School of Social Work

Governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed Michigan Senate Bill 1012 into law. The legislation provides for the creation of a Student Mental Health Apprenticeship Retention and Training grant program (SMART), paying graduate social work students $25 an hour for their field education in public schools settings.  The legislation was supported by The School’s Joint Task Force on Stipends and the social work student campaign Payments for Placements in partnership with the Michigan Chapter of the National Association of Social Work.  

"As this legislation demonstrates, paid fieldwork is a win-win. The

DEI Program Manager Dillon Cathro has been elected to the U-M Police Department Oversight Committee, which receives and makes recommendations regarding grievances against any police officers deputized by the university. “Social Workers have a responsibility to tackle difficult issues that impact our most vulnerable and marginalized community members, both on and off campus, and police conduct is one such issue,” said Cathro.” I'm hopeful that the committee will provide thoughtful, intentional leadership and recommendations that reimagine the ways security and safety are maintained.”

Professor Rogério M. Pinto has been named a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor.

Sponsored by the Office of the Provost, and jointly administered by the U-M National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID) and the Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (ODEI), the Diversity and Social Transformation Professorship is an honor designation for senior faculty who have the highest levels of achievement in demonstrating a commitment to the university’s ideals of diversity, equity and inclusion through their scholarship, teaching or service and engagement. The initial

Welcome, Dr. Santa J. Ono, named by the Board of Regents as 15th President-Elect of the University of Michigan. “I fiercely believe that higher education — through our scholarship, our service, and our graduates — can deliver the changes we need to build healthy, sustainable, and just communities,” he said.

Professor Brian Perron has been invited to speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee regarding his investigation of a Russian academic paper mill. Such entities provide fraudulent services – ghostwriting, brokering authorship on accepted papers, and falsifying data–to researchers seeking to publish articles in peer-reviewed journals. Perron has identified approximately 200 papers in the published literature that have evidence of being brokered through this paper mill. His investigation led to the retraction of 30 published articles from the International Journal

PhD student Valerie Taing has been awarded a 2022-2023 Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship. The Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship is one of the most prestigious awards granted by the Rackham Graduate School. Doctoral candidates who expect to graduate within six years after beginning their degrees are eligible to apply, and the strength and quality of their dissertation abstract, publications and presentations, and recommendations are all taken into consideration when granting this award.

Sam Gilliam, the abstract artist whose work “The Real Blue” was commissioned for the School of Social Work died on Saturday at his home in Washington, D.C. He was 88. “The Real Blue” is the centerpiece of the School’s original art collection.

“Sam Gilliam brought his dynamic use of structures and brilliant deployment of colors to the “The Real Blue,” said Dean Emerita Paula Allen-Meares. This commissioned work of art anchors the collection of artistic works at the School of Social Work. He contextualized this work within the spirit of social justice and the vibrant tapestry of the America we

On July 1, 2022, Kathryn Elizabeth (Beth) Angell was appointed as dean of the School of Social Work. She was previously dean of the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Social Work and, before that, held a number of leadership roles at Rutgers University in New Jersey. We caught up with Angell as she prepared to move to Ann Arbor, to learn more about her experiences, perspectives and hopes for the future.

Garrett Pace, Joint Doctoral Program in Social Work and Sociology, has successfully defended his dissertation entitled "Corporal Punishment Bans in Global Perspective: Conceptualization and Child- and Caregiver-Reported Outcomes.” His committee consisted of Shawna Lee and Andrew Grogan-Kaylor. Pace has accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Assistant Dean of Field Education Dan Fischer’s Interprofessional Education (IPE) team has won a 2022 bronze award from 1EdTech for their collaboration with U-M Informational & Technology Services.  Their project, Competency-Based Tracking for Interprofessional Education Leveraging Institutional Data, will leverage data to track competencies across U-M’s approximately 35 IPE offerings, which involve 5,000 students from 10 schools across 3 campuses. The team is in the final stages of preparing this project for launch and utilization on the U-M campuses.