Catherine Crowley has been an occupational therapist since 1974. She began her career working with adults in a psychiatric hospital on the East Coast and thereafter moved west to Colorado to work in the community mental health system. When the facility was closed in light of shifting governmental fiscal priorities and the de-institutionalization movement, Dr. Crowley pursued a master’s degree in Occupational Therapy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, changing her focus of study and practice to pediatrics, wherein her thesis work involved examining variables in parental involvement in the child’s early intervention programs. In the 1990s, she came to the University of Southern California Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. She completed her clinical doctorate in 2007, and continues teaching part-time in the Division's Minor in Occupational Science program.