InDepth: Perspectives in Social Work (Fall 2016)

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InDepth FALL 2016

I N THI S ISSUE LGBTQ FAMILIES COMMUNITY PRACTICE ANTI-RACISM EFFORTS / 1 /

SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

Tatiana Padilla, M.S.W. ’16, sports a cap with a message SSW students and alumni take to heart. You’ll find more coverage of Commencement 2016 in the Spring 2017 issue of InDepth.

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.

04 A new type of brew. Paying homage to coffee lovers at SSW.

MANAGING EDITOR

Tynan Power DESIGN

Lilly Pereira Maureen Scanlon Murre Creative CONTRIBUTORS

Toby Davis Dawn Faucher Patricia Gilbert Dane Kuttler Laurie Loisel Tynan Power Megan Rubiner Zinn PHOTOGRAPHY

Shana Sureck Caitlin Shea Steven Bradley 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 ©2016

FOLLOW US ON:

Facebook facebook.com/ smithcollegessw Twitter twitter.com/ smithcollegessw

SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

InDepth FALL 2016

FEATURES

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LGBTQ Family Matters

SSW faculty members and alumnae share insights and research questions from their current work with LGBTQ families, including what social work is doing right and where we can do better.

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Community Talk

Phebe Sessions literally wrote the book on community-based practice. Here, she reflects on decades of bearing witness to the power of community.

DEPARTMENTS

02 From the Dean A note from Marianne Yoshioka

03 SSWorks School News + Updates Faculty Notes Student Focus

35 Alumni News Alumni Desk Alumni Profile

40 Post Script An End Note

ON THE COVER

Instagram instagram.com/ smithcollegessw

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YouTube bit.ly/SSWYouTube

Dean Yoshioka offers her perspective on the SSW anti-racism commitment, recent protests on campus and the work ahead.

Meaningful Action

Kai Lynch, A17, (left) and Alex Sobieraj, A18, (right) participated in the 2016 Student Org Leadership Retreat.

Photo by Caitlin Shea.

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

SSWorks News from Lilly Hall

A Strong Community It’s wonderful to know that the thoughtfulness and care that we bring to our educational process and the content of each course have been seen and acknowledged.

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Greetings! We have just concluded the 98th year of our master’s and doctoral programs. This past summer, like the ones before, was filled with hard work, great learning, and many opportunities to come together as a community. We owe a debt of gratitude to our staff, who manage many of the logistics to make each summer run smoothly. Our deepest thanks go to the resident and part-time faculty members whose expertise and skills as educators and advisers make the Smith experience so powerful.

Our educational programs are renowned throughout the country for their excellence. We were delighted that this spring we were ranked #6 of all social work programs in the country by College Choice.

It’s wonderful to know that the thoughtfulness and care that we bring to our educational process and the content of each course have been seen and acknowledged.

In these pages, I invite you to read about the many ways that we lead in clinical social work education and research.

Clinical practice is always complex and, in this issue, we turn our focus to several issues highly relevant to today’s practice and education environments. Our article, “LGBTQ Family Matters: Moving the Field Forward,” draws on the groundbreaking work of Assistant Professor Hannah Karpman and alumna Caitlin Ryan. In it, we consider the unique strengths and experiences that LGBTQ identities bring to family life and also the challenges that can emerge for parents or children in families where one or more family members identifies as LGBTQ. In “Trans Families: A Growth Edge in Social Work,” adjunct professor Arlene Istar Lev and alumna Shannon Sennott talk about an area where the School—and the profession—can do more, by teaching and learning better ways to serve transgender

SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

individuals and families. These perspectives help us ensure that clinical work with families is relevant and honors diverse family experiences.

We offer an interview with Professor Phebe Sessions, who deepens our understanding of the many and intersecting ways that clinical social workers operate in communities to support the developmental and mental health needs of those who live there. Community is often where we are our authentic selves and in which our support systems also reside. Phebe brings a depth of expertise to this subject, since she wrote the book on the topic—literally. She is the co-author of the Handbook of Community-Based Clinical Practice with former SSW Dean Anita Lightburn.

I also offer some thoughts on how institutions take meaningful action toward anti-racism practices—a topic that remains in the forefront of all of our minds. Since last year, we have experienced students and faculty of color rise up demanding real and substantive changes to acknowledge and respect their place in the academy. As an institution committed to anti-racism, we have undertaken a great deal of work toward these goals, but we are not immune to the kinds of systemic racism challenges that higher education institutions face. Our anti-racism commitment means that we will not relent in this work—not that we believe the work is over.

There are great things happening in our School, and I truly believe the world is a better place for it. I hope you enjoy this issue’s stories and see in them the many ways that your support of our School continues to make a difference.

There is no limit on what we can accomplish when we tap into our combined strength as a community of clinicians, learners and educators. X

IN THIS SECTION

SCHOOL NEWS FACULTY NOTES STUDENT FOCUS

Nathalie Rodriguez, M.S.W. ’16, reads Where the Wild Things Are at Baccalaureate.

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SPOKEN WORD

“Social work at its best is about training folks to see those who are otherwise made invisible: to see them fully, to see them totally, and to see them through a lens, through a framework, of love and commitment.”

JOHN L. JACKSON, JR., PH.D ., dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice, gave the Annual Anti-racism Lecture during our 2016 Public Lecture Series.

Label artwork for our Bertha’s Blend coffee

Partnering with Purpose New Collaboration for DBT Training

Something Brewing Need a caffeine infusion? Check out Bertha’s Blend!

This fall, the School for Social Work is launching its own coffee brands! Inspired by special blends made by local roaster Melissa Kreuger, proprietor of The Elbow Room, we asked Kreuger to develop our own regular and decaffeinated blends and package them for our community. Northampton-based graphic designer Tom Pappalardo created labels that play up the School’s quirky humor. Now you can put a little SSW into every day, too. We serve Bertha’s Blend and our decaffeinated blend, Caffeine Intervention, in Lilly Hall. Both blends will be available at alumni events.

Learn more about Bertha and why her memory keeps us energized on page 40.

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This spring, SSW began a collaboration with Cutchins Programs for Children and Families, a leading Massachusetts provider of children and family services, with the aim of increasing opportunities for clinicians to train in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).

DBT is an empirically-supported intervention shown to be effective for individuals with serious self-harming behavior. Drawing on cognitive behavioral principles, research indicates that DBT offers an important way to intervene with individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD), difficulties with emotional regulation, substance dependence, depression, eating disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In May, Charles Swenson, M.D., and Kelly Koerner, Ph.D., presented a four-day advanced intensive training at the Smith College Conference Center. In October, the collaboration will bring Swenson back to Smith for the first part of a ten-day comprehensive DBT training; the second part will take place in April 2017.

Swenson is an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. A widely-respected expert in the field, he began training in DBT and CBT in 1987 and has conducted more than 40 ten-day workshops, training hundreds of individuals, and has numerous publications to his credit.

He has implemented DBT in outpatient, inpatient, day treatment, residential, case management and crisis settings, with adults and adolescents. Swenson is an inspiring teacher who brings DBT to life with clinical examples and demonstrations. We are fortunate to benefit from his expertise here in Northampton, where he maintains a private practice for adults, adolescents and families.

DBT is an empirically supported intervention shown to be effective for individuals with serious self-harming behavior.

COMINGS + GOINGS Welcome to Myrna Flynn The School for Social Work is pleased to welcome Myrna Flynn to Smith College as the School’s new communications manager. She brings a wealth of experience to the position, having worked as a reporter and producer for local news outlets and as a director of marketing and social media.

“We are confident that Myrna’s unique vision, experience, and skills are an excellent fit for us and this position,” said Dean Yoshioka.

Immediately prior to her position at Smith, Flynn was the special assistant for presidential communications at Amherst College. She holds a B.A. in communications and political science from Saint Mary’s College and an M.A. in teaching with a concentration in English from Smith College. She has additional post-graduate training in broadcast journalism.

“I’m thrilled to be a member of the team and look forward to achieving the SSW mission on campus and in the field,” said Flynn. “My first month on the job allowed me to experience the dynamism of the School’s anti-racism commitment, and it’s humbling to have the opportunity to work toward its fulfillment. In addition, it’s clear that there are countless stories among our students, faculty and alumni, and each has the potential to demonstrate the worldwide impact of our community members. I’m honored to be the one who gets those stories told.”

Though a Minneapolis native, Flynn has lived in Northampton for the past 15 years with her husband, Jim, and their four children.

Flynn joined the School on August 1. She can be reached at mflynn@smith.edu.

Best wishes to Tarek Zidan On July 29, the School said good-bye to Tarek Zidan, who joined Smith College last fall when he became the 2015 Bertha Capen Reynolds Predoctoral Fellow. Over the past year, he has been an engaged participant in the School community and served as an adviser for SSW students. During his time at Smith, he completed his Ph.D. at Howard University, including his dissertation on attitudes of Arab Americans toward people with developmental disabilities. Zidan hopes his doctoral research will help to fill in gaps in previous research, contribute to improved attitudes toward people with developmental disabilities and expand clinical awareness of the factors that play a formative role in attitudes of Arab Americans. Ths Fall, Zidan will begin his new position as assistant professor at the University of Indiana at South Bend. Zidan looks forward to teaching social welfare policy, mental health policy and social work research methods at the University.

