Spring 2020 InDepth - Smith College School for Social Work

InDepth SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SO CIAL WORK

SPRING 2020

I N THI S I SS U E ENDURED STIGMAS A NEW APPROACH KEEPING WITH TRADITION

Current student Michelle Humbert laughs during class.

InDepth is published by the Smith College School for Social Work. Its goal is to connect our School community, celebrate recent accomplishments and capture the research and scholarship at the School for Social Work.

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For some alums, horses and dogs are standard officemates.

EDITORIAL TEAM

Lucie Bodnar Laura Noel DESIGN

Lilly Pereira Maureen Scanlon Murre Creative CONTRIBUTORS

Lucie Bodnar Dawn Faucher Laurie Loisel Tynan Power Faye S. Wolfe Megan Rubiner Zinn PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Shana Sureck

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR AND ALUMNI UPDATES CAN BE SENT TO:

InDepth Managing Editor Smith College School for Social Work Lilly Hall Northampton, MA 01063 413-585-7950 indepth@smith.edu ©2020

FO LLOW US O N:

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SMI TH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

SPRING 2020

F EATU RE S

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Reframing HIV

After nearly four decades, social workers continue to be on the cutting-edge in their work with HIV-positive clients, at-risk communities and a society that continues to stigmatize them

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Four-Legged Colleagues

Alums embrace animal-assisted therapy

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Making the Case

Why we teach psychodynamic theory

DE P A RT M E NTS

02 From the Dean A note from Marianne Yoshioka

03 SSWorks School News + Updates Faculty Notes

27 Alumni News Alumni Desk Alumni Lives Alumni Profile

34 Post Script An End Note

O N T H E COV E R

Current student Jon Kutnick listens intently during class.

Photo by Shana Sureck.

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M ARIAN NE R .M . Y OSH IOK A, M .S.W., M BA, PH .D .

My Dear Community I am so grateful for our alumni, students, faculty, staff and friends who continue to band together and generate not only inspiring visions, but also incredible actions.

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Like all of you, SSW is adjusting to the effects of this global pandemic. As social workers, we are focused on the impact of COVID-19 on under-resourced communities, as educators we are faced with the challenge of moving our program to alternate modes of instruction for summer 2020 and as human beings we are all struggling to adjust.

This pandemic has highlighted our sociocultural, political and economic disparities in new and painful ways. So many in our SSW community are finding innovative methods to bring aid to those most in need while also voicing the urgency for greater justice. I am so grateful for our alumni, students, faculty, staff and friends who continue to band together and generate not only inspiring visions, but also incredible actions.

Care and concern for the safety of our students and the community has been at the forefront of every difficult decision we’ve made over the last months. As calls for social distancing moved to mandates for sheltering in place, we quickly recalled students from their field placements around the country. We have since taken up the task of how to deliver a top educational experience through alternate modes of instruction. This is no small feat and our faculty are being character­ istically thoughtful in how they will (re)create meaningful learning experiences. As so much of our program centers

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around the vibrant, supportive community created each summer, we are focusing on the ways we can create an equally supportive community remotely.

Like our programs, this issue of InDepth is only available online. I think you will find that while we have had to find flexibility in our methods of delivery, we have not compromised the high quality for which we are known. In this issue we pay homage to former Dean Howard Parad who himself represents excellence in clinical practice education. We also examine our long-standing commitment to teaching a strong foundation of psychodynamic theories as part of an excellent clinical social work education. And finally, this issue highlights faculty and alumni on the cutting-edge of healing the painful stigmas endured by HIV-positive clients.

As a community we have so much to be proud of. While each of you manages your daily concern for yourself and your loved ones, you are finding myriad ways to support not only our students but also each other. We’ve seen it through donations to our newly created emergency fund for students, through webinars to teach best practices in telehealth and in countless other unseen, but equally significant, ways. I remain certain as we continue navi­gating these unprecedented challenges that even from a distance, our SSW community will thrive. ◆

SSWorks News from Lilly Hall IN THIS SECTION

SCHOOL NEWS FACULTY NOTES

Beck Liatt, M.S.W. ’19, at left, shares a smile with a classmate.

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Easing the Burden Houston’s Menninger Scholars program sets a lead

Concerned about the debt that its students carry, SSW launched the Menninger Scholars Program, an innovative partnership with the renowned Menninger Clinic in Houston, Texas.

The new program is the brainchild of Dean Marianne Yoshioka, M.S.W., MBA, Ph.D., Associate Dean Irene Rodríguez-Martin, Ed.D., and Field Director Katelin Lewis-Kulin, M.S.W. ’00.

“We are trying to be creative in helping our students to achieve their clinical goals,” said Rodríguez-Martin. “And we’ve been looking to address the fact that many of our students come here with a great amount of debt. The internships they do as part of the degree program are usually unpaid. On top of the thirty hours a week they work at their internships, about seventy percent of our students work part-time to support themselves. Many of them struggle with a big financial burden.”

To ease that burden, SSW set out to find placement locations that offered exceptional learning opportunities, affordability and, when possible, diverse populations that would help students feel safe and welcome in their placements.

Houston, for example, has a cost of living that is lower than the national average, comparing very favorably to cities such as New York City and San Francisco.

Menninger Scholars receive a generous package of support: a $3,000 merit scholarship, a living stipend of $300 a month

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during their placement, and up to $1,000 for travel between Northampton and Houston. There is also $500 allocated in support of conference attendance. The package is in addition to any financial aid the student is already receiving.

In 2020–21 the School will select between two and five of its strongest second-year students to become Scholars. A similar arrangement will be set up in Austin, Texas; students doing placement there will each receive a living stipend, up to $1,000 for travel between Texas and Northampton and $500 in conference monies.

The Menninger Clinic is also excited about the partnership. It has committed to contributing an additional $1,000 stipend for each student. The clinic has a storied history, pioneering treatments for mental illness since its founding in 1925. To cite just one example, after World War II, it trained hundreds of psychiatric residents at its facilities to work with veterans suffering from combat stress. Ranked among the top five psychiatric hospitals in the nation, the clinic continues to provide outstanding care to adolescents and adults with complex and difficult-to-treat disorders.

With programs that treat clients who struggle with anxiety, PTSD, addiction, depression, personality disorders or other issues, the clinic is well positioned to help Scholars pursue their chosen area of specialization. The clinic also collaborates with Houston-based organizations to deliver mental health care to underserved areas of the city. The need for social services among the city’s poor and marginalized populations is real: according to a 2017 Mayoral Task Force on Equity report, nearly a quarter of the city’s residents live in poverty.

Rodríguez-Martin hopes that this program is just the beginning of a rich, long-term relationship—and that similar arrangements with other leading institutions might be in the offing. SSW is hoping to develop partnerships in other cities such as Atlanta and Durham.

“This kind of partnership is rare,” said Rodríguez-Martin.

“We couldn’t do it without the generosity of the Mayer family.

SSW is the very fortunate beneficiary of an endowment from their foundation to be used for the development of clinicians primarily in Texas, and also in Colorado.”—Faye Wolfe

We are trying to be creative in helping our students to achieve their clinical goals.

—IRENE RODRÍGUEZ-MARTIN

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SPOKEN WORD

“ As social workers, we are

artists. We have the power to utilize our collective and creative voices to heal individuals, groups, communities and ultimately, the planet.”

—NICHOLE WOFFORD, PH.D. ’19, from 2019 commencement Ph.D. address

Through a Wider Lens Psychodynamic theory keeps clinicians on track At SSW, Tara Bredesen, M.S.W. ’18, became keenly interested in how psychodynamic theory can “speak to social problems like racism.” Her scholarship in that area led her to join a panel of presenters at the APA Division 39 spring meeting in 2019 on “Trauma and Undocumented Migration: Psychoanalytic Experiences with a Contemporary Crisis.”

As a Bay Area clinician, Bredesen works with children and their care­ givers. Her agency emphasizes several less psychodynamic approaches but she views all models with a psychodynamic lens.

“I think behavioral models can be too narrow for young children,” said Bredensen, “they may not take into account the environmental piece, and they put responsibility for change on the kid. It can too quickly become a punitive framework.” In her sessions, Bredesen encourages exploration of deep feelings, fantasies and memories and looks to unpack symbolic language.

Bredesen speaks enthusiastically about her work, despite the fact that many of her clients can’t escape ongoing traumatic situations. “When I get discouraged, I remind myself that children are always healing, that trauma gets metabolized, and what I have to do is help them do that.”

