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It gave me a sense of what’s behind us and made me think about what’s ahead. —FILM ATTENDEE “You could almost say Jarrett was one of the original ‘nasty women,’ very opinionated, very powerful, very unafraid to say what she thought,” said Park. The nuances were taken into account, the film’s scope was expanded—and the storyline was extended right up to the present. Several generations and perspectives were given voice through interviews with former Dean Howard Parad; Professor Emerita Joyce Everett; Jean Camille Hall, Ph.D. ’04; Professor Joshua Miller; and alums Alan Siskind, Ph.D. ’72; Wendy Bassett, M.S.W. ’03; Tomás Alvarez, M.S.W. ’06; Frank Bayles, M.S.W. ’14; Zach Wigham, M.S.W. ’16; and Maggie Furey, M.S.W. ’18. The film’s clips of Alvarez, a pioneer of hip-hop therapy, working with “at-promise”
kids, as he calls them, show how relevant an SSW education is today. “Schools are living organisms,” Akeret said. “If they are sensitive and alert, they will grow and change as the world grows and changes.” “There are two take-home messages from this film for me,” Dean Yoshioka said. “First, that our School has been unique and extraordinary from the beginning. Its block program, for example, allowed for incredible depth in the curriculum, depth that we retain to this day. The second takeaway is that our attention to racial justice was introduced in the School’s early years. It’s constant and evolving, and it hasn’t been easy. But it is a true commitment.” ◆
SPOKEN WORD
“ The purpose of your
work is not to save anyone, but to be part of the restoration of your own humanity by being in service toward the restoration of all of humanity.” —SONYA RENEE TAYLOR, 2018 commencement speaker
The Study of Caring Welcoming Ben Capistrant While doing field research in Malawi in 2006, Benjamin Capistrant experienced a turning point that would set a trajectory for his areas of specialty. Capistrant, who joined the SSW faculty in July as an assistant professor, was studying people caring for aging parents with undiagnosed dementia. At the same time, his own family was caring for elders with dementia. “The universality of this idea that families care for each other hit me,” he said. What he refers to as his aha moment sparked an ongoing fascination with this research question: “How do families care for each other, and what does caregiving look like when families look different and have different resources?” The search for answers has led him to study families in India, where family structures look different than in the United States, as well as gay male couples in which one partner has prostate cancer. Capistrant is in the unusual position of holding an appointment at SSW while teaching half time in the statistics and data science department at Smith College, where his husband, Miles Ott, is an assistant professor. Capistrant, 37, earned his master’s and doctorate in public health at Harvard University and his bachelor’s degree at Boston University. In the data science department at Smith, Capistrant last year taught intro and intermediate statistics and population health courses. The exact courses he will teach at SSW have yet to be determined, but he is already working with students earning Ph.D.s and serving on committees. “He is a great collaborator and we anticipate a wonderful colleague and contributor for the SSW,” Dean Marianne Yoshioka said in her letter announcing his appointment. “My background and interest as a methodologist lends itself to some natural collaboration,” he said. “Those are pieces I’m already starting to develop and cultivate, research questions with other faculty here.” While new to social work, Capistrant sees an enormous amount of intersection between the social justice aspect of social work and public health, particularly the social determinants of health. “Social work as a discipline has done a really nice job of crafting an identity and having an organized set of principles,” he said. “I think that’s exciting to join the ranks and be a part of.”—Laurie Loisel
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