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Rhoda Smith, 2016 Bertha Capen Reynolds Predoctoral Fellow.

Rhoda Smith 2016 BCR Predoctoral Fellow For the next year, Rhoda Smith will be part of the School community, as this year’s Bertha Capen Reynolds Predoctoral Fellow. Smith is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in social policy and social research at Loma Linda University. She is also a lecturer in Azusa Pacific University’s M.S.W. program as well as the school’s coordinator for the University Consortium for Children and Families.

After a long career in child welfare, Smith felt driven to do more for her colleagues, for the field and for the children in the system. Working in supervisory positions, she found social workers who weren’t prepared to meet the diverse needs of the families with whom they worked, social workers who were quickly burning out and administrators who couldn’t provide the necessary support. At the same time, she wanted to do more to help the children in the welfare system, by improving their well-being and quality of life. With an eye toward working on recruitment and retention in the field, she began pursuing a doctorate.

Smith’s research has included maternal health and well-being for children in the child welfare system, especially foster youth. Her dissertation

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focuses on how foster youth learn about sex and reproductive health.

“Foster youth have such poor outcomes when it comes to reproductive health,” Smith said. “Half the girls in foster care will become pregnant as teenagers. By 19, a third of them will have two babies. And we blame them for it. We say, ‘They’re in foster care, so of course that’s going to happen to them.’”

Smith believes these outcomes are not inevitable; a lack of sex education and support contribute significantly to the high pregnancy rate.

“Foster kids are disconnected from their families, they change schools often and they may not have a longtime connection with anyone,” said Smith. “Often the social worker is the constant adult figure in their lives, but with so much turnover in child welfare, that constant is not very long.”

Most of the literature on parent-child sexual communication that exists is based on studies of normative families; Smith’s goal is to bring foster children into those conversations.

Smith was drawn to SSW in part for its clinical focus.

“I’ve had a chance to really use that lens when I look at well-being and quality of life for kids in the foster care system, and what kinds of predictable outcomes we can expect in terms of their mental health,” said Smith.

However, she was also intrigued by the figure of Bertha Capen Reynolds herself.

“Some people thought Reynolds was a kind of social justice rebel—that really resonated with me.”

The BCR Predoctoral Fellowship provides a twelve-month residential fellowship to a doctoral student in the dissertation phase, from any accredited social work Ph.D. program. Created in 1987, this highly competitive fellowship supports the development of scholars from underrepresented groups, whose work promotes both the underlying principles of Reynolds’ approach to clinical social work and the mission of Smith College School for Social Work.

To learn more about the BCR Predoctoral Fellowship, visit smith.edu/ssw/bcr. To learn more about Bertha Capen Reynolds, see page 40.

SSW By the Numbers

360 29 M .S.W. A N D PH .D . STU D EN TS united by a passion for clinical social work within an anti-racism framework each year.

average A G E of students.

4:1

3

M O N TH S time (avg.) it takes for our graduates to secure jobs.

O VER

500 FEET of records documenting SSW history in the Smith College Archives.

STU D EN TFA CU LTY RATI O .

Our typical introductory social work practice CL A SS SI Z E

75% of students Q U A L I FY FO R FI N A N CI A L A I D , with grant awards ranging from $5,000 to $22,000.

18 26% STU D EN TS.

of our students identify as PEO PL E O F CO L O R.

1.4

MILLION + L I BRA RY H O L D I N G S. Special-subject libraries for the fine arts, the performing arts and the sciences; distinguished collection of women’s history manuscripts; nationally prominent rare book collection; largest liberal arts college library—larger than many university libraries.

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The school was FO U N D ED in

1918 under the name, Smith Psychiatric Training School.

#6

in 2016 RA N KI N G of U.S. Schools of Social Work.

L O CKERS in the Smith College gym were made available for gender non-binary students, faculty and staff in summer 2016. In fact, response has been so positive, that locker room will continue to be gender-neutral year-round.

A FRESH LOOK

SSW Launches New Website This fall, SSW is launching a new website, after more than a year of planning and implementation. The School has worked closely with the College and the web design firm Primacy to create a new site that contains all the information students, alumni and other visitors seek, presented in a way that is clear, easy to navigate and responsive to mobile and other devices.

Before designing the site, Primacy and the School did a lot of listening.

Primacy met with a working group of a dozen members of the School’s staff and administration, who identified key stakeholders in the project.

Focus groups of current students and prospective students shed light on what worked and what didn’t work on the existing site. One-on-one meetings were held with each department of the School’s administration—from Admissions to the Field Office—to determine how the new website could best serve departmental needs. All of this information guided decisions about the content, navigation and appearance of the new site.

The new website highlights the strengths of the School’s academic programs, while conveying our values, illustrating our school culture and providing current information to our communities of students, faculty and alumni. Whether they visit using a desktop computer, a tablet or a mobile phone, visitors will find that the site is engaging and interesting—and fun to explore.

While much has changed, the URL has not. Visit the site at smith. edu/ssw.

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Faculty Notes Recent news and accomplishments

Affilia was created 30 years ago to claim a particular space in social work, one in which scholarship written ‘as women, about women, for women’ could be published.

Yoosun Park Named Editor of Affilia

In December, Associate Professor Yoosun Park, M.S.W., Ph.D., will take the lead of Affilia: Journal of Women in Social Work as the publication’s editor-in-chief. The journal’s mission is to give “voice to the myriad ways in which feminist practice and praxis manifest in social work.” Founded in 1986 as a dedicated forum for women’s voices in social work, Affilia strives to maintain a critical, intersectional lens that continually questions which voices and perspectives are represented and should be included.

Park has brought just such a feminist lens to her own work, both in the classroom and in her research. Park’s relationship with Affilia began four years ago, when she joined the editorial board, and includes the journal’s publication of her article, “‘A Curious Inconsistency’: The Discourse of Social Work on the 1922 Married Women’s Independent Nationality Act and the Intersecting Dynamics

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of Race and Gender in the Laws of Immigration and Citizenship,” in 2015.

Affilia was created 30 years ago to claim a particular space in social work, one in which scholarship written ‘as women, about women, for women’ (Meyer, 1996, p. 141) could be published,” said Park. “I am honored by this opportunity to work with and on behalf of social workers who bring a feminist lens to their work. I look forward to helping to bring attention to underrepresented voices in the field and to expanding the reach of Affilia.

For more about Park, visit smith. edu/ssw/park. —Tynan Power New Smith Studies Editor Outlines Vision for Journal

As the new editor of the Smith College Studies in Social Work journal, Dennis Miehls, M.S.W., Ph.D. ’89, has high hopes for the quarterly publication.

It will continue to provide a forum for discussion of timely clinical practice issues and research. The scholarly

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journal also will continue to examine traditional theory and policy matters—all with the School’s hallmark anti-racism lens.

“I welcome manuscripts that contribute to the important discussion of anti-racism in clinical practice and clinical education and in elucidating ways to challenge institutional racism,” Miehls wrote in his first issue as editor, April-June 2016.

The journal is also, he believes, a means to support and showcase new practitioners and researchers in the field.

“I do see that as part of the mission —to mentor Ph.D. students and junior faculty to launch their publishing career in some way,” said Miehls.

First published in 1930, the peer reviewed journal bears testimony to the School’s longstanding commitment to excellence in social work.

Miehls noted that his appointment follows a long list of distinguished editors, including Smith faculty emeriti Roger Miller, Joan Laird, Gerald Schamess, and most recently

by Professor Kathryn Basham. Miehls

said he hopes to build on the quality journal they published year after year.

Typically, each issue has four articles written by contributors from around the world, as well as two book reviews. Two members of the editorial board work with writers to get their articles ready for publication in a process that can take a year. The journal publishes about half of the submissions it receives.

Typically, articles cover a broad range of social work topics in each issue. One or two times a year, the journal is given over to a special topic issue, often published with the help of a guest editor.

Previously, Miehls was guest editor for a special topic issue on neurobiology, one of his areas of interest.

Miehls said two special issues are now in the works. One addresses clinical work with children whose parents are incarcerated.

“This is a very unfortunately hot topic right now because of the rates of incarceration,” Miehls noted.

The other is an issue devoted to clinicians of color discussing their perspectives on social work practice and theory.

Miehls said he aims to highlight special topic issues because exploring

topics in depth is important to both practitioners and researchers.

“They tend to attract wider readership and give a focused look at current clinical social work practice,” he said.

“You can get a pretty solid look at a topic area.”

Previous special topic issues have addressed supervision, contemplative practice and spirituality, and community-based practices. Some of the topic areas he is considering for upcoming special issues include sexuality in clinical social work, clinical issues in working with combat veterans, trauma-informed approaches to working with male clients and best practices in working with transgender clients.

Another change Miehls plans for the journal is to introduce a regular feature that highlights case studies by social workers “out there in the trenches.”

While journal articles often include clinical vignettes, there are fewer opportunities for detailed case studies that can be used as learning tools in social work education. Miehls believes these case studies will fill a void and highlight professionals who have much to say.