Like Bredesen, Jixia Ao, M.S.W. ’18, presented at last year’s APA Division 39 meeting, on “Queer and Gender-Expansive Clinicians of Color Talk Psychoanalysis: A Dialogue Across Difference.” Ao also believes psycho­dynamic training imparts important tools—and a more inclusive perspective.

“I pay close attention to relationship dynamics, to transference and counter-transference. I work with homeless youth, and there are a lot of scheduling problems. It’s frustrating, unsettling, unpredictable. By recognizing how it makes me feel, I gain insight into how their lives feel.”

Summing up, Ao said, “I’m very glad I learned psychodynamic theory, but it needs to do better in engaging with social realities, to be less focused on the single family unit. It has the potential to widen your lens, to take into account power, oppression and privilege and consider the effects of class, gender, race, disability. Talking about race and other ‘isms’ is not only relevant but also essential to developing useful, insightful and powerful theory and practice.”—Faye Wolfe

PROFESSIONAL ED CORNER Webinars bring CE choices to your desk SSW Professional Education now offers a series of inspiring and lively webinars on pressing contemporary issues that are grounded in the School’s commitment both to clinical practice and anti-racism.

Topics range from supporting trans-identified individuals, cultural considerations in improving end of life care to changing the narrative around suicidality.

Offering education on contemporary social work issues “helps people expand skills into new areas,” said Mary Curtin, M.S.W. ’00, manager of SSW Professional Education.

One recent webinar on how to conduct social work assessments for immigrants seeking asylum offered “a tangible way that social workers could get involved and help people try to stay in this country,” said Curtin.

And the webinars are easy to access, too. Typically held during the noon lunch hour, clinicians can earn a 1.5 CEs without leaving their desks. For clinicians who can’t attend the live session, webinars are recorded so they can be watched after the fact.

“I’m also always looking for new webinar proposals,” said Curtin. “We select topics from those identified in last year’s alumni survey but new ideas are always welcome.”

For clinicians interested in offering a webinar, visit ssw.smith.edu/submitaproposal

ssw.smith.edu/ onlinecourses

Many of our Professional Education webinars are available on-demand. Visit our website to learn about which past courses are available and watch them on your schedule! Most range from $25 to $35 and CEs are available.

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Howard Parad’s Gentle Vision Dean Parad and his family modelled balanced approach to learning and scholarship

As Dean of Smith College School for Social Work from 1956 through 1971, Howard Parad, M.S.W., Ph.D., shepherded the School through turbulent times for the country and intellectually stimulating times for social workers.

Parad, who died at his Florida home Sept. 2, 2019 at age 96, enjoyed a distinguished career as a lecturer, teacher, mentor, practitioner and scholar. He made indelible contributions to the field throughout his career, but those who knew him best say his years at Smith remained among the most meaningful to him.

“It was his favorite job,” confirmed his wife, Libbie Parad, 96.

“He loved everything about it, the colleagues, the community,” agreed their son, Jonathan.

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During their 77-year marriage, Howard and Libbie shared an enduring, and uncommonly equal for the times, professional collaboration in which they coauthored books and articles.

“My father would be the first to say that my mother was half the team,” said Jonathan. “He could not have done it alone.”

Libbie and Howard married in 1944, though Libbie notes that they first met in kindergarten. As colleagues, she said, they loved working together on projects meaningful to both of them.

“He would write an article and give it to me and I would read it and I would say, ‘It’s very good, but it’s two or three articles,’” she said. “And I would edit— it made it much more readable.”

SSW Professor James Drisko, M.S.W.,

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’77, Ph.D., said Parad’s biggest contri‑ bution to the field was the groundbreaking and innovative work he and Libbie did on crisis intervention theory and practice.

“This was a massive change,” said Drisko. “They wrote several books and were practically leaders in the ’60s and ’70s in this whole endeavor.”

The work helped pave the way to greater access to services and, Drisko believes, a reduction in stigma surrounding people seeking out mental health treatment. There was a greater understanding and acceptance, he said, that “you may need help with everyday life stuff.”

Though Drisko earned his master’s degree after Parad had left the Pioneer Valley, he got to know Parad through

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He was a warm, generous, gentle man.

He was curious and open to learning.

—JAMES DRISKO

professional organizations as well as the School’s alumni association.

“He was a warm, generous, gentle man,” said Drisko. “He was curious and open to learning.”

When Parad was named dean, the young couple didn’t realize what the job would entail, or that much of it would involve fundraising for the institution.

Libbie said while that was not his favorite part of the job, her husband rose to the challenge. He became parti­ cularly enthused about raising funds for a scholarship program that enabled the School to become more diverse and accessible to more students of color and low-income students.

“Anyone who was a really good student could get a scholarship,” said Libbie.

Under Parad’s leadership, the School started a doctoral program in 1964.

Known for his promotion of the Smith College Studies in Social Work journal, Parad brought big names in the field to campus, recruiting beloved faculty members including the late Professor Emeritus Roger Miller, M.S.W., Ph.D., developing close relationships with students and encouraging their research.

Alum Mary Hall, M.S.W. ’66, said it was an intellectually challenging and exciting time to enter the social work profession.

In those years, students and faculty dined together family-style, she recalled.

Because she had a habit of arriving for dinner on the later side, she frequently found the only seat left vacant was at Parad’s table where he would be eating with Libbie and their children.

As an African American student with no first-hand experience relating to white families, Hall said it was an eye-opening and unusual experience.

“From my point of view, it was an intimate look at a white family,” she said.

And observe she did, noticing that Howard and Libbie Parad had a much different parenting style than what she was accustomed to, with their children enjoying freedoms she didn’t realize children could have.

“The children were very chatty and they had no hesitation stating their opinions,” Hall recalled. “They asked a lot of questions.”

As parents, “they were child-centered,” she said, and Parad was kind and patient with his children.

Though she initially felt under the microscope, possibly even intimidated, to be eating dinner with the dean, she adjusted to the situation.

“I felt very accepted by him,” she said. “I learned to feel very comfortable being there.”

After his tenure at SSW, Parad went to the University of Southern California, where he taught and led research projects

while maintaining a successful private practice. Libbie Parad, meanwhile, ran an agency that provided psychological services to children.

For the Parad family, the Pioneer Valley always felt like home, though, as they returned for extended stays in the summer to enjoy property they own with close friends at a lake in Goshen.

“The understanding was that this was our home. My father was always very proud of Northampton and its progressive values,” said Jonathan.

Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the three Parad children, Harry, Jonathan and Sarah, followed in their parents’ footsteps professionally. “[Since my parents and siblings] are all in the mental health field,” said Jonathan, “we talked shop whenever we were together.”

If indeed it’s true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, that is perhaps evidence of their parents’ devotion to their work and the contributions to the field of social work.—Laurie Loisel

Facing page: Howard Parad, M.S.W., Ph.D., shares a heartwarming moment with his wife, Libbie Parad. At right: Marie Singer, ’47 and Howard Parad exchange smiles.

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Faculty Notes Recent news and accomplishments

Being in the mess and being in there thoughtfully and intentionally offers a path and shows it is possible. Critical conversation is a way forward. It’s very liberating to find pathways to build the capacity for change. — PEG GY O ’ N EI L L

Critical Conversations Model Gains National Recognition

Critical Conversations, a model developed by SSW professors that prompts in-depth conversations around power, race, gender and other potentially fraught topics, is drawing national attention after an article about the technique earned an award at the 65th annual meeting of the Council for Social Work Education in Denver, CO. Developed in 2015 by Assistant Professor Peggy O’Neill, M.S.W., Ph.D., LCSW, and then-SSW colleague Hye-Kyung Kang, M.S.W., Ph.D., Critical Conversations aims to illuminate power dynamics within a social context to allow for deeper examination and reflection with a goal of instigating social change at personal, systemic and institutional levels.

The model was introduced to the SSW campus through faculty training and engagement starting in 2016, and by now is well integrated as faculty rely on it to guide conversations on these difficult topics within their classrooms and other group settings.

Two years ago, O’Neill, Associate Professor Annemarie Gockel, M.S.W., Ph.D., and Professor Nnamdi Pole, Ph.D., from the Smith College

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department of psychology, launched an undergraduate research study bringing the critical conversations model to Smith undergraduates.

At the CSWE annual meeting in October, O’Neill and Kang picked up honors for their article “Teaching Note—Constructing Critical Conversations: A model for Facilitating Classroom Dialogue for Critical Learning,” published in a 2018 issue of the Journal of Social Work Education.

Meanwhile, the multi-year research project around Critical Conversations has expanded to the University of Massachusetts and Mount Holyoke campuses. While the research team is gearing up for intensive data analysis, initial reports from the field suggest the model is promising.

