Scott Steiner arrived at the SAHARA lab in 1994, about a year after completing his B.A. at the University of California, San Diego. He graduated from the UT Clinical Psychology program in December of 2002 after completing his dissertation (under Dr. Fromme’s mentorship), which examined the role of moods and affective memories in judgments regarding alcohol use. Scott, his wife (Rebecca), and 2-year-old son (Zachary) decided to stay in Austin and in January of 2003 Scott began
working in private practice as a therapist under the supervision of a local psychologist, Elayne Lansford, Ph.D. About six months later, the Central Texas Veterans Administration (where Scott did his internship) hired him on a contract basis to provide substance abuse treatment services in the Austin Satellite Mental Health Clinic. In August Scott was offered a full-time position as the head of the substance abuse program in the Austin clinic and he is now in the process of making the transition over to working completely at the VA. Scott’s plans for the new position (likely to begin in November 2003) are to overhaul the current treatment program (by shifting to empirically-validated substance abuse approaches) and to eventually return to research.