“There are a number of really seasoned and experienced clinical practitioners who have a lot to offer in terms of case study and case analysis,” he said.

Miehls brings a wealth of experience and academic rigor to this new role. In addition to teaching in the SSW doctoral program, he serves as a research adviser and maintains a clinical practice. In 2015, Miehls collaborated with Jeffrey Applegate, D.S.W., to co-author Neurobiology and Mental Health Clinical Practice, which examines the implication of research findings in neurobiology to a variety of clinical issues.

While being editor of the Smith College Studies in Social Work journal

is a tremendous amount of work, it is also an honor, Miehls noted, as well as a great opportunity.

“It’s exciting for me because I tend to be a fairly voracious reader and in my role as editor I’m exposed to writing that I wouldn’t be otherwise.

For more about Miehls, visit smith. edu/ssw/miehls. —Laurie Loisel Marsha Kline Pruett Elected President of AFCC

The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) is an international association of family law professionals who fall along various points of the family-court involvement spectrum. You’ll find judges, lawyers, psychologists, academics, researchers, social workers, educators, financial planners—and many other professionals—coming together to reduce the toxic effects of family conflict, as well as change the family court system to better serve the people who come through it. AFCC provides leadership through guidelines for standards of practice, the respected Family Court Review journal, online and in person trainings and resources, task forces, think tanks and conferences related to issues such as parental separation, divorce and child custody cases:

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all of these areas are in the purview of AFCC. Marsha Kline Pruett, the Maconda Brown O’Connor professor at Smith College School for Social Work, was recently elected president of AFCC. This role with the innovative organization couldn’t be better tailored to her areas of expertise.

Kline Pruett, who holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California Berkeley and a master’s in law from Yale School of Law, has an international reputation for the development, implementation and evaluation of preventive interventions in courts and family-focused community agencies. Her long history of collaboration with professionals outside the academic and social work world has prepared her to lead the AFCC Board of Directors. She has been organizing reform groups and efforts since the early 1990’s. In 2001, she joined forces with a lawyer to co-author Your Divorce Advisor: An Attorney and Psychologist Lead You Through the Legal and Emotional Landscape of Divorce.

“I was drawn immediately to [AFCC’s] interdisciplinarity,” said Kline Pruett. “I recall my Great Aunt Eva asking me when I was still a middle schooler: ‘Marshie, what are you going to do with your life to make the world a better place? What do you want to be?’ I said without hesitation, ‘I’ve narrowed down my options; I know I’m going to a psychologist, a sociologist, an educator, a lawyer or a journalist. Or maybe even some of those together.’”

Kline Pruett says her goal is to work collaboratively to make family life stronger and family conflict less toxic, as well as to help children have two (or more) parents who teach them the lessons of life, with its peaks and valleys. Kline Pruett already has strengthened the AFCC’s work in a number of ways. She founded the Researchers Roundtable, a small group of researchers that began a conversation and wrote two articles about the need for examining the role and integrity of research in family law. She became a key partner in AFCC membership drives, bringing new experts

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The award recognizes an educator who has “made unique contributions to academic social work education in development of knowledge through research, dissemination of knowledge through teaching and/or writing, and/or community service.”

and their talents into the organization.

She also inaugurated a new professionals’ fellowship to develop the strengths of young mental health and legal professionals.

For more about Kline Pruett, visit smith.edu/ssw/klinepruett. —Dane Kuttler

Kathryn Basham Honored for Her Contribution to Social Work Education

In April 2016, SSW Professor Kathryn Basham, M.S.W., Ph.D. ’90, was honored with an award for Greatest Contribution to Social Work Education by the National Association of Social Workers—Massachusetts chapter. The award recognizes an educator who has “made unique contributions to academic social work education in development of knowledge through research, dissemination of knowledge through teaching and/ or writing, and/or community

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service.” The award also recognizes Basham’s effectiveness in education and the high respect and admiration she has earned among colleagues and students.

At SSW, Basham serves as the co-director of the doctoral program and leads the School’s efforts to prepare students for clinical social work practice with military-affiliated populations in Veterans Affairs (VA) and Department of Defense medical centers. In fact, her efforts to educate others about the mental health needs of Veterans and service members go far beyond Smith’s walls.

In the fall of 2015, Basham began a year-long collaboration with Military Network Radio to deliver information about research and care strategies for Veterans, service members, and their families, to a broader audience. For this project, Basham teamed up with Linda Kreter, a Smith College alumna who created Military Network Radio, a weekly online podcast for military/

Veteran families (toginet.com/shows/ militarynetworkradio). Every other month for the past year, Kreter has interviewed Basham and other social work educators regarding current mental health research and strategies related to Veterans and military members. Subjects have included re-integration, relationship issues (such as communication, intimacy and attachment issues), the effects of secondary trauma on family members living with a Veteran who is coping with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) or other injuries, and aging among Veteran populations.

For more about Basham, visit smith. edu/ssw/basham. —Tynan Power Jim Drisko’s Work on Assessing Competencies Earns JSWE Award

Competencies. Evidence-based practice. Data-driven. Today, it’s not unusual to find these phrases liberally sprinkled across job descriptions, grant proposals and resumes in the social work world. For that, we have to thank professor James Drisko, M.S.W. ’77, Ph.D., who has been one of the driving forces behind social work’s biggest questions: What works?

Why? What makes a good social worker? How do we ensure that social workers are prepared and ready to face their enormous tasks with skill and sustainability?

“My years of clinical practice with children and families in community mental health and in schools has shaped me in many ways: prioritizing service to others, understanding people in their lived environments, learning how to selectively and professionally use myself as a vehicle of change, engaging with intense and painful feelings, applying a wide range of theories and increasingly engaging with human diversity and differences,” said Drisko. “This is my passion.”

He may not have all the answers, but Drisko’s paper, “Competencies and Their Assessment” digs deeply into the question of how to ensure social workers have the knowledge and skills they need. A critical examination of both social work curricula and how social work students are assessed, “Competencies and Their Assessment” has been awarded Best Conceptual Article by the Journal of Social Work Education at the 2015 CSWE conference.

“Over my six years of service [which began in 2010,] on the Council on Social Work Educations’ Commission on Accreditation, I saw many, many evaluation tools and models,” said Drisko. “However, exploration of just what competency is was rare. It turned out that there was outstanding scholarship from the 1970s on this topic: scholarship that had likely inspired the growing focus on assessing competence. This scholarship pointed out that tests rarely evaluated

competence well. It promoted using multiple methods and measures in actual contexts, assessed by a person already demonstrated as competent, and allowing for the continued development of true expertise beyond graduation. All of this made sense to me and seemed worth articulating and promoting to improve social work education. This was the basis for my article ‘Competencies and their Assessment.’ My goal was simply to get people thinking and talking—to encourage more and even better work on the topic.”

The School for Social Work has had the good fortune to benefit from Drisko’s passion and commitment to excellence for more than two decades.

In 2015, Smith College awarded him with the Charis Medal, in recognition of 25 years of distinguished service For more about Drisko, visit smith. edu/ssw/drisko. —Dane Kuttler

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BY MEG A N RUBI NER ZI NN

Taking the Leap When Career Change Starts with an M.S.W.

Courtney Tucker, A17, was a public health researcher before pursuing an M.S.W.

Each class of 125 students entering the Smith College School for Social Work M.S.W. program includes a number of career changers. They come from a variety of fields. For some, there was something missing in their previous work, be it passion, intellectual challenge, career growth or rich relationships with colleagues and clients. Others come with a significant desire to make a difference in people’s lives, something they weren’t able to do in their previous work. They choose Smith for its clinical excellence, its focus on family and community, its anti-racism commitment, its location in an area rich with opportunities for mental health research and practice, and its unique structure of summer classes and two eight-month field internships.¶ For Courtney Tucker and Nicolas McQueen, two such career changers, these were important factors in why they chose Smith. However, above all, it is the depth of their field training and the speed with which they have been able to gain experience and establish themselves in the profession that have proven to them that Smith was the right choice.

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From the Macro to the Micro

Courtney Tucker, a second-year student, wasn’t looking to significantly change her field. She chose to pursue an M.S.W. as a way to better serve the populations with which she has worked for years.

Before coming to Smith, Tucker, who has a Ph.D. in Educational Studies, worked as a public health researcher with a consulting firm in Atlanta, Georgia. Her work involved research and evaluation of public health programs that sought to address health disparities and health equities in vulnerable communities, particularly communities of color. Tucker enjoyed her work, but as she studied programs that targeted heart disease, obesity, stroke prevention and diabetes, she realized that structural changes in the community wouldn’t be successful if the community wasn’t ready for it.

“I began to see that regardless how much money you threw at something, no matter how much technical assistance you provided, if you didn’t deal with the mental component or look at it with a mental health lens, then nobody was going to do anything,” she said. “I wanted to really understand what is happening with individuals mentally when we’re seeing these health disparities play out.”

Tucker was drawn to Smith because the program would allow her to engage in clinical work even in her first year of study and give her more clinical hours than other programs. She also was impressed by the fieldwork expectations that required students to consistently record their process, give and get feedback, and reflect on their work.