“It seems to be having transformational impacts, shifting how people are thinking about power dynamics, shaping how they show up in conversations about critical social issues,” said O’Neill.

The research study has facilitators trained in the Critical Conversations model running ten different groups for undergraduates to grapple with social justice issues.

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“The real substance of the model has to do with decisively and intentionally paying attention to what the power dynamics of the moment are,” said O’Neill.

The conversations within the undergraduate groups are taped and transcribed for qualitative analysis.

The team expects to have results of the study within about six months, but in the meantime, O’Neill has found listening to the tapes highly illuminating.

What she’s heard are deep crossracial and cross-difference conversations. The goal of the model is to unearth hidden assumptions tied up in power dynamics around race, class and gender—just the kind of conversations people tend to avoid. The model seems to push through that avoidance.

“I’m very encouraged,” she said.

“We’re seeing that it activates a very meaningful process of critical selfreflection and thought about how to move towards change.”

The article in the Journal of Social Work Education makes the case for how the model can help students and their teachers engage around issues that seem to be intractable, such as race, gender and class and the underlying power dynamics.

/ Faculty Notes /

/ MORE / For complete bios of our outstanding faculty visit ssw.smith.edu/faculty

“Learning to embrace rather than avoid tension demystifies how to engage with potentially charged topics,” the article states. “Witnessing and experiencing productive engagement may encourage students to become more willing and able to practice skills to work through emerging tensions in critical conversations.

O’Neill is inspired by what she is seeing and believes the model offers hope for working through issues that have stymied interpersonal relationships for so long.

“Being in the mess and being in there thoughtfully and intentionally offers a path and shows it is possible.

Critical conversation is a way forward,” she said. “It’s very liberating to find pathways to build the capacity for change.”—Laurie Loisel Working to Reintegrate Veterans and their Families

For decades, Kathryn Basham, Ph.D. ’90, LICSW, focused her research, teaching and clinical practice on improving the lives of Veterans affected by their military service.

This work continues unabated.

Basham says even with the resilience exhibited in many Veterans and their families, injuries often persist.

“They are not just away from their families, they often come back home distressed and changed in major ways,” she said. Basham explores the question of whether post-deployment traumatic responses are grounded in a fear response and/or what she refers to as moral injury.

Moral injuries involve a perceived moral default experienced by a Veteran related to their own actions or behavior by a commanding officer or peer.

“Not every Veteran reports this experience, yet it is disturbing to know how frequently this suffering occurs.”

Before joining SSW in 1992, Basham

worked in several inpatient and outpatient mental health programs with diverse clients including civilian, military service members and Veterans.

Basham served as co-director of the doctoral program for ten years and as editor of the Smith College Studies in Social Work for nine years.

Serving on three congressionallymandated Institute of Medicine research committees focused on Veteran’s mental health has contributed to her expertise in military social work. That work has also provided scaffolding for her research and practice to improve the reintegration of Veterans and their families.

One of Basham’s current projects, underway for five years, explores the outcomes of a 12-session multitheoretical attachment-based couple therapy approach she designed for couples, where one or both members are post-9/11 Veterans suffering post-deployment stress responses.

It is “relationship-based, culturallyresponsive, anti-racism grounded, theoretically-supported and research-informed,” she said.

Primary aims are to evaluate the effectiveness of the model in terms of symptom reduction and affect regulation, reduced aggression, improved communication and enhanced relationship satisfaction, utilizing pre-and post-measures.

“We are looking for signs of resilience and a capacity to cope with stress while navigating various challenges involving integrating back home,” Basham said.

Basham is still recruiting licensed clinicians to be educated in the approach and aims to develop a cadre of skilled couple therapy providers.

New Veteran couples are also invited to participate in the study.

The model holds great promise; Basham noted that couples are showing decreased post-traumatic stress symptoms as well as increased

trust and connection between partners, improved communication and better understanding of the role post-traumatic stress plays within a family system.

A next step will be to compare this approach with other traditional models, such as cognitive-behavioral couple therapy.

Another project Basham has been working on the, Western Massachusetts Veterans Outreach, pulls together civilian and Veteran representatives from local, state and federal agencies and community members to better attune mental providers to the unique needs of Veterans and their families.

This project has offered conferences, seminars and education forums about military culture as well as signature injuries such as traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, intimate partner violence and substance misuse.

Both projects are rooted in Basham’s belief that society has a moral obligation to service members returning from war zones.—Laurie Loisel For more information, visit: westernmassveteransoutreach.com

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After nearly four decades, social workers continue to be on the

ReframÄąng HIV cutting-edge in their work with HIV-positive

clients, at-risk communities

and a society

that continues to

stigmatize them.

The Psychic Life of Stigma. Project Stigma, Brighton, UK. Pastel and ink drawing cocreated by workshop participants and artist Laura Ryan in conjunction with Brighton community partner, Higgins Trust.

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BY TYNAN POWER

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I

n the 39 years since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first published a report on the mysterious disease that would come to be known as HIV/ AIDS, neither the disease nor the stigma surrounding it has been eradicated. From the start, social workers like David Aronstein, M.S.W. ’80, and Bruce Thompson, Ph.D. ’87, co-editors of the groundbreaking HIV and Social Work: A Practitioner’s Guide, helped forge new paths forward with clients facing both the poorly-understood new disease that was spreading swiftly and nearly always fatal—and the growing fears and prejudice that surrounded it.

Today, new treatments and prevention tools like PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) have slowed infection rates and transformed HIV infection from what felt like a death sentence into a chronic illness.

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Yet, despite these medical advances, the deep stigma that attached itself to HIV early on has not dissipated—and social workers continue to rise to the challenge of providing support and education to those directly affected by the disease and the larger communities in which they exist.

Assistant Professor Rory Crath, M.A., Ph.D., has spent his career exploring the ways in which social, health and economic disparities and exclusion affect individuals and communities. His current research project, Reframing HIV Stigma: Towards a 5 Cities Research Programme, seeks to understand the wide-ranging effects of stigma as it is experienced by individuals of diverse identities in five cities around the world: Brighton (Europe), Delhi (Asia/Asia Pacific), Havana (Latin America/Caribbean), Nairobi (Africa) and New York (North America). Reframing HIV Stigma is a community-driven, collaborative project in which Crath is working with co-investigators Annette Carina van der Zaag, Ph.D., of Birkbeck University of London, Paul Boyce, Ph.D., of the University of Sussex; Anupam Hazra, associate director of Programs for Solidarity and Action Against The HIV Infection in India; Amrita Sarkar, co-founder of IRGT —A Global Network of Trans Women and HIV and member of the Transgender Professional Association for Transgender Health; Denis Nzioka, Project Officer for HivosEast Africa; Olga Saavedra Montes de Oca, Ph.D., of the University of Sussex University, and Rosaida Ochoa Soto, Ph.D., of the National Institute of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Microbiology and director of the National Centre for the Prevention of STIs-HIV/AIDS in Havana. Each of the cities in the project is part of the international Fast-Track Cities initiative that was launched in 2014 and currently includes more than 300 cities and municipalities across six regions of the world. Each of the cities is committed to ending the HIV epidemic by 2030, an ambitious goal that includes providing access to testing, treatment and prevention services—and a commitment to end stigma and discrimination.

“ Upon closer examination you will find that the roots of health disparities are embedded in the social environment.”

— T RA N EI KA T U RN ER-WENTT

These photographs are part of Rory Crath’s current research project, Reframing HIV Stigma: Towards a 5 Cities Research Programme. They depict transgender and hijra/kinner identifying participants returning to various social settings in Delhi, India where they have experienced the violences of stigma. But in their collective return, they rewrite the terms of stigma through their art-making. Participants wanted to reclaim these places by staging a defiant presence. The photographs document the intimate acts, spaces and experiences of stigma—as captured in peoples’ eyes, bodily comportment and gestures. Each photograph assembles a different situated knowledge about stigma.

Together these images point to stigma’s embodied effects and the creative, collective responses it can generate.

“Fast-Track Cities is a United Nations based initiative and the cities themselves identify that their priorities align with the Fast Track Cities,” said Crath. “These cities might have different politics than their national government. For example, there are a number of cities where HIV politics and sexual politics are misaligned with the politics of the state. So this is very much a local initiative, in that sense, but the objectives and goals are global.”

One of the most devastating causes of the stigma associated with HIV has historically been the mistaken belief that only gay men can contract it—and therefore only gay men should be tested. Because of this perceived association, bias based on sexual orientation has then carried over to anyone who seeks testing.

