School of Social Work News

Dean Emerita Paula Allen-Meares spoke with public radio station WNIJ about an initiative in Rockford, Illinois using poetry to increase health awareness. The six-part video program was created in partnership with the University of Illinois in Chicago, of which Allen-Meares is chancellor emerita. 

Allen-Meares has a long history of using the arts as an avenue to advance social work. During her tenure at the School of Social Work, she established the School’s groundbreaking and influential art collection.

Assistant Professor Rebeccah Sokol is the principal investigator of a three-year project recently funded by the CDC entitled “Evaluating a school-based social and material needs identification system to prevent youth violence involvement.” The project will evaluate the effect of Pathways to Potential (P2P) on youth violence outcomes by using administrative data sources and surveys of key program staff. P2P is a Michigan Department of Health and Human Services program that seeks to improve school communities’ social conditions by identifying and reducing the level and concentration of risk factors for chronic absenteeism. Professor Joe Ryan is a co-investigator of this project.

Lecturer Trevor Bechtel, PhD ‘08, spoke with Michigan Radio’s Stateside about how the prevalence of guns in our society affect police interactions. Bechtel is also the Student Engagement & Strategic Projects Manager at U-M’s Poverty Solutions and is a co-author of their recent report examining the use of force by law enforcement.

PhD Student Irene Routté has recently received both the Lester P. Monts Award for Outstanding Graduate Research from U-M’s African Studies Center, as well as an honorable mention from the 2022 Bennetta Jules-Rosette Graduate Essay Award contest from The Association for Africanist Anthropology. Routté’s essay, “Will You Take Care? Bio-Space, Racial Assemblages and the U.S. Youth Refugee Resettlement Welfare System,” is an ethnographic case study of an unaccompanied refugee minor from Nigeria during his first year in care under the United States Office of Refugee Resettlement. This essay was also awarded the School’s Henry Meyer award.

Professor Luke Shaefer spoke with Michigan Radio about a new report from U-M’s Poverty Solutions, which shows that U.S. police officers kill more people in days than police in other countries kill in years. “This is one place where, if we’re trying to see things from the perspective of police … that fear, that vigilance really of anyone and everyone that they encounter may have a gun does look like it drives more police shootings,” he said. Shaefer is Poverty Solutions’ faculty director and one of the authors of the report.

Professor Andy Grogan-Kaylor is quoted in a feature in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health titled “The strange endurance of corporal punishment.” The article explores the fact that while corporal punishment of children is an extremely loaded issue that transcends cultures, the research is almost entirely uniform in finding that corporal punishment doesn’t work and has enduring negative effects on children. “Using spanking might buy you an hour of quiet or an hour of better behaviour,” Grogan-Kaylor said. “But over the course of the long term, it'll lead to all kinds of problems.”

Professor Luke Shaefer was quoted in a Detroit News article on how the Earned Income and Child Tax Credit can make a critical difference for families with low to moderate incomes. 

“This is an important time of year for households who are working hard to make ends meet,” said Shaefer. “Tax refunds help families pay down debt, invest in car repairs, and all the other things they need. We all benefit when families can access these resources.”

Andrea Mora, PhD student Social Work and Developmental Psychology, is one of the Grand Challenges for Social Work's inaugural cohort of fellowship awardees. In addition to supporting policy and practice proposals, the fellowships also broaden the pipeline of social workers equipped for and committed to tackling and surmounting the Grand Challenges. Mora’s research proposal is entitled: “Build Healthy Relationships to End Violence: Protective factors for exposure to community violence and neighborhood-based sexual harassment among Latino/a adolescents in the U.S. and Mexico."