Salem State University School of Social Work E-Newsletter Spring 2017

SPRING 2017

INDEX Faculty Presentations, Keynotes 2 Faculty Publications

2

Upcoming Events

3

Friends of the School of Social Work

3

Faculty 3 Faculty/Social Work Activities 4 Women’s March

5

First Annual Menstrual Products Drive

6

Student Accomplishments 6 Accolades for our Alumni 6

LETTER FROM ASSOCIATE DEAN CAROL E. BONNER

The 2016-2017 academic year is in the “second half.” We started the year with a wonderful celebration of the School’s 30th anniversary, the beginning of a rapidly moving, productive year. Our major task this year has been preparation for our Council on Social Work Reaccreditation.

Simultaneously, the faculty in both programs worked diligently to revision program curricula. I am extremely excited and proud of the result of their efforts.

By the end of this academic year, we will have said “goodbye” to two of our MSW faculty members. Both colleagues were very devoted to students and their learning.

Mary Byrne, PhD, retired from the School of Social Work (SSW) in December of 2016. As many of you know, Mary’s 21-year career at Salem State included numerous contributions to teaching, administration and service. Serving as Chair, MSW Program Coordinator, Coordinator of Field in the course of her time at Salem State, her administrative leadership and expertise were invaluable.

Sandra Yudilevich Espinoza, PhD, is leaving SSW in May. Sandra’s contributions to SSW have included her teaching content on Older Adults and End-of-Life. In addition to providing leadership for the “Death, Dying, Grief, and Bereavement across the Life Span” course, she also served on our admissions committee and she chaired the Awards Committee for the university.

Faculty “comings and goings” are a routine part of life in academia. I’m sure many of you will share our sadness while extending best wishes and thanks to Mary and Sandra upon hearing of their departures. A faculty search committee, chaired by Michael Melendez, PhD, reviewed the CVs of many strong candidates and we hope to welcome a new colleague in the fall of 2017.

Transformative Learning for Social Work Practice

SALEM STATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK

The newsletter shares some of the many activities of our faculty this year.

It’s fair to say that Salem State faculty have a strong presence locally, nationally and, in some cases, internationally. The recognition of their work and expertise has been a source of pride for all of us.

Our programs are robust with student enrollments, as we opened with more than 700 students this fall. In addition, a third cohort of MSW continued

1

Saturday Program students began in January. They are well underway in their classes—another impressive cohort of students who bring significant professional experience to the program.

Finally, along with our colleagues in education and psychology at Salem State, social work was approved to offer an MSW program option that will graduate MSW students with an initial license in school social work. This program will be launched in the fall of 2017.

Salem State SSW’s second professional development program will be held this year between June 6 and June 27, 2017. Topics will include trauma, leadership, suicide assessment and intervention, participatory photography as a therapeutic tool and intervention to advance youth permanency. A special workshop, July 16 and 17, will be entitled “Substance Use and Addictive Disorders: Energizing the Community to Fight Back.” This two-day intensive, inter professional offering is designed to strengthen understanding, assessment and practice skills to effectively practice in the area of addictions. Led by David Selden, LICSW, information regarding this conference will appear in our brochure and on our website.

Mirick, R.G. & Davis, A.D. (2016, November). Statistical Ability and

MSW Students' Anxiety, Confidence, and Avoidance of

Statistics, poster presentation at the 2016 Annual Council

on Social Work Education Program Meeting, Atlanta, GA. Steenrod, S. & Mirick, R.G. (2016, December). The epidemic of

opiate addiction: Implications for social workers’ work

with opiate addicted parents. Center for Professional

Innovation Workshop. Foxborough, MA. Steenrod, S. & Mirick, R.G. (2016, November). The epidemic of

opiate addiction: Implications for social workers’ work

with opiate addicted parents. Center for Professional

Innovation Workshop. Sturbridge, MA. Steenrod, S. & Mirick, R.G. (2016, October). The epidemic of

opiate addiction: Implications for social workers’ work

with opiate addicted parents. Center for Professional

Innovation Workshop. Peabody, MA.

When our next newsletter is developed in the fall, our self-studies will be complete and submitted, our site visit for reaccreditation will be scheduled and we will be transitioned to our new curricula.

We hope you will have a great spring and relaxing summer.

Wladkowski, S.P. & Mirick, R.G. (2016, November). Pregnancy and

Doctoral Education in Social Work and Other Health-Care

Fields, paper presentation at the 2016 Annual Council on

Social Work Education Program Meeting, Atlanta, GA.

I am always interested in hearing from you at cbonner@ salemstate.edu. We are also very appreciative of your support of SSW. Without all of your support, we couldn’t continue to strengthen the academic excellence of our programs.