“Some health care providers are reluctant to test their patients, because they do not think the person is at risk,” said Traneika Turner-Wentt, M.S.W.

’00, D.S.W., LCSW “They say ‘This person is [heterosexually] married, they have children.’”

Turner-Wentt has seen this play out repeatedly in her decades of work in healthcare settings. She is currently the prevention and testing program manager at Parkland Health & Hospital System in Dallas, which is currently ranked the top performing program for Emergency Department HIV testing in the state of Texas, testing nearly 60,000 patients per year.

“In HIV prevention, increasing patient awareness of their need for testing is not enough,” said TurnerWentt. “All healthcare providers must implement best practices by following CDC guidelines: In communities with an elevated positivity rate (greater than 0.1%), routine testing is recommended, and more frequently for individuals with increased vulnerability for exposure to the virus. It is imperative that the health care community

bid farewell to the outdated mindset because those archaic social constructs do not apply to the preventive paradigm and certainly do not support the robust efforts to end the epidemic by 2030. The multidisciplinary team must translate national goals into best practices within our respective disciplines.”

“Social workers are particularly important in helping end the stigma around this disease,” said TurnerWentt. She offers an example of misinformation about the high incidence of HIV infection in communities of color—and how social workers can provide correct information.

“It is known that people of color in general, but particularly black people, are disproportionately affected by many diseases in the U.S. When you begin to unpack the possible reasons for that, there is always the factor of systemic racism, which has the ability to affect people in every area of their existence. Upon closer examination you will find that the roots of health disparities are embedded in the social environment. People who are experiencing housing insecurities, those without a method to market their skill set for a better income, or who have not attended an institution for higher learning are more severely impacted. Ending the epidemic means we have tackled some of the other issues that surround the issue of health disparities.”

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“Social workers can help make others aware that people of color do not necessarily have behaviors that are ‘worse,’ they simply have more vulnerabilities in their environment, which places them at a greater risk.

For instance, a man of color who has sex with other men is not necessarily having any more risky sex than a Caucasian man who has sex with men.

In fact, studies have shown that men of color may have less risky behaviors, however, because there is a higher concentration of the illness among people in certain zip codes, that increases their vulnerability for acquiring the disease. Social service providers have a keen ability to understand the person in relation to their environment and as we become more aware of this type of research outcomes and disseminate those truths, we can improve the awareness of those with whom we work—especially in the healthcare system.”

Research often focuses on public health ramifications of stigma, such as the barriers to testing and treatment that Turner-Wentt has observed.

Crath’s project explores stigma through a lens that is not trained exclusively on health care, but rather as a factor that impacts many aspects of lived experience. Using Embodied Mapping, a methodology Crath developed with Cristian Rangel, Ph.D., of the University of Toronto, and Adam Gaubinger, M.S.W. ’17, the project seeks to gather participants’ context-specific knowledge of HIV and stigma, while documenting how visual methods for exploring the subject can identify and open up fresh areas for research.

Crath has described Embodied Mapping as a tool for capturing a more complex human subject than the purely rational, medicalized body that is often conceptualized by conventional research. Holding room for the whole person in their relationship to social and material environments is a strength that social work brings to research with human subjects—and allows for a research framework that assumes the complexity of existing with a body, emotions, aspirations and a host of connections to other people and communities and systems of power. The resulting findings should

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shed light on the variety of ways that HIV and stigma are experienced, understood and integrated into the lives of people of diverse identities in very different geopolitical locations.

Embodied Mapping typically involves using multiple artistic elements with a visual collage effect designed to capture complex embod­ ied experiences and interactions. To reflect the differences between groups of participants, Crath’s methodology is flexing to allow participants to drive the creative methods as well as the conversation.

“The workshop in Delhi happened over four days,” said Crath.

“Participants—who identified with a variety of terms including ‘trans women,’ ‘trans feminine,’ and ‘hijra’ [a gender identity specific to South Asian culture]—came together with artists, including some who identified with the communities. There were initially three photographers and two storytellers who sat with participants and talked about experiences of stigma in Delhi, and about their involvement in activism and health care.”

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“In thinking about what kind of art objects they wanted to create, the participants decided they wanted to bring in choreography and mehndi [a traditional form of temporary body art using henna],” said Crath. “Groups went to places in Delhi that were evocative of stigma for the participants. Photographers documented them marching defiantly through these locations, staging their experiences— and also captured the stigmatizing expressions of other people who were watching. The photographers made prints of those images and the participants selected a few, then brought in the mehndi and choreography. The results of the participants’ embodied and storied performances about how stigma is lived were then captured by a videographer.”

While the creation of art has been a key means of documentation and expression from the earliest days of public education and activism about HIV—with the Names Project: AIDS Memorial Quilt being perhaps the best known example—the results of Embodied Mapping provide more than

“ Photographers documented them marching defiantly through these locations, staging their experiences—and also captured the stigmatizing expressions of other people who were watching.”

— RO RY C RAT H

creative catharsis and personal expression. The method can help identify previously unexplored ways in which people affected by HIV are impacted by—and impact—the contexts in which they live. Comparing these can bring to light the ways that these impacts are the same—or differ—across identities and locations.

In Texas, Turner-Wentt sees anxiety and depression as frequent companions to HIV and one of the ways that stigma affects the populations she serves.

“There is a visceral response that accompanies a highly stigmatized medical diagnosis—fear that someone will see them at the clinic and discover that they have an HIV positive status,” said Turner-Wentt. “To combat that, we have to create a welcoming and affirming healthcare environment for all patients. Fortunately, our health system has dedicated ID (infectious disease) staff who are caring, compassionate leaders in the medical field. This encourages patients, many of whom are managing challenging life circumstances, to access services.

Having that safe space can create an opportunity for patients to be more open about mental health symptoms.

For a patient who is not only doing their best to manage one aspect of their physical health, while dealing with mental health issues, which are often exacerbated by challenges in the social environment, having the support of those with whom they personally interact and knowing that there is a global movement to close gaps in existing services and also end the epidemic, it can be reassuring.”

“We are at a pivotal juncture and have all the tools we need to end the epidemic. The key is to consider the ways in which people make decisions,” Turner-Wentt said. “Taking the easy route exacerbates disparities. Leaders in this movement must address the concerns within the environment to increase the uptake of the intervention.”

Knowledge of the ways that HIV and stigma impact people across different aspects of their lives is information that is known to people living with HIV and to those who are shifting

the paradigm to end the epidemic by 2030, like Turner-Wentt. Yet these hyper-local and context-specific bodies of knowledge are often missing from the broad scope of many HIV-related initiatives.

“I think what we’re really interested in is for policy makers and health care practitioners to really listen, to hear what’s already being lived and known on the margins,” said Crath. “When we talk about eradicating stigma, what exactly are we doing? What gets eradicated? We don’t want to lose sight of how deeply painful and wounding stigma is, but we want to look at how stigma is lived and what’s activated because of it, what gets created—like new language or forms of political or artistic expression or community mobilization and care based on shared experience.”

“In a way this work feels synonymous with excellent clinical work— and it relates to the work I do in the classroom,” said Crath. “We have to be listening for what people are bringing to us, making sure our end goals are in line with what the people we serve are saying they need. We have to ask ourselves if we’re setting futures for clients that reflect their own hopes, or if we are setting futures that leave the client and the community behind.” ◆

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FOURLEGGED COLLEAGUES Alums

embrace animal-

assisted therapy

BY MEGAN RUBINER ZINN PORTRAIT BY SHANA SURECK

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L

ike many mental health practitioners, Smith School for Social work alumnae Annie Sexauer, Judith Saeks Gable and Kate Nicoll have two offices. Unlike most of their colleagues, while one of these offices is conventional, the other includes such features as barns, hay, pastures, horses, dogs and guinea pigs. “It’s a little awkward,” Gable said about the route to her office.

“You have to walk through some horse poop.”

Previous spread: Annie Sexauer poses with her horse at her Whately, MA farm where she has a private practice.

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Sexauer, M.S.W. ’11, LICSW, Gable, M.S.W. ’80, LCSW, and Nicoll, M.S.W. ’89 all practice animalassisted therapy (AAT), hence the unusual office environments.

Sexauer grew up with horses and looked for careers that allowed her to work with them. She began as a therapeutic riding instructor, often assisting clinicians. Drawn to their work, she earned her degree at SSW and now has a private practice on her small farm in Whately, Massachusetts. She also works with veterans in a therapeutic riding program at the Therapeutic Equestrian Center in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Although she grew up riding horses, Gable came to AAT later in her career, which has included a private practice and work in nonprofit mental health, training and supervising graduate students treating high-risk adolescents.

