someone to be interviewed for this column, please contact Hani Miletski, PhD, MSW, Membership Steering Committee chair, at Hani@DrMiletski.com. E ric Garrison joined AASECT and received his certification as a sexuality counselor last summer. “New Orleans served as a choice venue to meet and greet and — as a bonus — it afforded me the chance to earn the 20 credits needed for my re-certification,” he says. “I am looking forward to this year’s conference, where I can just relax and learn.” As social workers, his parents provided basic sexuality counseling to people with disabilities, and Garrison discovered their educational materials at an early age. By high school, he was listening to Ruth Westheimer’s show, Sexually Speaking, with his radio under the pillow — not because she was forbidden in their house, but because her show aired very late on a school night. “I hated high school sex ed with boys over here and girls over there,” he says. “That is when I discovered I wanted to study sexology.” In 1987, as a German major at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Garrison became a peer sexuality educator under the stewardship of Betty Reppert, Gay Cutchin and Linda Hancock. He also took his first human sexuality course under Professor Daphne Rankin. “It was at VCU that I met guest speaker, Cydelle Berlin, New York University (NYU) alumna of their PhD program in Human Sexuality and set my sights on that program,” he says. Garrison continued his peer education work as a graduate student at the College of William and Mary, under Cynthia Burwell who gave him the best outreach advice: “When my healthy sexuality event, William and Mary and You: A Dangerous Menage-a-Trois, raised eyebrows with alumni, she called me into her office and said, ‘If you ever do a sex program and it doesn’t offend at least somebody, it means you covered something up.’” After graduating with a master’s degree in Education in 1994, Garrison taught at T.C. Williams High School in northern Virginia. There, he founded the first Gay-Straight Alliance Network in a Virginia public school and ran a peer HIV education group. Garrison left that job after securing a graduate fellowship (his essay was on being marginalized as a bisexual) to study human sexuality at NYU. NYU was a great experience, Garrison says, and he learned a lot about many aspects of sexuality. In 1998, he transferred to the doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania, which closed two weeks before he was to begin. Garrison then discovered the sex research program at the University of London and earned both his master of science in Reproductive and Sexual Health Research and the diploma of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine. “The London School introduced me to a world class cohort — literally and figuratively — and bumped my sexology skills up another level,” he says. “I was elected student president, sat on both the Board of Management and the Court of Governors and it was there — before receiving my second master’s — that I was invited to lecture on taking sexual histories (my specialty) at Oxford University. “One of the best moments in my life was not the invitation to lecture at Oxford, but the feeling of ‘I can do this.’ It was a feeling of self-efficacy and self actualization that would have made Bandura and Maslow proud.” Once back in the U.S., Garrison worked at various universities before settling into his current position within student health services at The New School in New York. Garrison also has a private practice and is completing his first book: Multiple Position Sex: Mind-Blowing Sex for Unforgettable Orgasms, due out this fall from Quiver Books. Garrison loves music and has been known to sit down at a hotel lobby piano and play. He loves to cook, host and entertain others. In 2008, Garrison hosted Sex in the Park, where 27 Who’s Who of Manhattan’s past, present, and future sexologists, policy makers, authors, radio hosts, columnists, professors, educators, counselors, therapists and celebrities met for lunch. Most were current AASECT members or became members shortly thereafter. Garrison is planning the next lunch for early May, in time for everyone to meet and greet prior to traveling to Arizona. “I am still getting my AASECT feet wet,” Garrison says. “I look forward to attending the conference next month, mingling with AASECT members of various ages, professions, and points of view.” — Hani Miletski “New Orleans served as a choice venue to meet and greet, and — as a bonus — it afforded me the chance to earn the 20 credits needed for my re-certifications. I am looking forward to this year’s conference, where I can just relax and learn.” — Eric Garrison April 2009 Vol. 43, No. 4 | www.aasect.org Contemporary Sexuality 3 http://www.aasect.org
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