Faculty Publications

Best, Carol

Faculty Presentations, Keynotes

Byrne, M. (2017, March) New England Consortium of Field

Educations Field Instructor Workshop, Supervision in

times of trauma. Salem State University, Salem, MA. Byrne, M. (2016, June). Supervising in times of trauma. 12th

International Interdisciplinary Conference on Clinical

Supervision. Adelphi University, Garden City, NY. Byrne, M. (2016, May) Is there room in professional educational

programs to be transformational? Council on Teaching

and Learning: Pearls & Perils Conference, Salem State

University, Salem, MA. Mirick, R.G. (2016, September). Suicide prevention through

relational connections. Friends of the Salem State School

of Social Work Fall Professional Development Workshop, 2 Salem, MA.

Davis, A., Mirick, R.G., & Wladkowski, S. (in press). Lessons

learned for successful dissertation completion from social

work doctoral graduates. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, Mirick, R.G. & Davis, A. (in press). Making Meaning of MSW

Students’ Statistical Abilities: The Role of Self-Efficacy

and Knowledge-Based Assessment. Journal of Social

Work Education.

Mirick, R.G. (2016). Reactance Theory: A model for instructor

communication in the classroom. Scholarship of Teaching

and Learning in Psychology, 2(3), 219-229.

Mirick, R. (2016). Challenges in recruiting parents to participate in

child welfare research: Implications for study design and

research practice. Child & Family Social Work, 21(4), 484-491.

Mirick, R.G. & Steenrod, S. (2016). Opioid Use Disorder,

attachment, and parenting: Key concerns for practitioners.

Child & Adolescent Social Work Journal, 33(6), 547-557.

Steenrod, S. & Mirick, R.G. (2016). Substance use disorders and

referral to treatment in substantiated cases of child maltreatment. Child & Family Social Work.

FRIENDS OF THE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK

Annual Spring Professional Development Workshop "Family Issues Related to Adults with Severe Mental Illness in Post-Deinstitutionalization" Presented by Phyllis Solomon, PhD Saturday, March 25 8:45 am Registration and breakfast 9:30 am-1 pm Workshop and Presentation of Outstanding Social Worker Alumni Award Waterfront Hotel and Suites, Salem Co-sponsored by the Northeast Regional Council of the NASW Massachusetts Chapter.

The workshop will further include a review of competencies and examples of intervention strategies and programs that can help social workers assist families of an adult with a severe mental illness. The relevance of these issues to systems other than mental health, including child welfare, substance abuse, criminal justice, Veterans Administration and homeless/shelter systems will be made explicit.

Register now for this workshop or consider making a gift to the School of Social Work.

FACULTY

Lisa Johnson, PhD The Salem State University Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award is given annually to a Salem State student, alumna/us, faculty member, and staff or administrator for their outstanding and significant contributions to the cause of freedom, justice, peace, and equality.

Lisa Johnson was nominated for her work in organizing Salem State’s first #BlackLivesMatter Teach-In in 2015 and in being a founder of the Working Group for Racial Justice. She is a courageous and consistent advocate for equity and justice and a talented conversation facilitator. She is passionate about students and is often sought out for advice by many students—in and out of social work. Johnson has an incredible work ethic and he work is in keeping with the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—compassionate, committed, courageous, valuing differences, accepting challenges, and taking risks to achieve goals!

Elspeth Slayter, PhD Disability Rights Advocacy Efforts and Research National Association of Social Workers News has featured the work of Professor Elspeth Slayter in its recent issue.

Information about her research and activism related to disability civil rights are highlighted. Professor Slayter is one of a growing number of social work academics who are committed to promoting community inclusion and self-determination for people with disabilities worldwide, emphasizing the importance of lifting up the voices of people with disabilities themselves. socialworkers.org/ pubs/news/2017/1/social_workers_advocate.asp

continued 3

FACULTY

Faculty/Social Work Activities Shannon Mokoro, PhD Shannon Mokoro’s paper “Building Culturally Competent Schools: Broken Promises, Challenges and Opportunities” was accepted for the New England Educational Research Association conference. She will be presenting with Elizabeth Ambe, PhD, from UMass Lowell.