Gable reconnected with horses several years ago and began looking for opportunities to work more closely with them. She now volunteers at Horse and Heart Ranch in Soquel, California, working with foster youth and developmentally disabled adults, and maintains a practice at the ranch.

Nicoll, who had practiced in a variety of therapeutic settings, became interested in AAT through personal experience. She was widowed as a young woman with three children and several years later contracted the Epstein-Barr virus, which caused partial paral­ysis.

Throughout, she was struck by her dog’s instincts when she needed comfort and the positive effects he had on her. After undertaking research and training on AAT, she and a partner started Soul Friends in Wallingford, Connecticut. Soul Friends provides individual therapy, a dog training and social skill building program for special needs kids, a group therapy program for at-risk children and an equine program for adolescent girls living with loss, trauma and social-emotional challenges.

Sexauer, Gable and Nicoll have found that AAT is effective with a

“ If you come in acting like you’re happy and friendly, but you’re actually preoccupied and upset, they’ll go away. They pick up that there’s something wrong and dangerous.”

—JU DITH SA EKS GA B L E

Judith Saeks Gable uses animal-assisted therapy in her work with foster youth and develop­mentally disabled adults.

wide range of clients: people with special needs, who have anxiety, who have experienced trauma or who do not respond to traditional therapy.

Sexauer also noted that AAT is great for clients who are more movement oriented: “Anyone who does not want to sit and stare at me for 45 minutes,” she said.

According to another SSW alum, Froma Walsh, M.S.W. ’70, Ph.D., and emerita social work professor at the University of Chicago, “Animalassisted therapy involves the carefully planned and monitored use of the therapist’s companion animal in sessions to build rapport, enhance the therapeutic process and facilitate positive change.” (“Human-Animal Bonds I: The Relational Significance of Companion Animals.”)

AAT can include having a dog in therapy sessions to help lower the client’s anxiety or to serve as a sounding

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Kate Nicoll cofounded Soul Friends in Wallingford, CT after contracting Epstein-Barr virus.

“ They come and they’re calm, they’re interactive, they’re empathetic—they are truly at their best selves when they’re interacting with an animal.”

—KAT E N ICO L L

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board for a client, who may talk to the dog rather than directly to the therapist. It could be the experience of being in a peaceful farm environment, feeding chickens, walking outside.

It may involve skill and confidence building in learning to handle animals. It may include groundwork with equines—grooming, feeding, walking and interacting with them. It can also, but not necessarily, include riding.

The benefits of AAT are as varied as the clients and the specific characteristics of the animals, and the impact can be quick and profound. “I receive referrals for kids who have multiple diagnoses and who are on many medications,” said Nicoll. “They come and they’re calm, they’re interactive, they’re empathetic—they are truly at their best selves when they’re interacting with an animal.”

As prey animals, horses are attuned to humans’ behavior and emotions, since their survival depends on this, and they react to people quite honestly. On one hand, if they come to you, it’s because they trust you. “That can be really empowering because that’s something that you had to earn.

On the other hand, if they don’t trust you, they’ll simply walk away, which can force someone to look at their behavior and emotions. They’re very accurate as mirrors,” Sexauer said.

Gable agreed: “If you come in acting like you’re happy and friendly, but you’re actually preoccupied and upset, they’ll go away. They pick up that there’s something wrong and dangerous.” This can help a client examine themselves. “‘What am I really feeling right now? What am I really thinking right now? I’m acting like I’m happy and friendly, but am I actually communicating something different?’”

Animals are excellent models of non-verbal communication and interpersonal behavior, especially pack animals. Gable finds it useful for clients to pay careful attention to how horses communicate with each other. “If one horse feels another is too close, first they’ll give a series of signals—swish their tail, then pin their ears back. If the other horse isn’t responding, they’ll turn around and kick or bite. It’s like ‘I told you three times and now I mean it.’ And then

they’re friends again, like it was nothing.” The horse communicates and sets a boundary, but it doesn’t hold a grudge.

For a variety of reasons, AAT can be very effective with people who have experienced trauma. For some, it helps them regain a feeling of empowerment. Being around a horse who is enormous but gentle and who the client can control, is often helpful. It can also help clients practice tolerating their anxiety around something so big. “Anyone who’s got a trauma history has probably been overpowered at some point and this flips that,” said Sexauer. “You’re smaller but you can absolutely be safe and even influence these giant creatures.”

Further, because horses are prey animals, they are always on guard and startle easily, much like some people who have experienced trauma.

“They react pretty big to anything that feels dangerous and just as quickly they will go back to grazing and into a calm state,” said Gable.

Seeing how the horse deals with this can be very instructive for a client.

“They’re a huge animal that looks like they should be able to defend themselves, but they startle easily,” Gable said. “‘Okay, then I shouldn’t be ashamed about my startle response. If they can go back to a state of calm quickly, how might I be able to do that?’”

Identifying with a prey animal can also help a client normalize their own response to trauma. Nicoll tells of working with a group of boys who would play with guinea pigs and pay attention to their reactions. One client picked up on the nervous release of urine that Guinea pigs often display and was able to relate it to his own reaction during a traumatic experience. The whole group was able to support him in the therapeutic space and say, ‘No, of course something would happen like that when you saw something horrible.’”

Sexauer, Gable and Nicoll, as well as Walsh, are emphatic that therapists shouldn’t attempt to employ AAT without specialized training, to ensure they understand both the animal behavior and the complicated ways a human might respond. “When

Sexauer believes working with horses can help people overcome past traumas.

people respond to it, it can be very potent and powerful and it can work very quickly,” Sexauer said. “People can dive very deeply into the experience, especially with dissociation or active flashbacks. You want to be very careful of the experience you’re introducing.”

The AAT practitioners agree that working with animals has impacted their respective careers even when no animal is involved. They may have a better understanding of clients’ non-verbal communication, better recognition of the way clients read them like an animal might or it may remind them to meet the client where they are, as an animal will do.

Working in partnership with animals can also help them recognize that the client’s experience isn’t theirs. “When you work with another person and the horse, a lot of that work isn’t yours anymore, so there’s a letting go” Sexauer said. “When you’re with a client and a horse they can be having such intensity that it’s very clear it’s not your process. It feels good and right.” ◆

“ On the other hand, if they don’t trust you, they’ll simply walk away, which can force someone to look at their behavior and emotions. They are very accurate as mirrors.”

—A N N I E S EXAU ER

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©2020 Chris Gash c/o theispot

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MAKING THE CASE Why we teach psychodynamic theory

BY FAYE WOLFE

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hat’s the good of teaching psychodynamic theory to social work students?

“With its emphasis on relationships and internal life, psychodynamic theory provides a way of understanding our internal psychological selves,” said Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Marsha Kline Pruett, M.S., M.S.L., Ph.D. Calling it a “transformative approach,” one that is at the heart of a wide range of therapies, she upholds the value of psychodynamic theory being foundational within the SSW curriculum.

In recent years, a number of social work degree programs have moved away from psychodynamic theory, in particular emphasizing science-based interventive approaches or cognitive-behavioral modalities. Introduced into the field of social work 20 years or so ago, there are also good reasons why social workers should apply only those therapies with scientific evidence of their effectiveness.

With various estimates putting the number of types of psychotherapies as high as 500, and with the complexity of clinical issues that social workers are addressing, there is real pressure to use only what is most relevant and effective.

The issue of which should prevail is less like a battlefield with flags flying at either end, and more like a thicket, a dense tangle of questions, assumptions and semantics.

“Psychodynamic theory really should be spoken of as theories,” said Ora Nakash, Ph.D., professor and the chair of the HBSE sequence. “The theory itself has evolved dynamically. It’s an umbrella of ideas and critiques of the theory that Freud put forth a hundred years ago.”

Psychodynamic theory has certainly evolved since the man whom poet W.H. Auden called “a whole climate of opinion” promulgated his concepts. Its family tree includes such Freudian disciples and dissenters as Jung, Rank, Adler, Erikson, Fromm, Lacan and Klein—key thinkers in the development of modern psychology. Among its progeny, which include attachment theory, object relations theory, self-psychology, crisis theory, supportive-expressive theory, Nakash pointed out that fundamental psychodynamic principles—the existence of the unconscious, the importance of childhood experiences, the significance of relationships, the value of the bond between therapist and client—have never lost their relevance and are widely applicable. “It’s a very deep and broad concept.”

