Joint PhD Program News

Rick Rodems successfully defended his dissertation entitled "Hidden Hardship: Three Essays on Poverty and Material Welfare in the United States."  His committee consisted of Luke Shaefer, Fabian Pfeffer (co-chairs), Sandra Danziger and Greta Krippner. Rodems has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at U-M Poverty Solutions.

Rick Rodems successfully defended his dissertation entitled "Hidden Hardship: Three Essays on Poverty and Material Welfare in the United States."  His committee consisted of Luke Shaefer, Fabian Pfeffer (co-chairs), Sandra Danziger and Greta Krippner. Rodems has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at U-M Poverty Solutions.

Charity Hoffman successfully defended her dissertation "The 21st Century Mother: How New Moms Navigate Work, Family and the Struggle to Have it All” and obtained her PhD in Social Work and Sociology. Her committee consisted of Karin Martin, Katie Richards-Schuster (co-chairs), Fatma Muge Gocek and Mary Ruffolo. Hoffman has accepted a Research Project Coordinator position at UM's Women & Infants Mental Health Program in the Department of Psychiatry.

Rachel Burrage successfully defended her dissertation "Trauma, Loss, Resilience, and Resistance in the Beauval Indian Residential School” and obtained her PhD in Social Work and Psychology.  Her committee consisted of Joseph Gone, Sandra Momper (co-chairs), Donna Nagata and Karen Staller. She has accepted a tenure track faculty position with University of Hawaii at the Manoa's Myron B. Thompson School of Social Work.

Laura Yakas successfully defended her dissertation "Love in a Time of Madness: The Importance of Purpose and Belonging in Healing and Harnessing Madness". Her committee consisted of Karen Staller, Damani Partridge (co-chairs), Richard Tolman and Holly Peters-Golden. Yakas has accepted a summer position at a Global Leadership Forum for high school students.

Kathryn Berringer, Alex Lu (MSW student) and Joyce Y. Lee received the Doctoral Poster Awards at the School of Social Work's Social Justice in Social Work Research Symposium. Berringer was awarded for her poster, "Examining Drivers of Health Inequities in HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Implementation in the US". Lu and Lee for their poster "Spank, Smack, & Whoop”: Stay-At-Home Parents’ Spanking Tweets".

Joyce Lee, PhD student, was accepted as a student editorial board member for the journal Child Maltreatment for 2018-2019.

Director of Joint PhD Program and Associate Professor Daphne Watkins is one of five social work scholars selected to be featured at the Society for Social Work and Research's (SSWR) Brief and Brilliant TEDx-style session in January. This year’s conference theme is "Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity and Justice". Related to this theme, each speaker will be asked to complete the statement “I dream a world….”. The Brief and Brilliant session was developed last year with the goal of translating social work research to engage a broad audience and emphasize the public relevance of this work.