Meet Smith SSW Faculty

FACULTY

Meet Our

Smith College School for Social Work

Our resident faculty and administrators are world-renowned experts and committed educators who care deeply about our students.

Their unique experiences and interests fuel their research and enrich their classrooms.

DEAN

MARIANNE R. M. YOSHIOKA, M.S.W., Ph.D., M.B.A., LCSW Dean Elizabeth Marting Treuhaft Professor Dean Marianne Yoshioka arrived at the Smith College School for Social Work in 2014. Prior to Smith College, Yoshioka spent 18 years on the faculty of the Columbia School of Social Work and also served as the school’s associate dean of academic affairs. Originally trained as a clinical social worker, Yoshioka focused her research on the areas of addiction, family therapy, HIV/AIDS, family violence in Asian communities and the design and development of culturally tailored intervention. She has received related research funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, as well as private foundations, and has published her findings extensively in an effort to advance knowledge of and services for underrepresented communities.

Yoshioka has held board positions with the National Association of Deans and Directors of Social Work, the NASW, social service organizations and has participated in numerous working groups and think tanks. Yoshioka’s work as a clinician, researcher and administrator demonstrate a commitment to antioppression and inclusion that echoes Smith College School for Social Work’s strong clinical social work training programs and anti-racism mission.

Yoshioka has taught in the areas of clinical practice, advanced research methods, the developmental life course and practice with battered women. She received her M.B.A. from UMass Amherst, her Ph.D. from Florida State University’s School of Social Work, her M.S.W. from the University of Michigan and her B.A (honors) from Canada’s University of Western Ontario.

ASSOCIATE DEAN

MARSHA KLINE PRUETT, M.S., M.S.L., Ph.D. Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Maconda Brown O’Connor Professor Marsha Kline Pruett’s current research looks at family dynamics and development, both normative and non-normative, with a specialization in the promotion of healthy child and family development during life transitions, particularly those transitions related to adverse events or circumstances. Her clinical research incorporates preventive interventions, consultation, program design and evaluation.

Another current area of research and intervention Kline Pruett is involved in concentrates on increasing father involvement with their children. The Supporting Father Involvement project aims to reduce child abuse and neglect and enhance family well-being through an intervention that encourages father involvement and couple co-parenting (among married and unmarried parents) in family resource centers.

Kline Pruett involves undergraduate and social work graduate students in every aspect of research and writing on various projects. Students learn research skills and publish book chapters and articles. Doctoral students also attend and present at conferences and seminars that Kline Pruett attends in the local or national community.

Kline Pruett is the recipient of numerous federal, state and private foundation grants and is known nationally for the development, implementation and evaluation of preventive interventions in schools and courts.

ASSOCIATE DEAN

IRENE RODRÍGUEZ-MARTIN, Ed.D. Associate Dean of Graduate Enrollment and Student Services Irene Rodríguez-Martin is the daughter of immigrants and a first generation college graduate. For the past 20 years she has dedicated her career to issues of access, support and retention for students, especially for students of color. She has taught in the Research Sequence at Smith and serves as an adviser to the Council for Students of Color. While her professional efforts have focused on graduate education, she is also a long-time volunteer within the community on a range of social justice issues.

Rodríguez-Martin is a past President and Fundador of the Latino Scholarship Association; a charter member of the Carlos Vega Fund for Social Justice; a former trustee of the Western Massachusetts Community Foundation and the CARE Center; and a member of the Board of Directors at Baystate Medical Center.

RESIDENT FACULTY

KATHRYN BASHAM, Ph.D., LICSW Professor & Chair, Practice Sequence Kathryn Basham’s current focus is research, writing, clinical social work practice and education related to the effects of deployment and combat stress on the re-integration of service members, military Veterans and their families. She has been appointed to three National Academy of Medicine Congressional committees charged with exploring issues related to enhancing the mental health treatment of military and Veteran families.

Her current committee work focuses on evaluating the efficacy of various PTSD treatments for service members, Veterans and their families.

Additionally, Basham served on the executive committee of the Council for Social Work Education to design military social work competencies, and participated on the expert panel of the National Association of Social Workers to design credentials in military social work at the B.S.W., M.S.W. and Advanced Clinical M.S.W. levels. She is an active participant in a national interdisciplinary organization titled the Alliance for Military and Veteran Family Behavioral Health Providers. Basham is also working collaboratively with Jean LaTerz on a pilot research project exploring the effectiveness of a couple therapy approach grounded in neurobiology, attachment and trauma theories and developed for military and Veteran couples.

Basham received her bachelor’s degree from George Washington University, her M.S.W. from the University of California at Berkeley and her Ph.D. from Smith College School for Social Work.

