Susan D. Imus, LCPC, BC-DMT, GL-CMA

Susan’s career exemplifies the highest ideals of creative arts therapy. As a dance/movement therapist, educator, scholar, and leader, she has helped shape the field through decades of teaching, program development, research, service, and advocacy.

Susan is Professor Emerita at Columbia College Chicago and Co-Principal Investigator of the Dance for Health Research Study. During her nearly three decades of leadership at Columbia, she served as professor, department chair, and program director, shaping generations of students and helping advance creative arts therapy education. She chaired the Department of Creative Arts Therapy for 19 years and helped co-found six programs.

Her work includes foundational contributions to the Dance/Movement Therapy & Counseling curriculum, co-development of the Graduate Laban Certificate in Movement Analysis, and leadership in interdisciplinary arts-in-health education. She has also served as an international consultant and educator, with work reaching institutions throughout Asia and Europe.

Susan’s scholarship and service have strengthened the creative arts therapy field nationally and internationally. Her work has addressed embodied psychotherapy, education, mechanisms of change, arts-in-health practice, and suicide prevention. She has presented suicide prevention workshops to more than 4,000 people across the United States and Asia, and authored work on dance/movement therapy’s contributions to suicide prevention.

She has also served the American Dance Therapy Association through nearly twenty years on the Board of Directors as part of the Education, Research & Practice Committee, including four years as Chair. In 2006, she received ADTA’s first annual Excellence in Education Award.

Through her lifelong commitment to embodiment, relationship, equity, and wellbeing, Susan Imus has expanded both the reach and integrity of creative arts therapy. Her work carries forward Toddy Richman’s legacy with grace, rigor, and a profound belief in the healing power of the arts.