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RELEVANCE OF RELATIONSHIPS SSW doctoral candidate Jamie Daniels, M.S.W. ’14, finds the psychodynamic emphasis on relationships particularly meaningful. Perhaps that’s partly because Daniels’ own life is relationship-rich, as a daughter, a mother, a spouse, an academic advisor to master’s-level students, Smith’s Diversity and Inclusion Fellow and one of the three 2019–20 Marta Sotomayor Fellows, who help

Magdalene Kwakye and Melissa Tines participate in a role play during class.

support the School’s anti-racism commitment. She also maintains a private practice.

“I work with people of diverse backgrounds and with a range of issues, seen through a social justice lens,” explained Daniels. “I consider external factors: living with poverty, domestic violence, violence in a community. In my private practice, ninety-nine percent of my clients are people of color, queer, trans or other

identities on the margins. I listen to how they make meaning out of their lives, and I ask myself how do we push and pull and prod at those narratives, reclaim them in the service of growth?”

Daniels’ own narrative is one of struggle and self-discovery. “I dropped out of high school and had my first child at 17. Then I got my GED and went to Mount Holyoke College,” she said matter-of-factly, as if it were no

big deal. “I started to find my voice, and once I was on the road of education, I couldn’t get enough.”

With a laugh, Daniel calls herself a “Smith groupie,” but her commitment to its pedagogy is serious.

“At SSW, we learn about the classical history of therapy and how theory evolves over time—we don’t throw it out,” she said, adding, “We also learn how to evaluate clients, make assessments, manage the ebb and flow of cases, recognize a client’s need for referral and the need to weep, the need to be seen.”

People may assume that psycho­ dynamic therapy is all about the Oedipus complex and penis envy, and that it focuses on the inner life to the exclusion of external realities— the latter a criticism often directed at its antecedent, psychoanalysis.

“Even experienced clinical counselors are apt to speak of the psychodynamic approach as if it is forever wedged in the Victorian age,” Russell Fulmer wrote in his 2018 paper “The Evolution of the Psychodynamic Approach and System.” “Such equivalency is akin to speaking of computers as if they function no differently than their circa 1980 forerunners.”

SSW is committed to teaching concepts that go beyond foundational psychodynamic theories and venture into contemporary relational theories that weave in strands from different traditions, including interpersonal psychoanalysis, British school object-relations theories, self-psychology and existential psychoanalysis.

Students dive even deeper in SSW’s advanced elective courses, where they are further exposed to cutting-edge conversations about race and racism in psychoanalysis, including in-depth critical reading of writings by Dalal, Leary, Suchet, Tummala-Narra and Holmes, among others, that critique psychoanalytic theory and integrate concepts that have been historically

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absent such as those related to race, gender and sexuality.

“What is most powerful is how we learn to integrate EBPs and the psychodynamic theoretical frame,” Daniels said, “I believe in EBP. It would be unethical not to base treatment on what has been shown to work, what is rooted in research and evidence.”

Nakash takes that comment further, noting that there is a growing body of neuroscientific, developmental and clinical research that supports the validity of key elements of psycho­ dynamic theory. Particularly in the last 10 to 20 years, there has also been, she said, “booming empirical support” for the efficacy of psychodynamic therapy. As one source of such information, she cited Jonathan Shedler’s extensive survey of research literature, summarized in the 2010 paper “The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy,” which describes the results of meta-analysis of numerous scientists’ findings, from 1980 on.

“In meta-analysis,” she said, “the efficacy of psychodynamic interventions, short-term and long-term, is proving out.” In fact, she adds, in some studies, it has been shown to be more effective than cognitive-behavioral therapy or drugs.

A survey of studies done on the subject turns up recent research affirming Nakash’s point. Peter Fonagy of the University College London and Ellen Driessen, at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, for example, have found psychodynamic therapy beneficial for treating chronic depression.

Investigating the efficacy of psychodynamic therapy isn’t easy. The range of variables—what it’s being used to treat, the length and setting of treatment, how psychodynamic therapy is defined, what it’s being compared to, just for starters—make it challenging.

And there are forces at work that mean it is less likely to be studied in the first place by researchers—and by social work students.

“The world is looking for a fast fix,” said Kline Pruett, noting that evidence-based approaches tend to be “precise, pragmatic, crisis-oriented and shorter-term than psychodynamic treatment.” The demand for a fast fix

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“ I listen to how they make meaning out of their lives, and I ask myself how do we push and pull and prod at those narratives, reclaim them in the service of growth?”

—JA MI E DA N I EL S

comes from insurers, government agencies, and a society that, in general, is used to high-speed delivery of… everything.

Another reason that psychodynamic theory has lost ground to other theories, Kline Pruett believes, is that it uses jargon. In her roles as author, researcher and consultant, Kline Pruett is committed to translational science: “thinking complexly and sharing it simply.” She often presents psychodynamic concepts to people who need to understand mental health concepts for their work, judges, for example. “We need to make the theory accessible and understandable by developing curricula, games and other activities that use the concepts and get people excited about them.”

Ultimately, Kline Pruett thinks SSW’s “both/and” approach prepares students better than an “either/or.”

“Educating students is not about teaching them the ‘intervention du jour.’ It’s not about changing history—you

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learn from it,” said Pruett. “Moving away from psychodynamic theory means giving up the chance for students to learn about a central motivator of human behavior and about a way of thinking beyond symptom reduction. Our emphasis at SSW is about teaching our students and, ultimately, our profession, to help people in a long-term way.”

Critical, too, is teaching SSW students how to be informed consumers of research. “They may not all be interested in becoming active researchers,” said Nakash, “but they still need to understand how to think critically, how to approach evaluating research done by others, how to discern between good and bad research.

Our School holds those analytical values dear.”

When all is said and done (and most likely that won’t be happening soon, if ever), about which theory, which modality is best, SSW keeps its eyes on the prize, in Nakash’s words, “teaching students to be focused on human nature, dedicated to treating suffering and promoting health.”

As she works on her doctoral thesis, Jamie Daniels is propelled by her desire to become a more skilled, insightful practitioner, researcher and writer. Ultimately, she hopes to keep “helping the most vulnerable in our society”—with the aid of her psychodynamic glasses. ◆

Alumni News I N TH IS S ECTION

ALUMNI DESK ALUMNI LIVES ALUMNI PROFILE

Rebecca Maston, M.S.W. ’19 and her parents share a hug during the President’s Reception.

/ Alumni Desk /

DAWN M. FAUCHER Alumni Relations & Development Director

In Solidarity

Finding community in new and inspiring ways

As we navigate this unsettling crisis, know that all of us at SSW are here for you.

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The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been felt across the globe and life as we know it has changed dramatically.

The School responded swiftly and has undertaken drastic measures to protect our students, staff and faculty during this uncertain time. Most notably, Dean Yoshioka announced the decision to move all SSW graduate courses to alternate modes of instruction for summer 2020.

This change is not ideal. A large part of what makes Smith College School for Social Work special is the structure of our program; our alums and students cherish their on-campus community formed in the summer months, as well as their field community formed with alumni, field faculty and supervisors.

Even in this most challenging time, I continue to be inspired. From the tireless work being done by our dean, faculty and administrators, to you all—

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our incredible alums. Your tremendous outpouring of support to the School and to each other, whether through sharing tips for transitioning to telehealth or offering peer support groups, is heart­ ening and demonstrates that no matter the distance, our Smith SSW remains as strong as ever. I could not be more proud to belong to such an amazing community!

I know that new hardships and questions will arise in the weeks and months ahead but I am certain that we will address them as a community and find innovative ways to support one another.

As we navigate this unsettling crisis, know that all of us at SSW are here for you. And finally, if you are in a position to do so, please consider supporting our students by making a financial contribution online to the School for Social Work Student COVID-19 Emergency Fund. ◆

/ Alumni Lives /

Alumni Lives Updates from far and near 1968 Joyce Bonafield-Pierce writes, “My husband and I, along with a small group of Americans, have been volunteering our time in Tanzania, Ghana and Ethiopia in both health care and education development over the last 11 years.”

1973 Lucille Spira writes, “I am co-teaching a course: What the Analyst Does at the American Institute of Psychoanalysis, NYC (Certificate Training Program in Psychoanalysis).”

1975 Frank Donlon writes, “It’s been a very long time since I received my degree from Smith in 1975. Although I had launched my career in social work prior to coming to Smith, the M.S.W. degree and the education that I received at Smith created endless opportunities and many rich and rewarding experiences. Overall, my career spanned just over 40 years. I worked within public agencies and for private organizations, as well as in private practice. I was employed in a variety of direct service, supervisory and administrative positions, and was fortunate to have been able to retire at the age of 60, which is now over 12 years ago! From time to time I have re-visited Smith, most recently in 2018 for the 100th anniversary celebration. It is always a rejuvenating experience that leaves me refreshed and revitalized.

