Professor Luke Shaefer has been appointed special counselor to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services on anti-poverty and economic mobility initiatives. His role is advising and facilitating discussion on anti-poverty policy. 

Assistant Professor Lisa Fedina and team have received funding from the U-M Center for Academic Innovation for their new online course (MOOC) “Interprofessional Responses to Intimate Partner Violence.” The course will enhance knowledge and capacity to effectively identify, screen and respond to victims of intimate partner violence from an interprofessional perspective in a healthcare setting. The team includes Professor Richard Tolman, Assistant Professor Katie Schultz and faculty from the U-M School of Nursing and the University of Maryland School of Social Work. The course will start in the spring of 2020.

Clinical Associate Professor Beth Sherman is a member of the Standards Development Committee for the Michigan Department of Education. She worked on new recommendations for school social workers. Her efforts have resulted in two new standards encompassing diversity, inclusion, human rights and social justice. “These standards build on the School of Social Work’s commitment to DEI. Teaching and researching in this environment have taught me to be a strong advocate for social justice and informed my work on this committee.”

Clinical Assistant Professor Justin Hodge was elected to the board of directors for the Congressional Research Institute for Social Work and Policy (CRISP). CRISP is committed to expanding the participation of social workers in federal legislative and policy processes and acts as a bridge between social work researchers and federal policymakers.

Luke Shaefer, professor, and director of the University of Michigan Poverty Center talks with the Detroit Free Press about poverty in rural Michigan. "Coming up with money to pay utilities is a matter of having money. Having money means a job — and not just any job, but a decent paying one," said Shaefer.

Clinical Associate Professor Julie Ribaudo has been invited by the Erikson Institute and the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) to serve on the Infancy and Early Childhood Mental Health Steering Committee. The steering committee is comprised of social work and other discipline experts who will work to develop the Curricular Guide for Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health and Developmental Neuroscience.  The guides are accessible to CSWE program and individual members for free and can be found at the CSWE website. 

Shawna Lee, associate professor of social work, was appointed the director of the Program Evaluation Group, known as PEG, effective September 2019. Lee will bring her extensive knowledge and experience to the Program Evaluation Group. PEG’s mission is to provide professional evaluation services to a broad range of partners, including community-based organizations, social service providers, and university-based entities. PEG’s professional evaluation staff also train social work students in evaluation practice. PEG has a strong presence in Detroit and statewide, and has ongoing projects with collaborators such as the Kresge Foundation and the United Neighborhood Initiative.

Lee joined the School in 2012. She completed the Joint PhD Program in Social Work and Psychology at the University of Michigan, where she was a National Institutes of Health (NIH) predoctoral trainee in prevention research. She was a postdoctoral research scholar at the Columbia University School of Social Work.

Lee founded the Parenting in Context Research Lab whose research and community-based intervention work focuses on the role of fathers in promoting child and family wellbeing. She leads the design, implementation and evaluation of an intervention for low-income fathers in collaboration with Healthy Start home visitation program sites throughout Michigan. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the Michigan Health Endowment Fund, and the Fatherhood Research Practice Network. Lee teaches courses in research methods, program evaluation and social policy.

Lee is on the editorial board of Child Maltreatment and Child Abuse & Neglect: The International Journal. She was named a 2017 Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) Fellow.

Debra Mattison, Clinical Assistant Professor, is a member of the U-M IPE Foundations Experience Team that received the 2019 Demonstration Model Award at the Midwest Interprofessional Practice, Education, and Research Center (MIPERC) annual conference in Grand Rapids. Frank Ascione of the Center for IPE nominated the 10-member team, which is led by Laura Smith of UM-Flint, in part for "innovative solutions to teaching IPE principles to our large and diverse group of health science students."