Melanie Pruit
Q: Are you a psychologist at HHS?
A: Yes I am a psychologist at HHS.
Q: What was your major in college?
A: I was a psychology major in undergrad and a human services minor.
Q: Did you always know you wanted to be a psychologist?
A: No I didn’t actually, I knew that I liked working in the human services, helping people,supporting people, and finding ways to improve people’s lives. I actually worked as a social worker after undergrad.
Q: What did you do as a social worker?
A: I was foster care social worker, and I worked with kids to reunite them with their families if they’d been removed from their families. I also worked with parents to achieve goals to be reunited.
Q: Why did you decide to come to HHS?
A: I went back to school and got my degree in school psychology and I did my internship here when I was in school, in the HCPS, but I never really got to go to the high school a lot. I then spent some years working in other places and then came back to the city and this was one of the schools I was assigned as part of my school psych assignment. I’m also at Keister. I’m loving being here, I really enjoy working with the high school population.
Q: What do you do here as a psychologist?
A: I do lots of different things, but one of my main roles is to participate in the evaluations for special education eligibility. I conduct the psychological portion of those evaluations to determine whether a student would be eligible for additional support through special ed. I also work with students through counseling. I do consultations with teachers for any kind of support that I can provide them in class and sometimes I do interventions throughout school. I do a wide variety of things depending on what the school might need.
Q: Have you ever lived outside of Harrisonburg?
A: I have, I grew up on the eastern shore of Virginia over across the Chesapeake Bay in a little town called Onienca, so when, came to JMU for undergrad and I got here, Harrisonburg was a big city for me. When I first got out of school I lived here and then moved to New Hampshire a year later, but since then I’ve been here for the last 20 years or so.
Q: Why did you come to JMU?
A: Originally, I went skiing up Massanutten, I was in middle school, and somebody had a child that was at JMU at the time and we rode through the campus and I just loved the campus. From the time I was in middle school I just kept learning about JMU, and it just always seemed like a place that would fit.
Q: Did you play any sports at JMU?
A: I didn’t play any sports at JMU.
Q: What sports did you play in high school?
A: I was on the tennis team, I was a cheerleader and I swam in the summer.
Q: Were you involved in any clubs at JMU?
A: I was in the sorority Zeta at JMU.