My most recent effort has been the publication of a book entitled The Accumulation of Small Advantages: A Formula for Living a Successful and Meaningful Life. It is currently available on Amazon Books in paperback form. I am in the process of arranging for 100% of the profits from sales of the book to be donated to agencies that are involved in clinical work with children and families. I feel that it is the most logical extension of my career into my post retirement years.

Although I look back in amazement at how quickly the years have evaporated, I can’t have hoped for a more meaningful and important way to have spent my life.”

1978 Kathleen Carroll writes, “Greetings! For me, retirement is rich in volunteer work: I’m an active member of the San Diego Rotary

Club 33, I sell books at the local library, and my husband Joe and I tutor first graders in reading. Next year, we will celebrate our 30th anniversary with a cruise around the British Isles.”

1979 Lorna Christensen writes, “I am joyfully living in Del Mar, California with my husband, Richard, who is a retired associate director of the Super Computer Center at UCSD. I made the leap to retire spring of 2019, after 40+ years in health care and the last 30 in private practice with a specialty in EMDR. I’m managing my assets in other areas now: financial, physical, relational and spiritual. I am enjoying the freedom of time and choice. And I’ve been able to return to some creative passions (mixed media acrylics), more regular exercise (weight lifting, hiking & yoga) and we have many travel plans.

Two years ago we went to Bhutan, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. This year to New Zealand—something I’ve dreamt about for years. My M.S.W. from Smith has provided me with so much, and I always said, it’s not a career, it’s a calling. And my soul is calling me to something different now!”

1982 Caitlin Ryan writes, “I’m continuing to implement the evidence-based family support model that I’ve developed over the past two decades with the Family Acceptance Project (FAP) to help families to reduce risk and promote well-being for LGBTQ children and youth. I spent much of last year integrating core components of FAP’s model into TF-CBT. TF-CBT changed their model to include rejecting parents and FAP parenting approaches based on my research and found that these modifications and addressing stigma were effective for improving PTSD symptoms in trauma-impacted LGBTQ youth.

During the past year, I also launched our new evidence-based Healthy Futures poster series to increase awareness of our research findings (often compared to ACEs) on how specific family rejecting and accepting behaviors contribute to risk and well-being for LGBTQ young people at familyproject.sfsu.edu.”

1985 Janet Esposito writes, “It feels a bit surreal to me, but I will be retiring from my private practice at the end of March 2020. I will be turning 63 when I make this transition. I decided to give myself the gift of unscheduled/uncommitted time to rediscover myself beyond my work life of 35 years. I want to have more time to do other things that interest me when I have good health (hopefully for many more years to come). I am very grateful to have had such a meaningful, fulfilling and lucrative career over all of these years. I am sure I will feel a sense of loss when I leave, though I am feeling ready to step into this new chapter of my life.”

1988 Kathleen Shaw writes, “My husband, Steve, and I are enjoying empty nesting in Newburyport, MA. This past year I travelled with our oldest daughter, Leah throughout Southeast Asia while she was teaching English in Taiwan.

Our youngest, Quinn is a junior at Skidmore College. I continue to work in both the public and private sector as a family therapist for early intervention and child and family therapist in private practice. I sit on the Newburyport Human Rights Commission and am on the board of directors of Community Action, Inc. I have also been a tour leader for three adolescent and family service trips to Kenya with the Newburyport Youth Services and Kenya’s Divinity Foundation. Our work there has focused on schools, orphanages and a FGM Rescue Center in the Amboseli region.”

1990 Martha Sweezy (M.S.W.) writes, “In the last few years I have co-edited and co-written a number of books on internal family systems therapy (IFS), including Internal Family Systems Therapy, 2nd Edition, with Richard Schwartz; The IFS Skills Training Manual: Trauma-Informed Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, PTSD & Substance Abuse with Frank Anderson and Richard Schwartz; and Intimacy from the Inside Out: Courage and Compassion in Couple Therapy with Toni Herbine-Blank and Donna Kerpelman. I am an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, where I teach IFS

with Nancy Sowell, IFS lead trainer, and Richard C. Schwartz, IFS founder, and I have a private practice in downtown Northampton, MA. 1994 Liz Gregg writes, “I live in Washington, D.C., and continue to work at a grant funded program through the D.C. Department of Aging. My program serves lowincome seniors and adults with disabilities who need micro-grants to modify their home environment to improve their mobility and help them age in place more safely by reducing their risk of falls. As the only social worker on the program, my role is to manage any complications including family conflict, hoarding disorder, mental health issues, extreme poverty, illiteracy, cognitive decline, immigration status and any other challenges that prevent the individual or family from accessing services. I am on the move all day, doing home visits, and the work has been challenging and meaningful!” ¾ Leah Harp writes, “I serve on the boards of the Institute for Clinical Social Work and City Elementary, a therapeutic elementary school I helped cofound. I live in Minneapolis, MN. In my spare time, I am a streetcar driver for the Minnesota Streetcar Museum. Recently, I participated in an event honoring the Mottorettes, the women who drove the streetcars during WWII that was featured in the Minnesota Star Tribune.”

1997 Martha Sweezy (Ph.D.) See note in 1990.

2002 Judy Liss writes, “Sabine Cornelius, LCSW-C, Ph.D. has joined me at The Chrysalis Group, Inc., a private psychotherapy group in Bethesda, MD. We have been friends since our days at Smith and are very excited to be working together.”

2003 Shawna Reeves writes, “I was quoted in the Bloomberg News article “‘Trusted’ Professionals Target the Assets of America’s Elderly” on October 21, 2019. I work for the Institute on Aging in San Francisco, CA where I have been the director of elder abuse prevention for the past six years.”

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/ Alumni News /

IN MEMORIAM Class of 1946

Doris Rothseid Dresdale Louise Russem Lown Thelma Reed Rosen Class of 1949

Hazel Brill Brampton Frances Kleinman Class of 1950

Mary Webb France Class of 1951

Jean Proebstel Barr Class of 1952

Dorothy Gibson Jane Guise Class of 1953

N. Prudence Handford Morris Class of 1954

Clara Genetos Class of 1959

Mary McBride Robinson Class of 1961

Jeanne Farrell Class of 1963

Janet Pray Class of 1965

Anne Sharp Studner Class of 1968

Margaret Mautz Chadwell Chester Villalba Class of 1970

S. Rachel Dedmon Class of 1973

Barbara Hull Richardson Class of 1984

Elizabeth Sur Class of 1990

Steven Cadwell Class of 1991

Michael Becker Class of 1997

Carol Daily Class of 2003

Julie Stone Class of 2004

Leslie Young

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2005 Samantha Good writes, “I presented a paper entitled “They Say Goldfish Have No Memory: Learning to Swim with an Autistic and Traumatized Patient” at the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society Annual Congress in Vancouver, BC in June 2019. I will also be presenting a paper entitled “No Memory, No Desire: A Confrontation with Missing Pieces” at the Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study Annual Forum Conference in Seattle, WA in April 2020.” ¾ Kelly Wise writes, ““Wiser Sex Therapy continues to grow expanding in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. Having just finished EMDR training with Laurel Parnell, I look forward to using this trauma-centered modality with our clients. As I enter my second year on the Alumni Leadership Council, I am grateful for the opportunity to access the pulse of our unique program. Meeting new students and witnessing the evolution of my colleagues only further affirms my belief in the power of Smith to make a difference.”

2007 Tova Feldmanstern writes, “I am sending my sincere regards to the beloved SCSSW community and am excited to announce the launch of my private practice in Berkeley, CA. After many years working on staff at the UC Berkeley and San Jose State University Counseling Centers, I have particular expertise working with university students, student veterans, artists and the LGBTQIA+ community and can be found at tovafeldmansterntherapy.com.”

2008 Duncan Nichols writes, “A hearty hello to my classmates in the class of 2008. I am currently in private practice with about 3/4 of my clients being boys and young men (12–22). I spend a lot of my free time working on climate issues. At present, myself and a few other social workers are working on presenting a report to the state health department on neglect around our state government not acting fast enough on climate.”

2012 Karen Taylor writes, “I am wrapping up nearly four years as the trauma specialist at the counseling center of the U.S. Naval Academy and will soon be taking on the role of trauma coordinator at the Johns

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Hopkins University Counseling Center. Currently, I am most excited about trading a two-plus hour daily driven commute for under 20 minutes total walking, as I live about five blocks away from JHU! I am hoping to be able to develop JHU as a Smith field placement site in a year or two, as well.”

