Faculty
David Rychener, PhD
Fall 1980 - Fall 2120
Doctor of Whole Health Leadership Program
davidrychener@scuhs.edu
Current Position
Biography
From 2020-2022, Dr. Rychener served as a consultant with the Whole Health Institute to provide education to clinical and non-clinical personnel interested in practicing and promoting Whole Health. Dr. Rychener currently runs the Aravaipa Canyon Retreat Center at his Ranch in Arizona, where he also writes and performs Western music as his primary hobby.
From 2012-2021, Dr. Rychener was employed by Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation to direct a patient centered care education contract with the Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation, Veterans Health Administration. The tasks and deliverables include co-developing and delivering education courses focused on patient centered care.
From 2009-2012, Dr. Rychener was under contract with Duke University Integrative Medicine to assist in developing and delivering the Integrative Health Coaching Course. Dr. Rychener co-authored the Duke Integrative Health Coaching Professional Training Manual and co-authored units of the Personalized Health Plan Manual. He also authored proposals at the request of the US Army and Navy to provide training in Integrative Medicine and health coaching.
From 1983-2009, Dr. Rychener served in several capacities with PREVENT, the Navy’s prevention course for reducing health risk behaviors that detract from mission readiness. The contract was initially with the University of Arizona College of Medicine and later with Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. During Dr. Rychener’s tenure, more than 750,000 sailors were trained in the PREVENT course. During his tenure as director, Dr. Rychener was responsible for Program oversight, development of the model and curriculum, and training of contractor facilitator personnel. Dr. Rychener trained more than 1500 facilitators to deliver the program at more than 35 Navy locations worldwide.
From 1995-2000, Dr. Rychener was Associate Director for the Program In Integrative Medicine, Arizona Health Sciences Center at the University of Arizona. Under the direction of Dr. Andrew Weil, this Program’s mission is to train physicians and health care providers in a new discipline of medicine that combines the best of conventional and alternative practices, with the intention of reshaping the future of medicine in our culture. Dr. Rychener’s responsibilities included designing and initiating the first Integrative Medicine clinic. Once the clinic was established, he was responsible for designing and implementing the Integrative Research component of the Program. Currently, Dr. Rychener provides Integrative Health Coach Training for the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine.
Dr. Rychener earned his Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy from Purdue University in 1982. Dr. Rychener received an M.A. degree in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary in 1976 and a B.A. in Psychology from Wheaton College in 1972.
Degrees
Ph.D., Marriage and Family Therapy, Purdue University
Hear from the Students Who’ve Been in Your Shoes
I chose SCU when looking for a PA program because of their Integrative Medicine approach. I am from Michigan, and not many programs focus on this Integrative, Holistic approach when it comes to patient care in the Midwest, and I felt that was very important for me to learn as a future provider. My transition to semi-virtual learning has been very smooth and quite enjoyable. [su_accordion][su_spoiler title="Read More..." open="No"]My favorite part about attending SCU is how tight-knit and diverse the community is. Coming from a large undergrad university and moving so far, it was very important for me to have a PA program that made me feel valued and invested in my success. At SCU, they do a great job of making you feel that.[/su_spoiler][/su_accordion]
Brianna Hadley
MSPA Class of 2022
One of the great things about SCU is we do have a campus layout, so all your classes aren't in a single room. We have our cadaver lab. We have different specialty rooms for physical assessment classes vs. acupuncture classes. All our acupuncture-specific classes have all the herbs in the room. You can pull out the herbs and look at them, whether in class or in between classes to get that extra studying in.[su_accordion][su_spoiler title="Read More..." open="No"]My favorite part of SCU is the collaboration from our beginning terms. We were working alongside chiropractor students, PA students, and ayurvedic students. It's a unique community where we get to learn about these different fields and sit in classrooms with them and work with them in the clinic. It allows you to get an understanding of all the different fields and how they can work together, and what is unique about your field. I think that is a wonderful aspect that I didn't think was going to be as prominent as it is here; even now, in my upper term classes and I am not in class with chiropractic students, I can still reach out to them about a certain aspect I may not understand or if I am working on a case. I want another perspective I know I have them to reach out to, so that has been a great networking community to have resources for.[/su_spoiler][/su_accordion]
Dr. Jamie Kuljis
Graduate, Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine
"There are a lot of things that I love about the program at SCU. The first one is that the faculty come from a long line of Ayurvedic knowledge deeply rooted in ancient classical text. They studied Ayurveda, but they also lived it. When you learn from people who embody this wisdom, it's much easier to grasp this knowledge. The second thing I love is the camaraderie within the cohort. The combination of the training, supportive faculty, and the support of my peers and classmates has given me the confidence I need to start my own practice."
Portia Harris
Student, Ayurveda Program
Some of my favorite courses at SCU have to be the chiropractic procedure classes; those are the classes you get to hone in on your chiro skills, your palpation skills and ultimately work on the adjustments that make you a chiropractor. Those are the classes I feel enhance my knowledge the most and are some of the reasons I chose to become a chiropractor here are SCU.[su_accordion][su_spoiler title="Read More..." open="No"]On top of chiropractic procedures classes, my favorite is the cadaver lab experience. The cadaver classes opened up my perception of what the human body is made up of. It allowed me to get an in-person perspective of how the body works and looks on the inside. I am genuinely thankful for those experiences because they opened and broadened my horizons to the human body and anatomy in general.[/su_spoiler][/su_accordion]
Jordan Vega
Student, Doctor of Chiropractic
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