Faculty News

Associate Professor M. Candace Christensen has been named a Public Engagement Faculty Fellow by the U-M Office of the Vice President for Research.  The fellowship offers an opportunity for faculty members to consider how they can prioritize outward engagement in their scholarly activity and translate it into meaningful public impacts.

“My vision for who I want to be as a professional scholar in 5-10 years is to be exceptionally proficient at translating my own research, but also a guide, mentor, and leader for translating research into accessible, engaging, practical, and useful knowledge,” said Christensen. “The Public Engagement Faculty Fellowship will provide me with the mentorship, social networks, skills, and resources to achieve these goals.”

Six School of Social Work Professors have been selected to serve as cluster co-chairs for the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) Annual Conference. Cluster chairs play a significant role in the abstract review and development of the abstract-based program content for the SSWR annual conference.

Associate Professor Lindsay Bornheimer — Mental Health cluster

Assistant Professor James Ellis — Black and African Diaspora Focused-Research cluster

Assistant Professor Odessa Gonzalez Benson — Race and Ethnicity cluster

Associate Professor Shanna Kattari — Gender cluster

Associate Professor Kathryn Maguire-Jack — Inequality, Poverty, and Social Welfare Policy cluster

Associate Professor Camille Quinn — Black and African Diaspora Focused-Research cluster

Research Fellow Greer Hamilton, PhD ’23, has been selected as an Agent of Change Fellow. Sponsored by the Environmental Health News and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, the program is designed to empower emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.

Associate Professor Shanna Kattari spoke with USA Today about polyamory, the changing attitudes towards monogamy and increased interest in different relationship styles. "The more that even monogamous people are willing to learn and educate themselves about polyamory, the better it is for everyone," said Kattari.

Associate Professor Shanna Katari spoke with NPR’s Marketplace about job discrimination and the role it plays in the higher rates of economic hardship that transgendered people face in the U.S. “So it might not be something as explicit as ‘I’m not hiring you because you’re trans,’ but ‘I’m not hiring you because you don’t match my idea of what a woman should look like,’” they said.

Associate Clinical Professor Daicia Price spoke with Gray TV’s Local News Live about social media and loneliness. “Social Media has a role in our society,” she said, “but it is not a replacement for those intimate connections that people probably were really desiring.”

Associate Professor Shanna Kattari was interviewed on PBS NewsHour Weekend in a segment on the challenges of love and dating while living with disabilities.

“I think nondisabled people really buy into a lot of the notions that have been perpetuated around disability and disabled people, such as disabled folks are all asexual, which is not true,” said Kattari. “There is this idea that we should feel grateful to be asked on a date or grateful to be partnered with, which is totally not the case.”

Assistant Professor Anao Zhang has been named to the 2023 cohort of the Sojourns Scholar Leadership Program. Established by the Cambia Health Foundation in 2014, the program advances the next generation of palliative care leaders across a range of disciplines — including nursing, social work, pharmacy, communications, health systems, psychology and spirituality —with a goal of increasing palliative care access, awareness and quality across the nation. Zhang will receive a two-year, $180,000 grant for his project “Developing and implementing an inclusive and equitable framework to integrate palliative care services in adolescent and young adult (AYA) oncology programs.”