Faculty News

Assistant Professor Reuben Miller conducted a workshop on prisoner reentry for researchers and service providers in New York.

The Curtis Research and Training Center at the School of Social Work hosted the first annual Program Evaluation Symposium on Friday, February 14, 2014.  This day-long event was organized by the Program Evaluation Group and culminated with a keynote address by the President of the American Evaluation Symposium (AEA), Dr. Beverly Parsons.

Dr. Parson's keynote, "Visionary Evaluation for a Sustainable, Equitable Future," highlighted the need for systems thinking, buidling new relationships, and an emphasis on sustainable, equitable living in evaluation. After the keynote address, attendees were invited to participate in small group discussions based on the topic of the keynote. Dr. Parsons will use feedback from the event to inform the direction of the AEA Annual Conference.

Assistant Professor Daphne Watkins will deliver the presidential address at the American Men's Studies Association annual meeting.  

Assistant Professor Luke Shaefer is a new member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.  New members are nominated by current Academy members in recognition of their significant and ongoing professional contributions to the field of social insurance.  The National Academy of Social Insurance is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization made up of the nation’s leading experts on social insurance. Its mission is to advance solutions to challenges facing the nation by increasing public understanding of how social insurance contributes to economic security.

The Curtis Center Program Evaluation Group (CC-PEG) received a grant from the New York Community Trust to improve the macro social work profesion.  The awarded Place-Based Evaluation (PBE) Fellowship project was developed to better understand the needs and challenges related to building internal evaluation capacity within non-profit organizations.  The project will place three (3) PBE Fellows into community-based non-profit organizations in southeast Michigan for 20 hours per week for a period of eight (8) months.

The aims of the PBE Fellowship are to: (1) provide recent MSW graduates with the skills and experience necessary to work as professional evaluators in the field of social work; (2) provide communtiy-based non-profit organizations with quality evaluation services at a reduced cost; and (3) build and test the internal capacity for evaluation at each organization.

CC-PEG is happy to announce the selection of the PBE Fellows and non-profit organizations they will be placed in:

• Phylicia Allen, MSW, will be placed at Detroit Parent Network
• Ashley Eason, MSW, will be placed at Detroit Police Athletic League
• Lauren Emerson, MSW, will be placed at SOS Community Services in Ypsilanti

For more information on the PBE Fellowship project, contact [email protected]. 

Assistant Professor David Cordova received a grant from the Detroit Community Academic Urban Research Center to support the Preventing Substance Abuse and Mental Health Problems among Detroit Hispanic Youth project. He will work with the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation to eliminate substance use and mental health disparities experienced by Latino youth residing in southwest Detroit.

Assistant Professor Kristin Seefeldt will work with Abt Associates to conduct longitudinal, qualitative interviews with participants from Abt Associates "Innovative Strategies for Increasing Self-Sufficiency (ISIS)” program. The ISIS project is a rigorous evaluation of promising strategies which promote employment and self-sufficiency among economically disadvantaged families.  The focus of the ISIS study, funded by the Administration for Children and Families, is on career pathways as the main intervention framework.  

Associate Professor Mary Ruffolo and Adrienne Lapidos, Program Coordinator for the Certificate in Integrated Behavioral Health and Primary Care received an award for an evaluation project. The project evaluates the integrated behavioral health and primary care learning community model established by the Department of Community Health to facilitate public behavioral health sites and primary health care sites in the state in implementing integrated care models. The evaluation involves assessing progress on the learning community tasks and goals, examining the degree by which participating sites are moving toward integration of physical and behavioral health services for adults living with serious mental health or substance abuse disorders and chronic physical health illnesses.