Tucker’s first field internship was with Jewish Family & Career Services in Atlanta. Returning to Smith for the second summer, she was able to see

You’re able to bring those experiences back with you to the classroom and able to have a richness and a depth of discussion in doing them in your assignments, in your analysis. —COURTNEY TUCKER

more clearly the value of the deep dive into summer course work after a long field internship.

“Coming back and being in the courses I am in, it’s making me rethink how I would have done my cases,” said Tucker. “It’s applying a whole other level of scrutiny to it. I’m able to see my position as a clinician differently.”

Tucker has also appreciated the opportunity to come back to campus and engage with the students and faculty on the issues she confronted in the field.

“You’re able to bring those experiences back with you to the classroom and able to have a richness and a depth of discussion in doing them in your assignments, in your analysis,” she said. “And that’s a strength: being able to participate in these cross dialogues with people who all have a clinical focus.”

After more than a year in the program, Tucker also can see how unique Smith’s anti-racism commitment is— another part of the program’s draw.

“I don’t think any of the other graduate programs I have been in really challenged the students to look

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/ SSWorks /

at their privilege and to hold that, and to consider what that means for their relational aspects with clients, with individuals, with supervisors.”

Tucker’s second internship will be a significant shift in location and population, working in counseling services at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. When she completes her M.S.W., she plans to establish a private practice and hopes to train in psychoanalysis, as well, which she considers an excellent—and under-used— way to deal with issues facing the African-American community.

NICOLAS MCQUEEN Decision Time

On paper, Nicolas McQueen’s career change seems to be an about face: from hotel management to clinical social work. But for McQueen, who completed his M.S.W. this summer, it was more of a gradual and logical evolution.

McQueen holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

In the years after he graduated, his work varied but usually focused on customer service and management.

He traveled abroad and then landed in San Diego, where he worked at a hotel. He started as a bellman then worked up through the front desk into a supervisory position. When the hotel began grooming him for a management position, he realized it was time to make a decision about his life.

For some time, McQueen had been taking community college courses.

He happened to take one in biological psychology and found himself deeply interested in the subject. He followed this with a counseling course, which cemented his interest. McQueen took a research position in cognitive development at the University of California, San Diego, where he worked with toddlers. A mentor encouraged him to look beyond research into clinical work, particularly in the field of social work. McQueen had known many social workers who deeply impressed him, but he had assumed the field was focused on human services such as welfare and child custody. As he learned more about clinical social

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/ Student Focus /

work, it became clear that this was the best route for him. He got his feet wet, volunteering at the San Diego Deaf Community Center and then as a substance abuse and mental health volunteer at a San Diego hospital.

Like Tucker, when McQueen evaluated M.S.W. programs, his priority was getting intensive experience in the field as quickly as possible.

“I knew it had to be a bridge into a career, not another piece of paper,” he said.

Looking back, it’s clear to him that Smith was the right choice, primarily because of the quality and length of the field internships.

He calls the program one of the hardest things he’s done, but also the most rewarding.

“The [field] placements were exceptional: the relationships with supervisors, the clinical experiences,” McQueen said. “I couldn’t expect a better opportunity.”

McQueen’s first internship was at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, an inpatient facility where his experience included individual and group therapy. There, he gained experience in CBT, DBT, Motivational Interviewing, and Trauma Informed therapy. His second internship, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, provided thorough experience and excellent mentors.

McQueen worked individually with clients on an inpatient and an outpatient basis, deepening his experience with CBT, Motivational Interviewing and mindfulness-based techniques.

He worked with Dr. Cara Fuchs, a specialist in the patient-centered medical home model, and co-facilitated MBSR classes with Dr. Randall Paulsen.

With his M.S.W. in hand, McQueen is pursuing medical home model social work positions. He has also developed a strong interest in social work policy, especially in drug abuse and addiction, thanks to his SSW coursework.

“I didn’t think I was interested in policy, but the courses really opened my mind to the macro level approach to social work,” he said.

McQueen has entered the job market with a strong sense of confidence, which he attributes to the

SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

Smith is the best place for someone seeking a career change, because it prides itself on giving that experience and giving you a lot of it, and supporting you to be able to be reflective of it. You don’t have to wait to do what you changed careers for. —NICOLAS MCQUEEN

extensive work experience he built in the Smith program.

“Knowing it is work I’ve already done gives me a sense of authority and of understanding what the field needs,” said McQueen.

Looking back from the end of his social work education, McQueen can see that it was not an unlikely switch in careers, in spite of appearing otherwise.

“At the center of social work is working with people,” said McQueen.

“I was doing that in business management and personnel development, but the focus was on revenue and keeping the business growing. For me, it was a natural switch, focusing on people instead.”

For both Tucker and McQueen, Smith has proven to be the right conduit for their career changes, giving them a firm theoretical foundation while also moving them quickly to the clinical experience they needed to take the next step in their careers.

“Smith is the best place for someone seeking a career change, because it prides itself on giving that experience and giving you a lot of it, and supporting you to be able to be reflective of it,” Tucker said. “You don’t have to wait to do what you changed careers for.” X

Nicolas McQueen, M.S.W. ’16, studied business and worked in the hospitality industry before coming to Smith.

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BY LAURI E LO I SEL • PHOTOS BY SHANA SUR EC K

At home with Hannah Karpman, M.S.W., Ph.D., and her family.

Moving the Field Forward

LGBTQ

FamÄąly Matters Few areas of clinical and family social work have changed more dramatically than the theory and practice around LGBTQ people, the families they are born into, and the families they create. Yet there remain a multitude of clinical issues ripe for research and education, and plenty of uncharted territory for mental health professionals. Smith College School for Social Work community members are involved in a number of such projects, leading the way forward for clinical practice with new research and insights.

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SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

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“People were like, ‘thank God you’re doing this research, there’s nothing out there—and can you connect us with other families?’”

T

THE KNOWN DONOR PROJECT

he idea for Assistant Professor Hannah Karpman’s Known Donor Project sprang out of her own experience, but its breadth has grown far beyond her personal story.

When Karpman was moving towards creating a family with her wife, Katrina Hull, she wanted to consider using a known donor rather than an anonymous sperm bank, but she didn’t know anyone who had taken that route to pregnancy.

“Then I thought, ‘I’m a researcher, I should figure out what the narrative is,’ ” she said.

She found a book that had a single chapter on known donors, but beyond that found virtually no guidance in research literature.

Meanwhile, there was plenty of sentiment within her immediate and far-flung queer community suggesting known-donor arrangements carried serious risks.

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SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

“There was such a stigma in the lesbian community,” she said.

Despite the lack of information and the negativity, Karpman wasn’t dissuaded.

In 2012, she became pregnant with help from a childhood friend. This year, her wife gave birth to their second child— using the same donor.

Shortly after the birth of her first child, when the second-parent adoption was finalized in court, Karpman recalls making a passing comment to her attorney that it must be nice when such arrangements work out so well, given the potential for turmoil. Her lawyer surprised her by saying she’d been involved in dozens of known-donor arrangements and had only seen one problematic one in the bunch. That encounter in 2013, she said, set her on a research path she expects will go on for decades.

“I felt an obligation. I am queer. I am part of the queer community and I have these research skills,” she said.

“How can I best contribute?”

She decided to use her skills to research the ways women who use known donors create families and identify what clinical lessons can be gleaned from their experiences.

“Here is this awesome opportunity to answer a question that’s not being

answered in research literature,” said Karpman.

She and her research team conducted 134 interviews of members of 80 families in which women relied on known donors to get pregnant.

“I felt like we needed to start with the women’s narratives because we didn’t know what kind of research questions to ask—now we have 300,” she said.

When Karpman’s team reached out for study participants, the responses told them they were onto something.

“People were like, ‘thank God you’re doing this research, there’s nothing out there—and can you connect us with other families?’” Karpman said.

Her team conducted in-depth interviews with the mothers (both biological and non-biological), their donors, and, whenever possible, with the donor’s partner and parents.

The data they gathered through that research is still being mined for articles and theory development. There are plans for a longitudinal study that will follow families starting before conception to the choice of donor and through the child’s life, in order to see

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“Be very careful about your own assumptions and value judgments because what worked for you and what worked for your friends might not be right for this family.”

how the strengths and challenges within the families change over time.

Among the questions Karpman hopes to explore based on her initial research: • Are known donors a protective factor when a lesbian couple divorces? (“We heard that from parents,” Karpman said.)

• Are there personality characteristics more common in donors than the general population?

• Do women get pregnant faster with known donors?

• Are there economic advantages both at conception and over time to using known donors?

• How can the health care system better serve the needs of donor families?

• What are the differences between children from known donors and those from anonymous donors?

• Karpman finds the research fascinating on a number of levels, not the least of which is that she’s tapping into people whose experiences have not been studied closely.

“I like hearing the stories, but I also think it’s important. Same sex marriage has just been federally recognized. We are seeing and going to continue to see an increase in the

number of queer families, and we don’t know enough as mental health providers,” she said. “We don’t know enough about how to help them, we don’t even know what their common problems are.”

