School of Social Work News

Professors Andy Grogan-Kaylor and Shawna Lee’s research on the relationship between gender inequity and child abuse is featured in Michigan News. Garret Pace, PhD ‘22, and Kaitlin Paxton Ward, PhD ‘22 are also co-authors on the study, which found that gender inequality at the adult level perpetuates women’s economic insecurity that contributes to higher levels of child abuse.

Earlier this month, the School of Social Work presented Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, in the School’s second annual Social Justice Changemaker Lecture. The program, “Social Change in Action: How to be a change agent in a world that feels out of control,” featured a conversation in which Walker and Dean Beth Angell explored ways to be a change agent during challenging times and discussed how philanthropy can be used as a force for social change.

“Ann Arbor and the university welcomed us with open arms, and we fell in love with this diverse, inclusive community.” Lecturer and ENGAGE: DETROIT Program Manager Ayesha Ghazi Edwin’s family history is chronicled in a story on U-M’s Center for South Asian Studies website. The story describes how the progressive values of their grandparents have shaped Ghazi Edwin, who is also an Ann Arbor Council member, and her sister, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, who is Michigan’s Chief Medical Executive.

Professor Luke Shaefer was quoted in a New York Times article describing the short-term surge in federal per child spending during the pandemic. “In my career, I’ve never seen anything so dramatic as the shift in resources to families with kids during the pandemic,” said Shaefer “Now we have much more evidence that these types of provisions can really work, and almost all of it is going away.”

Assistant Professor Rebeccah Sokol is part of the inaugural cohort of six new faculty members hired for U-M Institute of Firearm Injury Prevention to advance knowledge and identify solutions to the ongoing national epidemic. Sokol focuses her research on youth exposure to adversity, and on firearm injury and violence prevention.

Andy Grogan-Kaylor’s team won a Breakthrough Award at the inaugural Psych Tank Funding Competition, hosted by the U-M’s Eisenberg Family Depression Center. The team came in second place, winning $75,000 for their project “Mental health care for ALL kids! What are we waiting for?”

Luke Shaefer explains in Vox how federal government support during the COVID-19 pandemic prompted child poverty to fall sharply. “It was, indeed, a triumph of policy.”

Nick Espitia, Joint Doctoral Program in Social Work and Sociology, has successfully defended his dissertation entitled “Our Existence is a Political Issue: Examining the Political Participation of Undocumented Latinx Immigrants in the Midwest.” Katie Richards-Schuster served on his committee.

Espitia has accepted a tenure-track faculty position in the department of social work at Oakland University.