School of Social Work News

Clinical Associate Professor Debra Mattison was awarded a 2022 Provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize. These awards honor faculty who have developed innovative approaches to teaching that incorporate creative pedagogies. Mattison along with a team from U-M’s Center for Interprofessional Education received the award for developing a fully virtual, co-curricular certificate program, for which Michigan Medicine’s Office of Patient Experience connects students with real patients, referred to as patient advisers, and their families. Mattison was also awarded an innovation prize in 2015 for an Interprofessional Education Team-Based Clinical Decision Making course.

Field Faculty Rosalva Osorio Cooksy and Clinical Professor Julie Ribaudo were part of the national task force that developed the Specialized Practice Curricular Guide for Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health, which was released in early April. The guide is part of the Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) Curricular Guide Resource Series.

Osorio Cooksy was part of the team developing Competency 5: Engage in Policy Practice. Ribaudo serves on CSWE’s National Task Force Steering Committee and led the team developing Competency 8: Intervention with Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations, and Communities. 
 
“The aim of the guide and the institute is to close the gap in social work education related to infants, young children and their caregivers. Despite a growing need for infant and early childhood mental health-informed professionals, very few MSW programs currently include related content in their curriculum,” said Ribaudo. “The guide offers materials, activities, and assignments that can be woven into almost any course related to work with children and families, especially in the field of mental health, school social work, medical social work, and child welfare.”
 
“My hope is that more social work programs implement infant and early childhood mental health content as there is a high need to build infant and early childhood workforce,” said Osorio Cooksy.  “Our infants, young children and families need support to build strong relationships.”

Clinical Associate Professors Dan Fischer and Debra Mattison, and Assistant Professor Anao Zhang are all members of Interprofessional Education (IPE) teams that won 2022 IPE Innovation & Excellence Awards. Fischer is part of the Effective Leadership Team. Mattison and Zhang are members of the Discharge Planning Simulation Team. Field Faculty Rosalva Osorio Cooksy had a poster as an Interprofessional Leadership Fellow. 

The awards were established to recognize and celebrate interprofessional education and practice across U-M’s health sciences schools, and were presented on Health Professions Education Day on April 5, 2022.

Professor Luke Shaefer has received the 2021 U-M President’s Award for Public Impact. This award honors individuals whose research and expertise tangibly address a major public-sector challenge.

Shaefer is a leading scholar of contemporary American social welfare policy and the inaugural director of U-M’s Poverty Solutions. He is co-author of the acclaimed book, “$2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America,” which helped lay the groundwork for current anti-poverty legislative efforts, including President Biden’s American Rescue Plan.

“It means a great deal to me to be at a university that has an award like this honoring public engagement. I think it really lifts up the importance of this kind of work,” Shaefer said. “I’m deeply honored to be a recipient because I greatly admire the scholars who have received it in the past.

MicroMasters student and returned Peace Corps volunteer Shannon Lynn Carter has received a Weiser Emerging Democracies Fellowship for Incoming Graduate Students. Emerging Democracies Fellowships are awarded to exceptional incoming graduate students who focus their work on emerging democracies, past or present. 

“It aligned with everything I had done as Youth Development Volunteer serving in Ukraine. I went into the Peace Corps knowing I wanted to develop as a person. I knew I had to go through something very difficult. I did not expect that, in the process, I would receive the Weiser Fellowship. I am extremely grateful now to be working for causes greater than I could have ever imagined and doing something that I feel is so meaningful. And I am grateful to be completing my second master's at the U-M School of Social Work.”

Carter served in Ukraine from September 2017 to when she was evacuated in March 2020 due to Covid-19. From Flint, Michigan, she took advantage of the statewide lockdown to complete our online MicroMasters program in under 12 weeks and deferred until she completed her first master's in Project Management at the Peace Studies and International Development Center at the University of Bradford Rotary Peace Center, England. She will start her MSW on campus in the fall with the intention of returning to Ukraine post-war. 

“What's happening in Ukraine is horrific,” she says. “My Ukrainian friends live-stream it. They don't know if they're going to make it the next day.  Paired with my Cyrillic linguistic skills and graduate-level credentials of social work and project management, I will be equipped with the tools to return to Ukraine and continue building on the democratic ideology that had originally inspired the creation of the U.S Peace Corps in the 1960s.” 

Apart from receiving the Weiser Emerging Democracies Fellowship, Carter has also received the Paul D. Coverdell  Fellowship, Rotary Peace Fellowship, and the Bill Huntly Fellowship.

The Association of Black Social Work Students (ABSWS) has received the Michigan Difference Professional Organization of the Year Award.  

“ABSWS has an ongoing presence at the University of Michigan and to continue the legacy, it is critical that their accomplishments be recognized,” said Clinical Assistant Professor Daicia Price.  “ABSWS has been an integral part of preparing for new accreditation requirements that involve anti-racism and social justice as a necessary part of the graduate curriculum. One of the amazing things about this group is that they have been using the curriculum and professional competencies to engage in and implement their strategic plan. They have been intentional about building collaborative networks and been creative and innovative about ways to combine the professional and social experience of social workers.”

The current ABSWS officers include: 

• Blair Baker - President
• Alex Black - Vice President
• J’Melia Richardson - Secretary & Social Coordinator
• Quentin Harris - Parliamentarian

The School of Social Work has again been named the nation’s top social work school in U.S. News & World Report’s 2023 Best Graduate School rankings, which were published today.

Professor Lisa Wexler’s research is featured in an article on resilience, which is the April 2022 cover story of NIH News in Health. Wexler discusses how tapping into protective factors — including cultural traditions such as ceremonies, teachings and practices — can help build resilience.