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Luis F. Morales Knight

Luis F. Morales Knight, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Psychology

Nominally he/him, but any pronouns are fine

lmoralesknight@callutheran.edu
(805) 493-3618
Oxnard Campus

Curriculum Vitae
Website

Office Hours: Click the "Website" link above for available appointment times

About

Dr. Knight grew up on the Central Coast and was influenced early on by growing up biracial / bicultural (Mexican-American) and bilingual (Spanish and English) in semi-rural / agricultural communities. He earned a B.A. in Linguistics at UC Santa Barbara, studying Modern Standard Mandarin (普通话, Pǔtōnghuà), Japanese, Catalan, German, and Modern Standard Arabic (الفصحى, al-Fuṣḥā). He also studied abroad at the University of Barcelona, taking Linguistics classes taught in Spanish and Catalan. He worked for several years as administrative staff at UC Los Angeles before returning to school, completing an M.A. in Psychology at Pepperdine University before being admitted to doctoral study at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where he earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. 

Dr. Knight's early clinical training at Nebraska emphasized delivery of manualized CBT treatments for anxiety disorders in adults, studying under Debra Hope, a leader in the area of social anxiety disorder. His predoctoral internship at the University of Nebraska Medical Center's Munroe-Meyer Institute for Genetics and Rehabilitation, and his postdoctoral fellowship at the Boys Town Center for Behavioral Health both emphasized behavioral-pediatric psychology, which is a functional-analytic approach to common behavioral problems of childhood, emphasizing behavioral parent training. At Boys Town, he trained under Patrick Friman, a major figure in the world of behavior analysis. Since then, his clinical practice has increasingly moved into the clinical behavior analysis space, emphasizing contextual behavioral science (CBS) approaches, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Relational Frame Theory (RFT). He has had the privilege of completing advanced trainings and participating in consultation groups led by luminaries in the CBS field, including Steven Hayes, Kelly Wilson, and Kirk Strosahl, the originators of ACT, as well as with Louise Hayes (co-originator of the DNA-V model), Patti Robinson, Lisa Coyne, Emily Sandoz, and others. 

After completing his postdoc, Dr. Knight was hired as Director of Behavioral Health for Boys Town's satellite location in Orange County, California, a post he held for several years before co-founding a private practice clinic, Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health Center, where he worked as a full-time clinician until being hired as core faculty in 2022. While he still maintains a part-time solo practice, his professional effort is now primarily dedicated to graduate education and research in CLU's Psy.D. Program, where he supervises trainees in the program's ACT track and teaches courses on child and adolescent psychopathology and interventions; history and systems of psychology; and ethics. Teaching is his passion, and when he isn't stalking around the classroom, holding forth on the topic of the day, he is constantly tinkering with and tweaking his methods and approaches. He is presently developing his use of the Interteaching method (Boyce & Hineline, 2002), a behavior-analytic set of classroom arrangements that decenters the professor(!), requires students to take ownership of their learning via independent discussion, and focuses lectures on the points students most need explained and clarified.  

At home, Dr. Knight and his wife, a clinical trials manager and artist, are very much engaged in raising their two children, who are their most constant teachers about what's most important in life. In his leisure time, he drives up and down the coast visiting family, reads science fiction and fantasy, plays video games, and pesters his social-media friends with posts about how great his kids are. 

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