The conference is in April in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Shelley Steenrod, PhD A new Head Start initiative targets children of opioid addicts - The Boston Globe, 1.30.17 In a grim indicator of the toll the opioid crisis is taking on children, a program is launching in Massachusetts specifically aimed at newborns, infants, and toddlers with opioid-addicted parents.

bostonglobe.com/business/2017/01/15/new-head-start-initiativetargets-children-opioid-addicts/iUfZBMPGLHzHn5LBcOZe9N/ story.html?s_campaign=8315 Rebecca Mirick, PhD Reflections on a Collaborative Group Approach with Evening Students Rebecca Mirick will receive the “Journal of Baccalaureate Social Work’s Best Teaching Note of the Year Award.” She will be presented with this award at the award dinner of Baccalaureate Program Directors annual conference in March 4, 2017.

Shannon Mokoro, PhD, and Laurie Grant, LICSW Shannon Mokoro and Laurie Grant have edited a book that is under production with Oxford University Press. Several of our faculty have contributed chapters, including: Lisa Johnson, Sandra Y. Espinoza, Allyson Livingstone, Rebecca Mirick, Elspeth Slayter, and Shelley Steenrod. The title of the book is Feminist Perspectives on Social Work Practice: The Intersecting Lives of Women in the 21st Century.

Elspeth Slayter, PhD During the January break, Slayter had the opportunity to do consulting work related to fostering community-based opportunities for children with disabilities in the child welfare system in Russia. Based in Moscow and funded by the Eurasia Foundation, Slayter visited a number of programs designed to support children with disabilities in the community—a new practice in Russia which to date takes a more segregation-oriented approach to the support of this population.

The bulk of Slayter’s work involved consulting with the group Nastavniki, an organization specializing in mentoring young people in the child welfare system—most recently including young people with disabilities. This makes Nastavniki a trail-blazer in Russia, due to their willingness to step up and support a stigmatized population of children in need. Alexandra Telitsyna, PhD, executive director, is passionate about this work, and has led the organization to embrace the challenge of supporting youth with disabilities to their best potential. Slayter functioned as a consultant to Telitsyna and her team of social workers on the topics of reframing disability and best practices in evaluating mentoring outcomes. Slayter presented information about best practices used in the United States, such as the use of successful adults with disabilities as mentors to youth with disabilities—especially with respect to mentoring around employment-related topics. Also addressed was the importance of developing the work-readiness skills of youth with disabilities and working to counter disability discrimination and stigma that is present in both the United States and the Russian Federation—specifically through empowerment-oriented work with youth with disabilities in mentoring relationships. Slayter also introduced the use of psychometrically tested outcome measures for self-efficacy, self-confidence and quality of life for use in the evaluation of Nastavniki’s mentoring program.

Slayter’s work has recently been re-funded by the Eurasia Foundation, and she hopes to take a group of students with her on her next consulting trip to the Russian Federation.

4

WOMEN’S MARCH At the heart of the social work profession is social justice. A few ways in which social justice is activated is through advocacy and organized protest. On January 21, 2017 one of the largest grassroots efforts in U.S. history took place. This effort is known as the Women’s March on Washington. Word spread quickly about this movement and within days approximately 400 women’s marches were planned and organized across the world. On this momentous day, over five million individuals marched in support of women’s rights. The motto “women’s rights are human rights” was the primary focus. In addition to bringing visibility to women’s rights, there was also a focus on racial justice, LGBT rights, health care reform, reproductive rights, immigration reform, and protection of the environment.

Given that social justice is critical to the field of social work, a number Salem State University Social Work students, faculty, staff and adjunct faculty participated in this event. Here are some of the pictures that were taken that capture the magnitude and the importance of this march. Given the recent changes in our new administration at the White House, we know that this is only the beginning.

5

FIRST ANNUAL MENSTRUAL PRODUCTS DRIVE While people who are homeless often know where to find a safe place to sleep or a meal to eat, taking care of menstrual hygiene needs is often a much more difficult challenge for those who were assigned a female gender at birth (i.e. women and transmen).

Although tampons and sanitary pads are often at the top the list at shelters, donors do not often provide these items. But the need for menstrual products does not only exist among people who are homeless—it also exists among low income people.

Did you know that Salem State University’s student ombudsman runs its own food pantry? In order to address the menstrual needs of women studying at Salem State, Karen Traversy, Pam Hodgson and Elspeth Slayter initiated a menstrual products drive in December 2016. Donations were given to the university’s food pantry just before the holiday break. The team plans to continue this tradition in the years to come. We look forward to your support of this important effort!

STUDENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS

ACCOLADES FOR OUR ALUMNI

Congratulations to the following Salem State University Student Ambassadors for NASW

MSW Graduate Colleen Shannon will be presented NASW's Emerging Leader Award at their Annual Awards Ceremony, April 6, 2017.

Danielle Meuse, BSW Program Maria Scippa, BSW Program Coleen Dalton, MSW Program Melissa Moore, MSW Program

6