Her work has clear implications for clinicians, many of whom, according to those interviewed by Karpman’s team, initially seemed to focus on helping clients hammer out roles and make plans for how a donor would relate to the women.

“Turns out, that’s not helpful.

Roles change over time. Our advice it to build trust, flexibility and skills around communication and management of conflict to navigate these changes over time,” said Karpman.

Another suggestion for a clinical approach is for clinicians to be open to the variety of LGBTQ family formations.

“Be very careful about your own assumptions and value judgments, because what worked for you and what worked for your friends might not be right for this family,” said Karpman.

Karpman said her goal is not to discern whether there is a “better way” for LGBTQ people to create families.

“I’m more interested in seeing what are the differences,” she said. “My goal is for women to have as much information as they want, so they can make their own empowered and informed choices in the family formation process.”

Meet the “Flynnlanderseaus.”

Kelsey Flynn and Jaime Olander are the moms. Dan Manseau is the dad. All three are legal parents of the kids, who live with Kelsey and Jaime, but see Dan every day as he lives four blocks away. The family is part of the Known Donor Project.

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SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

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A

THE FAMILY ACCEPTANCE PROJECT

t the beginning of the AIDS crisis, Caitlin Ryan, M.S.W. ’82, was the director of a pioneering AIDS organization in the South, where she had done her social work internships. Every day, she worked with sick and dying young men. She met mothers and fathers at a catastrophic time in their lives.

“They came to the bedsides of their gay and bisexual children where they learned for the first time that their child was gay and was dying of AIDS,” she recalled.

She witnessed a phenomenon that few people saw: the devastating consequences of family rejection on the whole family, not just gay and bisexual men: broken families with no time to reconcile or to share parting words.

Some families had experienced years of estrangement. In others, young men who left small cities and towns to avoid shaming their families because of their sexual orientation came home for awkward annual holiday visits, and here they were: brokenhearted parents at a child’s deathbed.

“I saw that they would have done anything to change that,” said Ryan.

“I realized there had to be a better way.”

That window into family regret and rejection planted the seeds for groundbreaking work Ryan is doing now with an initiative that she co-founded in 2002, the Family Acceptance Project (FAP). The Project’s goal is to transform systems—families, social service agencies, child welfare bureaucracies, behavioral health and religious institutions— in their approaches to helping diverse families learn to support their LGBTQ children.

Seismic cultural changes in widespread access to information, public policy and accurate depictions of LGBTQ lives have resulted in young people becoming aware of and expressing diverse LGBTQ identities at much younger ages. Ryan and her team at the Family Acceptance Project believe that family support is essential for healthy development for LGBTQ children, and that families need to understand how specific family accepting and rejecting reactions affect their LGBTQ children’s well-being and risk.

Self-identifying as LGBTQ in childhood and early adolescence significantly increases risk and the need for guidance and support, particularly for young people from rejecting families and conservative social worlds.

The Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University has developed the first research-based family support approach that empowers ethnically and religiously diverse families to change rejecting behaviors that contribute to serious health risks such as suicide, HIV and homelessness, and to increase supportive behaviors that strengthen families, promote their LGBTQ children’s well-being—and help keep families together.

The Project works on multiple levels.

“The Family Acceptance Project is not just a research project. It was really designed as a research, intervention and policy initiative,” said Ryan.

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SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

The Family Acceptance Project is producing a series of research-based family education and intervention videos that show how diverse families learn to support their LGBTQ children. Two of their videos have received 23 awards.

and better overall health. FAP family studies and several years of family intervention work have guided the development of FAP’s family support model and clinical intervention strategies that engage parents and families of LGBTQ youth as allies to reduce risk, build healthy futures and help reconnect LGBTQ out-of-home youth and families after they are fractured.

Furthermore, Ryan and her colleagues found that dramatic changes of heart are not necessary for LGBTQ youth to reap benefits.

Ryan and her team have been producing research-based family education videos, assessment tools and a host of educational materials geared to people from specific faith traditions and a wide variety of cultures. The materials are meant for parents of LGBTQ teens, as well as social service organizations, schools, practitioners, governmental agencies and faith institutions.

FAP investigators have studied the experiences of LGBTQ adolescents and families, including cultural and religious influences, identifying and measuring more than 100 specific accepting and rejecting behaviors that parents and caregivers use to respond to their children’s LGBTQ identities.

Results confirmed what practitioners had long observed: LGBTQ teens who experienced rejecting behaviors from their families were at high risk for a host of health problems in young adulthood: more than eight times likely to have attempted suicide, almost six times more likely to report high levels of depression, more than three times as likely to use illegal drugs and more than three times as likely to be at high risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Moreover, Ryan found that family accepting behaviors during adolescence helped to protect against depression, suicidal behavior and substance abuse, and LGBTQ young people who were accepted by their families reported higher levels of self-esteem

“Preserving and strengthening the family relationship is one of the most important things you can ever do for an LGBT young person.”

“A couple of core messages from this work are particularly useful in engaging and helping families to support their LGBT children. The first is that a little change in how families respond to their LGBT children can make a difference in their child’s health, mental health and well-being—so their responses don’t have to be all or nothing, and they don’t have to choose between their child and their faith,” Ryan wrote in a 2014 article in the Temple Political and Civil Rights Law Review. “The second is that families and caregivers’ words, actions, and behaviors have a physical

and emotional impact on their LGBTQ children. A little change opens the door for many things, including greater connectedness and hope. Hope is in short supply for many LGBTQ young people who get very negative messages about their families not only from the media, but also from people around them who have told them that their families will not support them and won’t be there for them.”

FAP’s approach focuses on strengthening families and increasing the health and well-being of LGBTQ children through psychoeducation, skill building, counseling and culturally relevant peer support, while aligning FAP’s research findings and family support strategies with the family’s religious and cultural values.

“What I don’t do in my work is fight with anybody’s dogma,” said Ryan.

Ryan’s work has been changing long-standing perceptions among LGBTQ and mainstream providers that families of LGBTQ youth were rejecting and unable to learn to support their LGBTQ children. The Center for American Policy notes that her work is paradigm-changing and her research calls for a “revolution in public policy” for LGBTQ children and youth.

“Mainstream research showed that families were protective of major adolescent health risks,” she said.

“But until we started our research, no studies of LGBTQ youth had included their families.”

“I knew that the perception that all families were not supportive was not correct,” she said. “But we needed to document how diverse families responded to their LGBT children, and understand what helped them grow and change so we could develop a new evidence-based framework to help families increase acceptance and support for their LGBT children.”

Yet, what of all the anguished stories therapists have heard for years about the harm parents have caused by rejecting their gay children?

Ryan’s research has found that families play a critical role in contributing to their LGBTQ children’s risk and well-being. And her intervention work has shown that diverse families can learn to support their LGBTQ children—even when they believe that being gay or transgender is wrong.

“My work is really a social work intervention and it uses the principles I learned in my social work training and practice,” said Ryan.

“Families are a critical part of the team,” said Ryan.

“What you have to remember is that typically, for parents, their children are the most important things in their lives and your role as a worker is to help them understand how to help their child,” she said. “Preserving, strengthening and re-connecting family relationships is one of the most important things you can ever do for an LGBT young person.” X

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(Left) Arlene Istar Lev with AndreAs NeumannMascis teaching in one of SSW’s Professional Education Seminars. (Below) Shannon Sennott is the co-founder of Translate Gender, Inc. and is in private practice in western Massachusetts.

“I feel like we’ve reached a tipping point or cutting edge in working with teens around non-binary and genderqueer identities.

Kids are feeling less and less like they have to fit in a standard trans narrative.”

B Y LAURIE L OISEL

TRANS FAMILIES:

A GROWTH EDGE IN SOCIAL WORK IN A CLINICAL PRACTICE based in Haydenville, Massachusetts, Shannon Sennott, M.S.W. ’08, specializes in helping parents figure out how to be supportive families for their trans children. She is co-founder of the nonprofit Translate Gender, Inc. (translategender.org), an advocacy and educational organization that works on the cutting-edge issue of gender nonconformity.

Preparing for that area of clinical expertise, though, was an exercise in self-education.

When she was a student at the Smith College School for Social Work from 2006 to 2008, few courses helped prepare her to work with the rich diversity of queer families she sees now in her clinical practice.

One pioneering book, Transgender Emergence, published 12 years ago, was a beacon in her studies.

“I still believe that if anyone is planning to work with trans folks they should definitely read that cover to cover,” said Sennott. “It’s an essential clinical text.”

Transgender Emergence was written by Arlene Istar Lev, LCSW-R, CASAC, a social worker, family therapist, educator, consultant

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and director of the Training Institute for Gender, Relationships, Identity, and Sexuality (tigrisinstitute.com).

She is also founder and director of the Albany, NY-based Choices Counseling and Consulting (choicesconsulting.com), which offers psychotherapy and family therapy services and provides clinical expertise around LGBTQ concerns, including sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression.

As part of her self-planned clinical training, Sennott traveled regularly from Northampton, where she lives, to Albany, New York, to study with Lev for two years.

“It was a chance to work with somebody who has been in the field for a long time.

