School of Social Work News

The School of Social Work’s marketing and web teams have won a Best of CASE District V Award for the School’s Centennial Timeline Project. The timeline depicts the School’s history from its origins to its current position as one of the world’s most prominent schools of social work. Initially designed as a physical installation, the timeline was reenvisioned during the pandemic as a three-prong initiative: 

A museum-quality installation in the School of Social Work Building. Custom-designed wallpaper depicts the architecture of the four School of Social Work buildings during the last century; plaques, photos and memorabilia detail specific moments in the School’s history.

 A four-page print version of the timeline was created for the centennial issue of our alumni magazine, Ongoing.

A digital version of the timeline is featured on the school’s Centennial website.

Designed as a brief overview — as opposed to a comprehensive history — the timeline is an interactive, community-sourced project that can expand to reflect contributions from the school alumni, faculty and students. All three versions end with a QR code, which allows the community to submit their own historical moment to the project. This was a long-term project that involved multiple departments including AV, development and facilities.

CASE is the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, a global non-profit association dedicated to educational advancement, alumni relations, communications, development, marketing and advancement services.

Professor Trina Shanks has been appointed board president of the Black Administrators, Researchers, and Scholars (BARS) group.  BARS was founded by the late Larry Davis, MSW '73 and  PhD '77, to aid in the development and advancement of Black social work scholars, researchers and administrators within the Social Work academic discipline.

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?”