Faculty Kudos

Lydia Aletraris

Submitted photo

Cyprus native Lydia Aletraris, associate research professor, was interviewed November 3, 2020 on Cypriot television’s main news show about the US election. She explained the main issues that concerned American voters and discussed the anxiety and uncertainty that Americans felt. Aletraris was also selected for the inaugural cohort of the Rural Engagement Workshop for Faculty through UGA Public Service and Outreach. https://outreach.uga.edu/programs/rural-engagement-facultyworkshop/

Y. Joon Choi

Photo by Chad Osburn

Joon Choi was appointed co-chair to the Society for Social Work and Research’s Immigrants and Refugees cluster. The three year term begins in 2021. Choi will be involved in the SSWR conference abstract acceptance decision-making process.

Llewellyn Cornelius

Photo by Robert Newcomb

In October Llewellyn “Lee” Cornelius participated in a panel on social justice titled “Racial/Ethnic and Cultural Contours of Community Interventions, Advocacy, and Change” at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. Debbie Salas-Lopez and Cornelius co-authored The Girl from the Bronx: A True Story of Struggle, Resiliency and Courage, a memoir of public policy’s effect on vulnerable populations.

Lemuel "Life" La Roche

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In July, Cornelius and Lemuel “Life” LaRoche BSW ’02, MSW ’03, also participated in a discussion on the radio program Athens News Matters about the experience of Black academics at a majority-white institution.

Allison Dunnigan

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In December 2020 the consumer finance website WalletHub featured expert commentary by Allison Dunnigan on the history of foster care in America and areas in need of improvement.

Jennifer Elkins

Photo by Andrew Davis Tucker

Jennifer Elkins was featured by Public Libraries Online regarding implementing a trauma-informed approach in libraries to support the most vulnerable populations.

Rachel Fusco

Photo by Dorothy Kozlowski

Rachel Fusco co-authored Dynamics of Family and Intimate Partner Violence with Irene Hanson Frieze and Christina Newhill, through Springer Publishing.

Kristina Jaskyte Bahr

Photo by Wingate Downs

Kristina Jaskyte Bahr received UGA’s Service-Learning Teaching Excellence Award and also was selected to the Innovation Bootcamp Spring 2020 cohort. The highly competitive program examines the unique challenges faced by female entrepreneurs as well and equip them with the key skills needed to be successful and innovative in an entrepreneurial environment.

Tony Lowe

Photo by Andrew Davis Tucker

Tony Lowe was selected as a recipient of the 2021 UGA President’s Fulfilling the Dream Award. Lowe was honored for his work helping the city of Hogansville, GA discover and confront its early civil rights struggles and build a plan for economic development that acknowledges its history. Lowe was recognized at the UGA Athens Freedom Breakfast virtual celebration on Friday January 15,2021.

Jane McPherson

Photo by Robert Newcomb

Jane McPherson has been an invited speaker around the world (virtually, because of COVID-19) on rights based social work practice. She was invited to speak at the European Human Rights and Social Work Network in the Netherlands, as a plenary speaker at the Rethinking Social Work VIII conference in Istanbul, and as the keynote speaker at the Taiwan Association of Social Workers Annual Conference.

David Okech

Photo by Robert Newcomb

David Okech was the convener and director of the first global Prevalence Reduction Innovation Forum (PRIF), bringing together leading researchers in the field of human trafficking to extend the science of prevalence estimation. As director of PRIF, Okech will work with the research teams to establish prevalence of human trafficking in selected hotspots in Brazil, Costa Rica, Morocco, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Tunisia. He was invited to join the program advisory group of The Freedom Fund (UK), as well as the Research and Prevalence Expert Panel (RPEP) of EnCompass, LLC.

Michael Robinson

Photo by Harold Waters

Michael A. Robinson and his co-authors were awarded the Florence W. Vigilante Award for Scholarly Excellence for “The Dehumanization of Black Males by Police: Teaching Social Justice - Black Life Really Does Matter” published in the Journal of Teaching in Social Work. The award is given annually in honor of the journal’s founding editor. Robinson and his co-authors were recognized in November 2020 at the virtual Annual Program Meeting of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE).

Anna Scheyett

Photo by Robert Newcomb

Anna Scheyett was named a 2020 NASW Social Work Pioneer ™ by the National Association of Social Workers Foundation (NASWF). “During the course of her career, Scheyett has demonstrated a commitment to community-based collaborative scholarship, excellence in social work education, and has served as a mentor to countless students and young faculty,” stated the NASWF press release.

Amy Shipp

Submitted Photo

Amy Shipp was invited to present at the Charleston Child Trauma Conference. Her presentation was titled “The Envision Project: Specialized Services for Commercially Sexually Exploited Youth”.

Rebecca Wells

Photo by Chad Osburn

Rebecca Wells was selected as a UGA 2020-2021 Service Learning Fellow. The year-long program provides selected faculty the opportunity to learn best practices in service learning, community engagement and how to integrate these practices into their teaching and research. Wells also published on medical homes for children with special healthcare needs https://news.uga.edu/ kids-with-special-needs-still-face-care-gaps/ , was quoted in “Healthday” about her research, and was interviewed for WUGA’s Athens News Matters.