RORY CRATH, M.A., Ph.D. Assistant Professor Rory Crath has been involved with numerous community-based, mixed-methods research initiatives focusing on queer men’s health and well-being, and the governance of urban youth experiencing social and economic disenfranchisement and precariousness of citizenship.

Crath’s research program addresses issues of social, health and economic disparity and exclusion; the political production and organization of social and health sciences knowledge about different socially disenfranchised urban communities; and the affective and aesthetic politics of belonging.

The overarching analytical scope of this program is a critical examination of the consolidation and mediation of knowledge in governance practices targeting the social lives and health of urban youth, immigrant communities and queer identified men. He is invested in interrogating how differently raced, classed, gendered and sexually lived lives come to be made meaningful or not, and are contested or accommodated through the exercise of circulating regimes of knowledge.

Crath has more than 15 years of community-based experience working in the areas of homelessness, sexual health promotion and anti-poverty mobilization with queer, racialised, immigrant, two-spirit and transgender youth.

RESIDENT FACULTY

JAMES DRISKO, M.S.W., Ph.D. Professor & Chair, Research Sequence James Drisko’s recent work focuses on evidence-based practice, the common factors model, clinical work with children and families (including reactive attachment disorder and its treatment), psychotherapy evaluation and qualitative research methods.

Drisko received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Amherst College, his M.S.W. from Smith College School for Social Work and his Ph.D. from Boston College Graduate School of Social Work.

Drisko was elected to the National Academies of Practice in Clinical Social Work in 2008 and was named as an inaugural fellow of the Society for Social Work and Research in 2014.

ANNEMARIE GOCKEL, M.S.W., Ph.D. Associate Professor & Chair, Social Work Practice Sequence Annemarie Gockel’s current work focuses on how people draw on spirituality to heal physically and mentally. Her ongoing research explores consumer contributions to the provision of health and mental health services, spiritual coping and mindfulness-based interventions. Gockel’s related areas of interest include mental health consumer narratives, social work education and training, and mindfulness in clinical training and community-based interventions.

Gockel teaches Social Work Practice with Individuals and Families in the M.S.W. program, advises first- and second-year students and clinical supervisors during field internships and advises secondyear students conducting research. She chairs the social work practice sequence, coordinates the foundational practice course and serves on the field internship and the curriculum committees.

RESIDENT FACULTY

MEGAN HARDING, M.S.W. Senior Lecturer & Chair, Policy Sequence Megan Harding’s work has focused on policy, program design and practice within the K-12 public school setting, with a particular focus on equity and reducing the opportunity gap in Massachusetts. Harding served as the former director of social emotional learning for Holyoke Public Schools as well as the coordinator of the Holyoke Early Literacy Initiative and a Full Service Community Schools leader in Holyoke.

Harding has focused on strategic efforts to strengthen the “conditions for learning” in public schools. This work has included practice and advocacy to promote the Full Service Community School strategy, utilization of a Multi-Tiered System of Supports design, integration of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) into core instruction, promotion of School-Based Health Centers as well as school climate initiatives to address trauma-sensitivity and mitigate disparities in discipline policies.

Currently, Harding provides planning support, professional learning and technical assistance through the BRYT Network for schools in Massachusetts interested in developing “Bridge Programs” for students returning to school after extended absence from psychiatric hospitalization. Harding’s work includes a focus on strengthening family partnership and collaboration within the programs.

At Smith, Harding coordinates the Community Practice Experience and the first-year Agency & Community Practice course and teaches social work policy classes and a school social work course. Harding received her bachelor’s degree in human development and philosophy from Boston College and her M.S.W. from the Smith College School for Social Work.

HANNAH KARPMAN, M.S.W., Ph.D. Assistant Professor Hannah Karpman’s broad research interests span child welfare, mental health, physical health and other child-serving systems based on what she observed early in her career in residential mental health services for young women. In addition, Karpman is interested in innovative approaches to increasing the resiliency of at-risk children and families.

Karpman’s current research focuses on the outcome of a class action lawsuit about Medicaid-funded mental health services for children. The resulting court remedy mandated a redesign of children’s Medicaid-funded mental health services. Her research focuses primarily on the implementation of a state-wide behavioral health assessment for children and a wraparound process used for care coordination.

Karpman helped to hone the Massachusetts version of the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) assessment, the tool used by public sector clinicians to assess children and families, and remains interested and involved in how this assessment is used in practice and research across the country.

At Smith, Karpman teaches social work policy classes and is an advocate for providing research support to community-based agencies that are implementing innovative approaches to the primary prevention of the issues impacting children and families.

Karpman received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and English from Mount Holyoke College, her M.S.W. from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. in social policy from Brandeis University.