2013 Asher Pandjiris writes, ““Asher Pandjiris is a queer, white, non-binary parent. They are an art-maker, an activist, a psychotherapist, a podcaster (Living in this Queer Body: A podcast about barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves) and group facilitator. She is someone living with auto-immune based chronic health issues. Asher is a scholar of critical, psychoanalytic, and mindfulness-based theories. Asher chases the sun whenever they can and has a small dog named Pickle.

They currently reside on Lenape land in Brooklyn, NY and want to keep this in the front of mind more often. Asher received a masters of arts in visual and critical studies in 2007 and a masters of social work from Smith College in 2013. In 2017, they completed a certificate program at The Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. Additionally, they served as the program director at Balance Eating Disorder treatment center and have years of experience working with issues related to trauma and its impact on the body. Asher has published on the topics of intergenerational trauma transmission, the treatment of eating disorders, sexual assault in the music industry, and gender dysphoria.

In 2019, her co-authored chapter was published in Sex, Sexuality, and Trans Identities: Clinical Guidance for Psychotherapists and Counselors (Jessica Kingsley Publishers).

Asher’s work is rooted in a belief that healing intergenerational wounds is in service of our collective liberation.”

2016 Julia Simone Fogelson writes, “I am having an exciting 2020. I finished the 3,000 hours for licensure in the state of California and have opened up my own private practice in Albany. I am also getting married this year to my sweetheart, whom I met in San Francisco while in my second field placement.”

2017 Michiko Mitsunaga-Whitten writes, “I published a paper; “A Qualitative Follow-Up Study of MDMA-assisted Psychotherapy for Military Veterans, Firefighters, and Police Officers with TreatmentResistant PTSD: Key Findings and Research Recommendations” (2019) along with Barone, William; Beck, Jerome; Mitsunaga-Whitten, Michiko; and Perl, Phillip in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs. I also started my own private practice in Boulder, CO last month, called Kintsugi Psychotherapy. I work primarily with undergraduate and graduate students, specifically students of color, using contemporary psychodynamic and relational modalities along with Internal Family Systems (IFS).”

2018 Madeline Freeman writes, “I celebrated my 1-year work anniversary at Cambridge Health Alliance’s Elder Service Plan, a wrap-around health care program for low-income older adults. After getting to know my many patients, I started a group in the program’s Adult Day Health Center called “Decompress Your Stress,” a group rooted in mindfulness meditation, reminiscing, and some classical music. On a personal level, I just landed the role of the baker’s wife in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods at a local community theatre.” ¾ Jocelyn Schur writes, “It’s been a full year working as both an inpatient social worker at Mclean Hospital and Cambridge Health Alliance’s PACE (Program of AllInclusive Care for the Elderly). I’m thrilled to be kicking 2020 off as the new vocational counselor at Gould Farm’s Boston Area Program.”

/ Alumni Lives /

Obituaries InDepth runs obituaries that are submitted by family, friends or classmates. Please submit obituaries to indepth@smith.edu or to InDepth, Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, MA 01063.

InDepth obituaries are 100-word notices for the alumni community and are not intended to repeat all of the information contained in newspaper obituaries.

Chester Villalba, M.S.W. ’68

Edna Stamp, M.S.W. ’00

Villalba’s boundless love, energy, good-naturedness, curiosity, generosity, and humor were qualities that stayed with him through good and difficult times. Villalba’s career in social work and social service administration spanned more than 50 years. He was executive director of the Marin Family Service Association and later became executive director of the Family Service Association of the Mid-Peninsula. After retiring from Family Service, he served as the interim executive director of organizations that were in the process of transition—including the Coyote Point Museum. He was a valued member of a variety of social work societies, committees, and educational institutions.

Stamp was one of the first women to become a mainframe computer programmer at International Paper in New York City. She was an active member of the Cambridge community, serving on the boards of the Cambridge Council on Aging and Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services and advocating for elders through various community initiatives including in-home services and affordable senior housing. She is survived by her three children, Laurie Stamp, Paula Topjian and Anthony Stamp; and four grandchildren.

February 1, 2019

Barbara Hull Richardson M.S.W. ’73 March 23, 2019, Keene, New Hampshire

Hull Richardson graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1944. Originally a substitute teacher, she went on to work as a social worker at a South Boston settlement house. In 1966, she joined the State of New Hampshire’s Division of Welfare. After earning her M.S.W., she became an administrator and wrote child services policy, worked on open adoption policy and policy to allow for adoption and foster care by gay and lesbian individuals.

Hull Richardson was elected to nine terms in the New Hampshire State Legislature, served on a number of non-profit and educational boards, was a founder of Cheshire Housing Trust, and a supporter PACE (Promoting Active Civil Engagement) and Open Democracy.

March 23, 2019, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Julie A. Stone, M.S.W. ’03, LCSW September 9, 2019

Serving over 10 years as a family preservationist with the Methodist Home for Children, Stone provided critical guidance to families at risk of losing custody of their children due to abuse or neglect. Stone also went on to open a private practice as a mental health therapist where she excelled.

She is remembered as authentic, warm, brilliant and engaging with a fantastic sense of humor. Stone is survived by many adoring family members including her mother, Jane Architzel, wife, Betsy Kahn, sisters Debbie and Becky, brother John, children Meghan, Ryan, Shawnee, KS, Dylan, Zach and Dominic.

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/ Alumni News /

BY LUC I E B O D N AR

Nicole Christina closes her eyes and basks in the sun.

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/ Alumni Profile /

The Thrill Isn’t Gone Reclaiming life in an age that refuses to age Aging in America is…confusing.

From the time they can speak, children are asked ad nauseam what they plan to be when they grow up—a bizarre, weighty question cloaked in a disguise of innocence, absurdity and humor.

Over the course of three decades, age returns annually in the form of a reward to youth—an unavoidable yet much welcomed treat— where the inescapable nature of getting older is the present itself.

It’s baffling to consider that at the same time, for those edging closer to middle life, a culture clash occurs; individuals bump into a conflicting narrative wherein age poses a threat so powerful, they gradually begin to deny their own life journey.

Psychotherapist and wellness expert Nicole Christina, M.S.W. ’92, LCSW is on a mission to eradicate calendar threat with her newly launched interview-style podcast, Zestful Aging.

Contoured by her own lived experience, the podcast celebrates the joys, challenges and changes brought on by growing older.

Christina has always been fascinated by culture and its effect on individuals.

A feminist activists Jean Kilbourne fangirl at heart, Christina paid particular attention to the problematic link between advertising and eating disorders amongst women. “Once you see that connection, you can’t ignore it,” she said. For nearly 30 years, Christina worked with individuals struggling with eating disorders and helped them to “break free of the trance many of us are in—the idea that we have to look a certain way to be of value.” Subsequently, an unexpected theme emerged.

“I noticed that more and more of my clients were expressing thoughts about their aging process. This struck

me because at the same time, I too was facing questions pertaining to my own age-related issues: How do I find meaning in my life? What legacy will I leave behind? How do I face my mortality?” The convergence of her questions and her clients’ longing to talk about this new chapter of their lives flipped a switch in Christina’s mind. She recognized the need to hold space for these individuals where they could feel safe, heard and respected and where their fear of the unknown could be transformed into a revitalization of self, filled with adventure, reclamation and excitement. Enter Zestful Aging.

Through interviews with featured guests—Pulitzer prize winners, Emmynominated actors, New York Times bestsellers, to name a few—the podcast explores age culture and its effect on individuals middle-aged and beyond.

“My guests are carefully selected because they make a contribution to the greater good,” said Christina.

“That’s what interests me as a host, a social worker, a thoughtful human.”

What began as a way to information gather, swap stories and share sage wisdom on the topic of getting older, quickly transformed into something more personal, more rewarding for Christina: It generated an entire network of people searching for answers,

On how the podcast came to be: I noticed that more and more of my clients were expressing thoughts about their aging process.

At the same time, I too was facing questions pertaining to my own age-related issues. — N I CO L E C HR ISTINA

for a community, a place to belong.

For Christina, it’s about finding meaningful ways to make an impact.

“As an advocate, I want to bring issues of fairness to the forefront. But people want to be entertained and educated at the same time so oftentimes I’ll don a playful hat to ensure my guests are enjoying themselves. At some point in the conversation, there’s almost always some humor. Even if we’re talking about mortality.” ◆ Listen to Zestful Aging at: nicolechristina.com/podcasts

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/ School Works /

Giving Voice to Social Work The Psychodynamic Singers were an ad hoc group that formed more or less annually for nearly a decade at Smith SSW. Here they are performing in 1990.

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