Her supervision was important,” said Sennott.

“She still runs a trans supervision group for clinicians.”

In July, Lev co-taught “You Mean it Doesn’t End with Marriage? Clinically Meaningful Work with LGBTQ Families,” with AndreAs NeumannMascis, a one-day continuing education seminar at SSW. She believes that as much as the field has changed for the better in its work with LGBTQ people, many more advances are needed.

SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

“The field has (still) barely begun to look at treating trans people within a systemic viewpoint,” she said.

Her book focuses on transgender people within a family system, as children, parents and partners—and research literature is still woefully lacking in this arena.

“When I first began working with transgender clients (then referred to as transsexuals and transvestites), all of the scholarly writing was embedded in a view that trans people were mentally ill,” said Lev. “I recognized that the pathologizing narrative about trans people mirrored exactly the narrative about ‘homosexuals’ a few decades earlier. In part, my book exposed this. It also examined the way that a pathologizing culture can create mental health problems (i.e., being told you are ‘sick’ is actually crazy-making!)”

Sennott said her practice has developed around helping families with transgender children understand how to support their children in ways that are affirming and nurturing, rather than harmful. This can mean educating parents about how to raise healthy children who defy mainstream cultural expectations,

when other family members experience more social privilege.

“Essentially, you have to lead with and teach parents what social justice is,” she said.

“These families didn’t start out with any marginalized status.”

Therapeutically, the clinical concept of “meeting families where they are” is more important than ever. If parents are frightened about their child’s future as a gendernonconforming person in a society that expects gender conformity, those feelings can’t be minimized or judged.

“Many families have never experienced marginalization within their communities, so becoming a trans family creates an unfamiliar risk of being oppressed, not just for the child that is coming out but for all members of the family,” said Sennott. “This means that families need to be given the tools to be allies to their children, both to the trans child and the siblings that might experience difficulties. The parents also need to learn how to help their own friends and family members become allies to them, so that everyone in the family is supported.”

There is an element of pure education involved, as well.

“It’s part sex education, it’s part sex therapy, it’s part family therapy, it’s part psychotherapy,” she said.

One of the resources Sennott provides in her practice is a family support group for what she calls “trans families.” She said some 21 families with children ages 3 to 21 are regular attendees of a therapy group that meets every eight weeks. In between this social-educationalsupport group, she said, the families meet for potluck gatherings, and clinicians often go, too.

This approach may seem unusual for a clinical practice, but she believes it’s what is needed to build resiliency and strength within such families.

“We definitely notice that networks and creating a community are what the trans kids need in particular,” she said. “It’s really normalizing and amazing.”

Sennott sees many signs of great progress in the field.

“I feel like we’ve reached a tipping point or cutting edge in working with teens around non-binary and genderqueer identities. Kids are feeling less and less like they have to fit in a standard trans narrative,” she said.

“It used to be that parents tried to shut down authentic gender expression,” she noted. This

was motivated, in some instances, by an urge to protect children from harm. She’s seen great progress in that arena.

“The new trans narrative is prideful. It’s moving into a place of celebration instead of being something that’s pathological,” said Sennott.

The great strides made in cultural acceptance of LGBTQ people notwithstanding, Lev said clinicians still need to be better equipped with tools to help LGBTQ people navigate their daily lives and emotional experiences of the world around them.

“Homophobia internationally, and in our own backyards, in the form of microaggressions, blatant violence and oppressive laws is still the norm—and queer folk internalize these experiences,” she said. “It effects our intimacy with our partners, how we parent our children and our mental health and stability.”

She suggests that SSW can do more to embed affirming work with LGBTQ clients into its curricula, in the same way it committed itself to an anti-racism clinical approach many years ago.

“The biggest challenge is for clinicians to see how much more work we have to do to serve this community competently and compassionately,” said Lev. X

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/ School Works /

/ School Works /

Community Talk

A Conversation with Phebe Sessions about Community-Based Clinical Practice

BY MEG AN R UBINER Z INN PHOTOS BY SHANA SUR EC K

Professor Phebe Sessions has been involved in the community-based clinical practice movement since its inception.

The collaboration between mental health professionals and communities grew out of 1960s activism around poverty and deinstitutionalization of mental health care. At its core, the model is about the interdependence of individuals and their communities. It was the perfect ďŹ t for Sessions—a young social worker with an enormous interest in psychotherapy but also a commitment to social activism.

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SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

FALL 2016 / 27 /

“

Community-based clinical practice brings together mental health services and the scientific knowledge of human behavior in community settings. However, the goal is not simply to move mental health services outside of institutions. Treatment must be coupled with a deep understanding of the community in which it takes place; it must be “of” the community, not just “in” the community. Community-based practice recognizes and embraces the support and healing power that community can have for individuals, such as offering a sense of shared social identity and opportunities to take on meaningful social roles.

The goal of community-based care is to strengthen the community’s ability to care for individuals, while avoiding hospitalizations, with their corollary personal and financial costs. Social workers collaborate with service providers and families to help them increase their commitment, knowledge, resources and skills as advocates and caregivers. Practitioners are able to include family as well as patients in decision-making and potentially engage those who may not seek out traditional mental health services.

In many ways, Sessions’ career has paralleled the community-based clinical practice movement. Sessions found an ideal mentor in Dr. Gerald Caplan at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Caplan, who pioneered a community-based approach to mental health, had set up Harvard University’s Laboratory of Community Psychiatry soon after President John F. Kennedy signed the 1963 Community Mental Health Centers Act. Sessions’ first outreach experience was at a housing project, where she helped staff develop the skills to intervene with mentally ill members of the community.

“I began to see we were preventing people from this housing project from having to be hospitalized by engaging people who worked there in a supportive network around them,” said Sessions. “I got more and more interested in it, because I could see that Gerald Caplan’s model worked.”

The “community psychiatry people,” as they called themselves, then moved to the Cambridge Hospital system and

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developed outreach programs even further under the guidance of John Mack. Sessions began working with teachers and staff in Cambridge schools to develop their capacity to work preventatively with troubled kids. She also had the opportunity to start mental health services in Cambridge and Somerville for the Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking communities.

Working with community representatives, they hired professionals who both represented the community and had the necessary mental health knowledge.

With this experience behind her, Sessions began her doctorate at Brandeis University’s Heller School, focusing on poverty.

“I really needed to know more about poverty to develop programs that integrated a perspective that was psychologically sound, but also responsive to community needs,” said Sessions.

After joining the faculty at Smith, Sessions began the project she calls “the love of my life.” Together with former Dean Anita Lightburn, Sessions developed a community-based outreach program in the Springfield schools, placing five full-time (eight-month) social work interns into each of two schools to provide individual help to students and to help teachers and staff develop programs for families within the schools.

“At every level, we were making consistent interventions,” said Sessions.

The program was extremely successful and lasted eleven years—until it lost funding from the Springfield schools.

The collaboration of Sessions and Lightburn had other fruitful outcomes.

SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

Together, they presented at conferences about integrating school-based practice and family support. This joint effort led to their groundbreaking text, Handbook of Community-Based Clinical Practice, which was published in 2005 and serves as the key text in training mental health professionals for community-based work.

The book was, in part, a response to the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health’s 2003 Report on Mental Health in the United States. In their book, Sessions and Lightburn wrote that the Report recommended, “that mental health services support recovery and build resilience instead of simply managing symptoms and accepting long-term disability.” The report also affirmed that community-based alternatives were more effective than institutional care. The Handbook, with 33 chapters from a wide range of scholar-practitioners, is a call for more clinicians to train in community-based mental health, as well as a comprehensive, multidisciplinary report on theory, research, and clinical work in the area.

In recent years, there has been an enormous increase in the number of community-based programs for mental heath services. Sessions notes that the most effective programs are those that incorporate up-to-date theory and practice, especially those that address trauma. “[They] have very deep appreciation of the importance of community,” said

Then you have to turn and look for the sources of healing and people coming together to work in community, because there is so much that is so obvious about the forces that are tearing us apart.”

Sessions. “There has to be a much deeper understanding of the meaning of intimate connections of people in a fragmenting society.”

When she visited SSW students at their internships, Sessions saw some exemplary programs in action. She cited Bessel van der Kolk as an important influence in the Boston area—and nationally—in developing outreach programs that work at different levels in the system and incorporate schools, communities and families.

One excellent program in Boston is part of the Home for Little Wanderers; their interns work in schools, integrating interventions at different levels.

They work with kids individually and in groups, consult with teachers and bring a thorough knowledge of the cultural identities of the children.

Wayside Youth & Family Support Network, a program that covers a large area of eastern and central Massachusetts, provides excellent in-home services, according to Sessions. Practitioners work in teams: one works with the identified child and the other with his or her family.

They use individual and family interventions, while seeking to build the capacity of the family and community to intervene, as well. Sessions noted that the program implements excellent trauma-informed models for different age groups.

Sessions also praised a project in which Anita Lightburn has been

involved since joining the faculty at Fordham. These programs around New York are welcoming people who are coming out of prison. They work in different religious community settings to develop a network of services—with exceptional success. Graduates of the programs often go on to become trainers themselves.