RESIDENT FACULTY

JOSHUA L. MILLER, M.S.W., Ph.D. Professor Joshua Miller is currently working with members of two First Nations tribes and employees of Alberta Health Service in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on sharing the lessons that they learned from a project intended to help the First Nations recover from a major flood. Miller also manages an ongoing psychosocial and medical capacity building project in northern Uganda. He published the second edition of his co-authored book, Racism in the United States: Implications for Social Work Practice, in February 2017. He is working on articles about attacks on school children in the U.S. and China and about socioeconomic class and the implications for social work practice.

In addition to his academic work, Miller has responded to, consulted on and written about many disasters including 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Aurora shootings, the Asian tsunami, the Haitian earthquake, armed conflict in northern Uganda, the Sichuan Province earthquake in China, the Boston Marathon bombing and the elementary school tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. He volunteers for a team that offers crisis intervention responses to firefighters, police officers and emergency medical technicians after tragedies; is a clinician with the Crisis Care Network; and often partners with local NGOs when responding to major disasters.

Prior to teaching, Miller spent 20 years as a community organizer, family therapist, group worker and researcher, and was the director of public and private nonprofit child and family welfare agencies. At Smith, Miller coordinates the required anti-racism course and teaches practice courses about psychosocial capacity building in response to disasters and cultivating client resilience. He co-facilitates a seminar for professors, field instructors and advisers called Pedagogy and Diversity. He is also a faculty field adviser.

ORA NAKASH, M.A., Ph.D. Professor & Director, Ph.D. Program Ora Nakash’s scholarly work aims to generate innovative research to improve the access, equity and quality of care for disadvantaged and minority populations. She is particularly interested in identifying the mechanisms that underlie mental health service disparities as a result of people’s social and cultural background and develop evidence-based interventions to reduce the detrimental effects these inequalities have on individuals, families and society at large.

To achieve these goals, Nakash uses a wide range of research methods, including epidemiological studies, laboratory experiments, and rigorously designed mixed-methods field studies across different clinical and educational contexts. In each of her research areas she intends to provide empirically driven and conceptually innovative insights that can advance both the theoretical understanding of the mechanisms underlying mental health disparities and the applied clinical literature on eliminating disparities in mental health services and improving quality of care.

As a scientist-practitioner, Nakash maintains a strong commitment to issues of diversity and improvement of mental health care for marginalized populations throughout her academic and clinical work. Her research, which preserves an intimate relationship with insights from her clinical work, strives to “emerge from the field and return to the field,” producing translational research that can assist in eliminating disparities in mental health.

Prior to Smith College Nakash was a faculty member at the School of Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel, where she also served as the school’s associate dean. Nakash’s work has received extensive funding from European Union and Israeli National foundations, including European Union Marie Curie Reintegration grant, the Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research and Health Service Research and the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation.

RESIDENT FACULTY

PEGGY O’NEILL, Ph.D., LCSW Assistant Professor Peggy O’Neill came to Smith in 2012 following eight years as senior lecturer at Columbia University School of Social Work, and served as associate dean of academic affairs. O’Neill has taught across the clinical and social enterprise administration methods. She is particularly interested in deepening authentic connections and relationships across differences, with particular attention to challenging oppression and finding resilience in the face of trauma.

With several years of experience working with diverse communities facing trauma post-9/11, O’Neill has worked on co-developing, implementing and evaluating resiliency based, culturally and linguistically attuned psychoeducational groups, and has 25 years of clinical and administrative social work practice in health/mental health care. She directed an employee assistance program (EAP) for seven years, serving employees and families of a large teaching hospital and multiple for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. She developed the organizational development and consulting component of the EAP to support and emphasize the human aspects of the workplace. She continues to work as a clinical social worker/psychotherapist consultant.

O’Neill received her bachelor’s degree in special education from Boston College, her master’s degree from the Columbia University School of Social Work and her Ph.D. from New York University.

YOOSUN PARK, M.S.W., Ph.D. Associate Professor Chair, Human Behavior in Social Environments Sequence Yoosun Park’s scholarship, framed within the broad substantive area of immigration, is informed by poststructuralist theories of discourse and methods of inquiry, and pursues two overlapping lines of inquiry: social work’s history with immigrants and immigration, and the study of contemporary issues pertinent to immigrants and the issue of immigration. Her examinations of the current and past discourses of the profession aim to identify and engender the development of alternative lines of inquiry, question formulation and conceptualization. Her approach to teaching parallels her scholarly pursuits in its critical mode and multidisciplinary content.

Park is the current editor-in-chief of social work’s only feminist journal, Affilia: Journal of Women in Social Work and serves on the board of Social Service Review. Her book, Facilitating Injustice, which critically examines social workers’ complicit role in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. was published in 2019.

Learn more: ssw.smith.edu/faculty