Katie Maguire-Jack Installed as the Fedele and Iris Fauri Research Professor in Child and Family Services

Katie Maguire-Jack was installed on November 4, 2026, as the inaugural Fedele and Iris Fauri Research Professor in Child and Family Services.

Fedele Fauri served as the first dean of the School of Social Work and professor of public welfare administration. Under his leadership, the School experienced extraordinary growth and national recognition. Fedele’s commitment to advancing social justice was shared by his wife Iris, who was deeply involved in feminist activism in Ann Arbor. This new endowed professorship recognizes the Fauris’ extraordinary contributions and their dedication to children and families, and extends their work and legacy.

Maguire-Jack is a leading child and family well-being scholar. She serves as the Title IV-E faculty director, director of the Child Maltreatment Prevention Lab, and associate editor for the journal Child Maltreatment. She works closely with communities, service providers and policymakers to develop and evaluate programs that strengthen economic resources, improve access to behavioral health and domestic violence services, enhance parenting knowledge and expand social support networks.

As part of the ceremony, Maguire-Jack addressed common misconceptions about child maltreatment.

“The vast, vast, vast majority of parents want to do the absolute best that they can for their children. Parents are not waking up in the morning making a decision to maltreat their children. But many parents face extremely challenging circumstances that cause them to face very difficult choices…,” she said.

“Child maltreatment is deeply preventable, but American safety net systems fail families through fragmented policies, zero paid federal family leave, prohibitive childcare costs, and short-sighted legislative cycles that penalize long-term prevention investments.”

This is especially true in rural areas of Michigan, where children suffer double the rate of confirmed maltreatment compared to urban peers and face severe service deserts. Due to acute foster home shortages, rural children are routinely placed 20 or more miles farther from home, with some temporarily housed in child welfare offices, hotels, hospitals or juvenile detention holdovers.

Maguire-Jack’s scholarship focuses on fixing the underlying structures by equipping communities with macro-level economic support systems. Her lab's research shows that simple structural interventions — such as training home visitors to help families access the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) — directly reduce self-reported neglect and help strengthen families. Moving forward, she is focused on developing innovative rural prevention models across Michigan while continuing to steward the statewide Title IV-E fellowship, which has already prepared 58 specialized child welfare graduates to strengthen the state's frontline workforce.

“I’m really hoping in the next phase of my work to move from focusing on documenting the challenges within rural areas to now being part of the solution through supporting the implementation of additional prevention strategies here in the state of Michigan and continuing to examine how we can improve structural barriers,” she said.

Maguire-Jack has published 125 peer-reviewed articles on child maltreatment, family supports, and child welfare services. Her scholarship has earned international recognition. She was included in the Stanford/Elsevier world’s top 2% of scientists in 2024 and 2025 and in 2026, was named the leading scholar in the field of child abuse by ScholarGPS.