State funding is necessary for many of these programs, according to Sessions. They often are not adequately covered by insurance. As a result, the strongest programs are in more progressive states—up and down the East and West Coasts and in the upper Midwest. Massachusetts has done well in expanding community-based work, especially with children and families.

In spite of the success of these programs, Sessions has some concern that their growth is at the expense of direct mental health services.

“I think that the community-based interventions work more effectively with highly troubled children,” said Sessions. “But I also feel as though the opportunity for individual growth and development can be enormously enhanced by more traditional mental health services.”

With Sessions’ advocacy, SSW has long incorporated community-based practice into the M.S.W. curriculum— in practice, theory, family and sociocultural courses. A significant percentage of students’ field internships are in agencies with strong community-based

programs. During their field internships, all students also engage in a community project to enhance their outreach skills. Sessions has a hand in selecting the agencies with which the School partners and in advising students in the field to ensure that the values of community-based practice are a key part of their training.

Regardless of their professional direction, all SSW graduates are prepared for work in community mental health upon graduation.

As the community-based clinical practice movement has expanded and evolved over five decades, it has maintained the values of the 1960s activists who began it—especially their firm belief in the healing and supportive abilities of strong communities. In Sessions’ view, the agencies and educational programs that have embraced this approach play a key role in countering the individualism and isolation that plague American culture.

“Sometimes you look at American society and you just see an enormous amount of fragmentation and conflict,” said Sessions. “Then you have to turn and look for the sources of healing and people coming together to work in community, because there is so much that is so obvious about the forces that are tearing us apart.” X

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/ School Works /

/ School Works /

BY MARIANNE R.M. YOSHIOKA, M.S.W., PH.D.

Committing (and Re-Committing) to Anti-Racism in Times of Student Protest

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ampus activism around institutionalized racism has grown rapidly over the past three years, as students across the country demand that colleges and universities address structural inequity. Fifty-five percent of college presidents of four-year programs have stated that racial diversity on their campuses has risen in priority in the last three years, according to “What Presidents Think about Race on Campus,” an article by Corinne Ruff that appeared in the March 2016 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

It was in response to such a student uprising in 1994 that the Smith College School for Social Work faculty first put their determination to become an anti-racism organization in writing. Two years later, that statement was officially named the “anti-racism commitment.” Last year, in the 21st year of our commitment, our students presented us with a petition outlining 11 demands pertaining to strengthening our anti-racism work in areas of curriculum and classroom process. We responded by collaborating—students, faculty and administrators—to identify the changes that we all want to see. This past summer, the students’ activism continued with a request that we also include how we support students in field education in our deliberations.

These events have given me pause to reflect on how any organization can best honor a commitment against bias.

THE ROOTS OF OUR COMMITMENT

In 1986–1987, Ann Hartmann, dean emerita, organized a gathering of alumni of color to discuss their experiences on campus; at the time, we had three students of color in the incoming class. From these early meetings, we began to create infrastructure and curricula to ensure that issues concerning race were central in our School’s work. We’ve enhanced our engagement over the years through thoughtful dialogue, new courses and faculty research. We have created a path that other colleges are now trying to forge for themselves.

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SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

Today’s issues are not new—and they are deeply embedded. “Ripples from a Protest Past,” an article by Ian Wilhelm in The Chronicle of Higher Education this past April, drew connections between current student frustrations and those that inspired college activism in the 1960’s. Wilhelm noted that students who occupied Cornell University in 1969 wanted greater inclusion of Black perspectives in the curriculum, more faculty of color and greater access to healthrelated services by minority students. Today, students at 80 institutions of higher education around the country have made demands (detailed at thedemands.org) that show these

THESE EVENTS HAVE GIVEN ME PAUSE TO REFLECT ON HOW ANY ORGANIZATION CAN BEST HONOR A COMMITMENT AGAINST BIAS. topics still predominate: greater visibility of faculty and students of color, means of accountability, access to mental health services and, in many cases, reconciliation through public acknowledgement of oppression. At SSW, our students’ demands were organized around these same themes, although they did not request public declarations.

So, what are the lessons for our school—and campuses everywhere—on substantive, sustainable change?

Students viewing display of text passages that would be joined to form SSW’s Anti-Racism Quilt.

Photos courtesy of Steven Bradley.

WHO SAYS THERE’S A PROBLEM?

As a senior administrator of schools of social work for the past 10 years, I have had the joy of watching students embrace learning with integrity and a commitment to social justice. I have also witnessed the despair of students, faculty and staff of color who experience exclusion and invisibility in classrooms and through organizational process.

What I have learned is that change doesn’t begin until you can acknowledge there is a problem; the longer that acknowledgement takes, the deeper the problem grows.

When evidence of structural oppression is presented in the form of personal narratives, it can be viewed as one person’s problem. When evidence is presented in the form of patterns within admissions data or incomplete or failed classes, leaves of absence or tenure decisions, they can be challenged as artifacts of poor data collection or not showing the whole story. Because most students and faculty of color excel despite institutional racism, those who speak up often feel blamed for their own struggles. The group impacted most by structural oppression winds up trying to convince those who are less impacted that a real problem even exists.

If we begin from the assumption that any organizational system will replicate the inequities of our society, then we accept that, even in organizations working to combat it, racism is likely to be replicated. Over the years, I have had countless conversations with students who have said “I thought it would be different in a school of social work.”

Alas, we can’t eliminate institutionalized racism in society, but we can name it, take responsibility for it and mitigate it.

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LASTING CHANGE IS SYSTEMIC

Many current student demands across the country seek changes to curriculum, faculty hiring practices and organizational structures. These changes are important, but they can be technical fixes. For lasting change, systemic shifts are necessary in the assumptions, policies and perspectives supporting organizational practices. These shifts are more difficult to bring about and sustain.

They may require using resources differently and building new kinds of systems of accountability.

A common student request is for faculty and administrator trainings to promote inclusion, develop racial and cultural competency, bring awareness to implicit bias or improve facilitation skills in discussions about race, class, gender and their intersections. Training is an important part of organizational change, but the real shift comes later, when the learning gained in training is implemented and sustained by organizational infrastructure, resources and new behaviors that change the culture and deep practices of an organization.

THESE COMMUNITY VOICES— WHICH CAN COME TO US FROM IMPORTANT VANTAGE POINTS DIFFERENT FROM THAT OF ADMINISTRATORS OR RESIDENT FACULTY— ARE OUR MOST IMPORTANT MECHANISMS OF ACCOUNTABILITY. / 34 /

Alumni News

teaching seminar, Pedagogy & Diversity; training students and staff in the model; and supporting our entire community to use it. Even though instructors and advisers can be quite adept at facilitating discussion, having a common language and a common model can help us make a systemic change to better manage our discussions with each other around issues of power, privilege or identity statuses—especially when conflicts arise. This kind of change deepens our long-term capacity to address inequity.

IN THIS SECTION

ALUMNI DESK ALUMNI PROFILE

CRITICAL CONVERSATIONS

In response to the 2015 student petition, the faculty, administrators, students and I convened to discuss each item, to ensure we all understood what the students were seeking. We determined tasks that could be addressed immediately—for example, identifying case studies written by clinicians of color that we could use for instruction and adding student representation on our curriculum oversight committee.

We have also tackled more difficult systemic changes that we believe are required at this time— changes not outlined in the petition, but which we see as important to fulfilling our commitment. This includes creating a plan to engage instructors and advisors in the use of a common discussion facilitation model authored by Assistant Professor and Associate Dean Peggy O’Neill and former Smith faculty member Hye-Kyung Kang. This long–term plan incorporates use of this model within SSW’s weekly

SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

STUDENT VOICES PROVIDE ACCOUNTABILITY

On any campus, it can be easy to fall into frustration or defensiveness when students, instructors or staff voice complaints or advocate for change. I believe that it is important to channel that frustration into curiosity, to listen and believe, because these community voices—which can come to us from important vantage points different from that of administrators or resident faculty—are our most important mechanisms of accountability. Our anti-racism commitment is not merely a statement but an approach to all aspects of our School’s functioning, one that emphasizes the importance of inclusion of community voices, collaboration, transparency in processes and systems of accountability. We—all of us in leadership in higher education—must continuously create an environment that says: “You all are welcome here. You belong.

You are valued.” X (Top) Adjunct instructor Michael Funk hugs a student at the 2016 vigil for Orlando shooting victims. (Top right) The newspaper of the Massachusetts Chapter of NASW ran a cover article about the 2015 protest at SSW.

Katie Green, M.S.W. ’16, chats with another participant at the Annual Field Conference.

/ Alumni Desk /

/ Alumni News /

DAWN M. FAUCHER Alumni Relations & Development Director

Dear Alumni, You, our alumni, are the ties that bind. That’s why our primary goal is to support you in maintaining those connections that weave together the fabric of our community.

You came for the summer. You made connections that last a lifetime!

Please join me in congratulating the master’s program and doctoral program class of 2016. I know you join me in welcoming this year’s graduates to the Smith College School for Social Work Alumni Network—a body of more than 5,500 graduates of our School, who comprise a committed and active network of clinical social workers who make a difference for individuals and communities throughout the U.S., Canada and abroad.

