Two faculty members from the Brown School are among the first cohort to complete a specialized training program designed to help social work and nursing educators integrate psychedelic-assisted therapy content into academic curricula.
Tonya Edmond, a professor, and Ryan Lindsay, a professor of practice and chair of the mental health concentration, were among 63 participants selected from 30 institutions across 22 states for the inaugural 2025 Faculty Fellow cohort of theUniversity Psychedelic Education Program's (U-PEP) Faculty Education Program. The cohort completed training at the Usona Institute in Madison, Wis., a nonprofit leader in psychedelic-assisted therapy research.
They join Leopoldo J. Cabassa, a professor, in advancing psychedelic education and research at the Brown School. Cabassa completed U-PEP's pilot training in 2023 and now serves as a faculty mentor for the program and is a member of the U-PEP Learning Collaborative.
All three faculty members are part of the Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies Learning Community (PAT-LC), an interdisciplinary group at the Brown School co-directed by Cabassa. This fall, Edmond will teach a new course for Master of Social Work students, "Foundations of Psychedelic Healing in Clinical Social Work."
