Meet Jenny Gambichler!
By Jeannie Simmons, senior director, Columbia College-Fort Worth
Our wonderful academic advisor, Jenny Gambichler, has worked at the Fort Worth location since March of 2013. She was born in Frankfort, Germany, and raised by a single hippie mom in St. Louis, Missouri. She received her bachelor’s in psychology and women’s studies and her master’s in clinical psychology from her mother’s alma mater, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.
Jenny began her career as an individual, family and group counselor and case manager working with adults with severe mental illness in rural Appalachia. She spent several years working with clients suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, multiple personality disorder and chronic substance abuse, and later worked in Missouri and Illinois community-based mental health facilities counseling teen and adult abusers, sex offenders and their victims.
Jenny left the field of mental health to become a military wife and full-time mom to two boys and volunteer extensively with the Army Family Readiness and her sons’ school district in Texas. This opened up an opportunity to serve as a substitute teacher, which ultimately led to a full-time position working with developmentally disabled and severely autistic children.
She jumped ship after one too many visits to Care Now, which brought her to adult education and Columbia College. She is an academic advisor and VA school certifying official here in Fort Worth, and teaches Adult Psychology on the side.
She lives in Lake Worth, with three adorable and annoying cats. Her youngest son, Max, is in the Air Force, and her oldest son, Samuel, is a history major at Columbia College and plans to teach high school history.
