Psychology professor, Dr. Todd Gaffaney, is retiring at the end of spring 2012 semester, ending a teaching career that stretched 37 years at Cerritos College.

Gafffaney acknowledges that it may not be easy to transition from decades of active work to a sudden home life.

To overcome this potential problem, Gaffaney is planning to phase out his work toward complete retirement by hopefully taking up part time teaching at the college for the next two semesters during fall and spring.

Gaffaney founded the Psychology Club called “National Honor Society in Psychology” 32 years ago.

“I have been involved at the national level. I have been involved at the local level for 32 years, and that’s been extremely enjoyable because I have had a chance to work with hundreds, maybe even thousands of students over the years,” Gaffaney said.

When it came to what good memories he would cherish, Gaffaney said without hesitation that it would be his meetings, parties, encounters, and dialogues with faculty, although it was his working with diverse challenging students he was going to remember most.

Gaffaney believes ultimately, the college is about one teacher, one student, and whether learning can take place. His emphasis is that in the end, what the student has learned, irrespective of all other student – activities.

Gaffaney’s specialty is clinical psychology, but he has also introduced to the college, social psychology and developmental psychology.

Clinical psychology, according to Gaffaney, works with people who have a psychological problem or disability; it works with symptoms, causes, treatment, and it also works with stigma and anti-stigma cases.

Gaffaney has been involved with in those programs during his whole Cerritos College teaching career.

Gaffaney and his colleagues have also been involved with learning communities for the last seven years between developmental psychology, English and library.

“When I first started here, the first ten years, I team-taught at a stretch the largest class in campus at the time, and it was a class on human sexuality,” Gaffaney said.

In order to cope with the large number of students in this class, Gafanney and his colleagues, trained thirty facilitators to do the small group-part for the class, which was then a unique operation.

For the length of time Gaffaney has been passionately involved with the college, the haunting question is that who would remember him.

“At the faculty level, it is too many to name, but I have to specifically name one person of course, that will be, Dr. Duff, because, I chaired the Psyche Club with her for 12 years, and every year, we go to a APA convention taking three to four students along with us. We are always going to remember that. ” Gaffaney said.

As for retirement activities, Gaffaney and his wife have taken six months leave of absence for participating in lap and ballroom dancing, which they plan to pursue. The couple would also like to travel, but their biggest preoccupation is going to be with their sizeable family including many grandkids.

“I would truly miss Dr. Gaffney for his dedication to his students and sheer positive energy he brings to our departments and division; I was actually one of his students too when I was here at Cerritos College, and to have been a student as well as a colleague is an experience that was truly rewarding for me,” said Dr. Jaclyn Ronquillo, psychology professor.

“I am going to miss Dr. Gaffaney because, he makes everything so interesting in the psychology field. I feel like I would have learned a lot more from him if I had taken more classes with him. The example he used about aliens on the subject of schizophrenia on how some pursue that as reality and others don’t, I find that very interesting.” said Brenda Beltran, psychology major.

Beten Lomeli, a psychology major also said that she was going to miss Gaffaney. This is because, he makes it a fun-class and turns everything as part of your life, and that ever since she took class with Gaffaney, she understood the college better; and that is why she is going to miss him, according to Lomeli.