We know that our alumni are connected to one another—that is part of what makes Smith College School for Social Work strong. You, our alumni, are the ties that bind. That’s why our primary goal is to support you in maintaining those connections that weave together the fabric of our community.

The Office of Alumni Relations is here to serve you. We can facilitate connections and steer you toward regional

networking events, continuing education, and career and service opportunities.

As an added benefit, you also are afforded all of the benefits of the Alumnae Association of Smith College. You can register to be part of the Association’s online community of more than 40,000 undergraduate—and graduate—Smithies at alumnae.smith.edu.

In parting, I urge you to stay in touch with us! It is a constant challenge to keep our alumni records up-to-date.

And while accurate data is important to us, we also value stories. We want to share in your successes, joys, losses, and life lessons learned on your professional and personal journey. So please keep us posted on your news, your latest contact information, and your participation in SCSSW community events. And we’ll make sure to keep you informed of all campus developments—as well as ways to stay involved with the School and each other. X

ALUMNI VOLUNTEERS

Making It Happen We want to take this opportunity to thank our many alumni volunteers who are the life blood of the alumni network. Our volunteers host alumni events, offer information and advice from their vast experience to both other alumni and current students in local field internships, and provide valuable support to the Office of Admissions at recruitment events, open houses and much more. These volunteers include the Alumni Leadership Council, Area Coordinators and many individuals. Our extraordinary alumni community could not be what it is without the many people who give back in so many ways! Thank you for all that you do for the School and one another.

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FALL 2016

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/ Alumni News /

/ Alumni Profile /

BY ME G A N R U B IN E R Z IN N

George Anderson The first thing anyone will notice about George Anderson is his calm, easy-going demeanor. He’ll laugh, saying it comes in part with age, but it is also by design. Modeling calm and composure has been a crucial part of Anderson’s broad-reaching career that began with work in the juvenile justice system and led to his reputation as the foremost expert on anger management.

Described in the LA Times as an “emotional genius,” Anderson is a Board Certified Diplomate in Psychotherapy and a Fellow in the American Orthopsychiatric Association. His practice, Anderson & Anderson, is the world’s largest provider of Certified Anger Management Facilitator training and the primary provider of Anger Management and Domestic Violence Intervention curricula. Even Hollywood has paid attention: Anderson was a consultant on the 2003 film, Anger Management.

Through his career—from juvenile probation officer to “anger management guru” (as he is often described)— Anderson has adapted to significant changes in his field, embraced any opportunity to learn and stretch as a practitioner and teacher and has impacted thousands of individuals and hundreds of businesses and institutions.

A 1971 graduate of the Smith College School for Social Work M.S.W. program, Anderson points to his Smith education as the foundation of his career in mental health. After spending 10 years working with adolescents as a probation officer, Anderson had decided to pursue a career in clinical psychology. A UCLA professor directed him to Smith’s program based on the strength of the School’s internship sites.

Anderson notes that it’s not just the quality and rigor of Smith’s field program that defines it, but its emphasis on interdisciplinary training. In his

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courses and internships, Anderson was able work with psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and other clinical social workers, which allowed him to understand mental health from a variety of perspectives. His Smith education also gave him enormous confidence.

“I was never shy or uncomfortable in speaking up in meetings and training experiences, because there was a feeling at Smith that we were really getting top training,” said Anderson.

On the strength of his Smith education and faculty recommendations, Harvard invited Anderson to post-graduate training in child and adolescent psychotherapy at the Judge Baker Children’s Center.

From Harvard, Anderson moved to Los Angeles to teach at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. While teaching and practicing at UCLA, Anderson and his wife Nancy, a psychologist, began providing mental health services for local Xerox

SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

employees. Eventually, they were asked to provide services for Xerox employees across California. They expanded their practice, hiring more practitioners and taking on work from other large organizations, including United Airlines, British Airways and Amtrak. This large mental health enterprise continued for more than a decade, until managed health care began to take over the industry and eliminated much of their clientele.

With this turn of events, which Anderson calls the “the worst thing that’s happened in my life so far,” he needed to reinvent his career. Looking for an expertise that was needed and which would make good use of his talents, Anderson decided to develop services for perpetrators of domestic violence. Working with students from UCLA, he wrote a domestic violence curriculum, published it in eight languages, and quickly emerged as an international expert on the subject.

Thanks to this reputation, Anderson was approached by a group of judges who asked him to write a similar curriculum on anger management to treat people in the justice system.

Anderson threw himself into this new expertise. Earlier work by psychologists like Raymond Novaco of the University of California, Irvine, who coined the term “anger management,” focused on the body’s physiological responses to anger. Anderson instead focused on the emotional responses and how to teach individuals to control them. He based his model of intervention on emotional intelligence, focusing on how individuals can lessen their anger

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Leading the world in anger management education

response through self-awareness, self-control, social awareness and relationship management.

As with his earlier career as a mental health provider, Anderson’s reputation and work took off. His anger management curriculum is the industry standard worldwide, and he and his colleagues have trained a generation of Certified Anger Management Facilitators. In addition to anger management, Anderson & Anderson provides training to organizations in stress management, self-awareness, self-control, communication and emotional intelligence, and still continues work in domestic violence prevention.

Well past the age of retirement, Anderson continues to find new passions and more fields in need of anger management training. In recent years, he has developed an expertise in coaching physicians. He finds it

particularly rewarding: the physicians are motivated, dedicated to learning the skills of anger management and deeply appreciative of his work.

Medical schools are beginning to see the value of this training. Three years ago the AMA invited Anderson to present at their international conference on importance of emotional intelligence in medical school education, and he currently coaches faculty, residents and medical students at UCLA’s medical school.

Anderson hopes to see anger management coaching expand beyond medical schools to higher education in general.

“If I had access to professors, I think that would enhance their effectiveness as educators,” said Anderson.

Given the breadth of his career and his track record, it’s likely Anderson could transform anger management in higher education if

I was never shy or uncomfortable in speaking up in meetings and training experiences, because there was a feeling at Smith that we were really getting top training. given the opportunity—then find more professionals who will benefit from his rich knowledge and experience, and his gentle guidance. X

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/ Post Script /

A single focus on clinical social work education with an anti-racism lens Smith College School for Social Work Theory Driven, Research Informed Located in Northampton, Massachusetts, both our M.S.W. and Ph.D. programs follow our unique block structure, alternating concentrated periods of rigorous on-campus education with off-site training at leading clinical or research sites around the country.

You’ll have double the time in the field than other programs, with the support of an on-site supervisor and a faculty field adviser.

More experience. More supervision. More recognition.

Bertha Capen Reynolds APPLICATION DEADLINES

Bertha Capen Reynolds was a Smith College alumna (1908), a graduate of the first class of the Smith College School for Social Work (1918), and a member of the School’s faculty (1925–1938). She was described by the NASW as “a progressive educator, creative and original thinker, clinician and community worker who strove to broaden and deepen social work practice.” In 1987, then-Dean Ann Hartman created the Bertha Capen Reynolds Predoctoral Fellowship. The fellowship program was renewed by Dean Marianne Yoshioka in 2014.

M.S.W. Early Decision: January 5 M.S.W. Regular Decision: February 21 Ph.D. Priority: February 1 Ph.D. Final: February 28

smith.edu/ssw sswadm@smith.edu

Tell someone you know about SSW and encourage them to apply.

Bertha Capen Reynolds, circa 1975 Creator: George de Vincent From the Bertha Capen Reynolds Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College (Northampton, Massachusetts)

M.S.W./Ph.D. / 40 /

SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK

| Clinical Research Institute | Post-M.S.W. Professional Education | Certificates

Lilly Hall Northampton, MA 01063 smith.edu/ssw

CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED

Advance your knowledge—and your career— with Smith’s online continuing education!

Tackle cutting-edge topics in social work from the comfort of your home or workplace— and earn continuing education credits at your own pace! Lectures focus on timely topics presented by some of the finest helping professionals in the field. The courses are informative, engaging and easily accessible online—in video and/or audio format!

You can earn .5 to 5.5 CEUs per course! Visit smith.edu/ssw/ced.

NEW COURSES THIS YEAR:

Bridges to Better Health and Wellness: A Culturally-adapted Health Care Manager Intervention for Latinos with Serious Mental Illness Leopoldo J. Cabassa, M.S.W., Ph.D. Listening with Purpose: New Applications in Treating Shame and Narcissism Patricia Gianotti, Psy.D. Beginner’s Guide to Sex Therapy Amy Basford-Pequet, M.S.W. Love, Race, and Invisibility in a World of “Us” and “Them” John L. Jackson, Jr., Ph.D. Dialectical Behavior Therapy Principles in Action Charles R. Swenson, M.D. TO SEE THE FULL LIST OF COURSES, OR TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CONTINUING YOUR EDUCATION WITH SSW, VISIT: SMITH.EDU/SSW/CED.

Earn .5 to 5.5 CEUs per course!

Learning doesn’t end when you receive your diploma. SSW continuing education opportunities include online courses, professional education seminars, certificate programs, and our annual Public Lecture Series in Social Work.