School of Social Work News
Ashley Cureton Awarded a Humanities Grant through Michigan HumanitiesAssistant Professor Ashley Cureton received a Humanities Grant through Michigan Humanities, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Humanities Grants emphasize collaboration among cultural, educational and community-based organizations and institutions in order to serve Michigan’s people with public humanities programming.
Together with Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County and local schools throughout Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Cureton will work with refugee youth to capture their pre-migration and resettlement experiences. The project will include the creation of a literary comic book as a way to provide guidance to future resettled refugee youth, their families, refugee resettlement agencies and schools on how to manage the difficult process of resettlement.
“Through the use of storytelling and the arts, we look forward to gaining a better understanding of how refugee youth across Washtenaw County navigate the resettlement process, which can often be quite overwhelming,” said Cureton.
- November 14, 2023
- Ashley Cureton is the 2022 Student Union Teacher of the Year
Assistant Professor Ashley Cureton has been named 2022 Student Union Teacher of the Year. This award is given by the School of Social Work students and recognizes faculty who have demonstrated commitment to improving DEI, made an outstanding and positive contribution to the School’s climate, and whose skills, dedication, understanding and caring have made a positive impact on students.
"I find teaching to be a profoundly rewarding experience. In fact, I believe I have the best job on the planet (SSW students are the best!). With the philosophy that education functions as a practice of freedom (as the late bell hooks said), I embrace a progressive, holistic, co-learning and engaged pedagogy with the adoption of cultural diversity in the classroom context. Freedom in education allows me to embrace the performative acts associated with teaching, offer a space for change, invention, and spontaneous shifts and serve as a catalyst to draw out thoughtful and critical discussions among students."
- May 26, 2022
- Ashley Cureton Named 2022 U-M Center for Academic Innovation Engagement Faculty Fellow
Assistant Professor Ashley Cureton has been named a 2022 Public Engagement Faculty Fellow by the U-M Center for Academic Innovation. The cohort of 14 fellows will participate in an intensive program designed to build engagement skills, understand key public-engagement concepts and reflect together on how public engagement fits into their scholarly identities.
"This program will help me to reflect on how public engagement fits into my scholarly identity. I am committed to considering the breadth of ways that my research creates public impact, from designing exhibits to working with policymakers to conducting community-engaged research projects to develop interventions and programs and to amplify the voices of refugee populations in the U.S. and abroad," said Cureton.
- March 23, 2022
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- Ashley Cureton Received 2021 Diversity Recognition Award from the Johns Hopkins Diversity Leadership Council
Assistant Professor Ashley Cureton has received a 2021 Diversity Recognition Award from the Johns Hopkins Diversity Leadership Council. The award recognizes outstanding accomplishments of faculty, staff, students and alumni whose demonstrable efforts advance diversity and inclusion at Johns Hopkins University. “I am so honored to receive this award. My postdoc and lectureship at Johns Hopkins overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic and a heightened awareness of the systemic racism and racial inequities in higher education and across the U.S., so I was adamant about developing effective strategies to create equitable outcomes for underrepresented populations by engaging in DEI initiatives. I hope to continue to engage in DEI work as a new faculty member at the University of Michigan.”
- September 29, 2021
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