SJSU Professor Lewis Aptekar

Lewis Aptekar is recently retired from academia, having wrapped up his tenure as Professor of Counselor Education within the San Jose State University Lurie College of Education in 2016.  Over the course of his career, Aptekar has earned considerable recognition and respect from numerous colleagues, organizations and members of the academic community; recognition that has, in turn, earned him countless invitations to lecture, speak, and participate in events in the United States and around the world. Lewis Aptekar is currently a licensed psychologist.

A clinical psychologist and career academic, Lewis Aptekar has taken part in numerous research efforts, lectures and programs centered on creating an improved understanding, and better addressing, the issues facing disadvantaged populations within developing nations. Much of Aptekar’s focus in these efforts has been on the problems and issues confronted by street children; those often among the most vulnerable within any given society or community. As someone who has devoted much of his time and research toward the study of struggling populations within developing nations, Lewis Aptekar has, at times, sought to immerse himself directly within those cultures and peoples so as to obtain a firsthand account of the situations they are experiencing; an effort essential to developing and implementing policies and procedures that not only better address the issues they face on a daily basis, but to help create a system more inclined to preventing such problems from occurring in th

Lewis Aptekar has devoted a good portion of his career, not only as a teacher, academic and researcher, but as an author and practicing clinical psychologist, to the observation and study of homeless youth and children in street situations (CSS); particularly those throughout developing countries. Now retired from teaching, Aptekar has immersed himself within cultures throughout such nations so as to obtain a firsthand account of the daily struggles faced by members of the “street” and homeless population, as well as to better develop recommendations for coping with and finding solutions to such issues. The co-author of StreetChildren and Homeless Youth : A Cross Cultural Perspective (2014), LewisAptekar sought to provide the reader a closer examination of several factors of both the children in street situations and the actual situations they face, and of the current policies and procedures societies and nations have in effect regarding this population. He ended the book with