Dear Friend of the School of Social Work at Portland State University,
Just before the “Snowpocalypse” — Portland’s recent January weather event that postponed the start of our winter term — a number of Portland State University faculty visited Washington, DC to attend the 20th annual Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) Conference.
Just prior to the conference start, I was privileged to meet with a group of deans who lead research-intensive social work education programs. This group has been active for more than 10 years and is working with other social work leaders to envision the future of social work research and related education nationally.
The meeting centered on four interrelated topics:
- Understanding the changing environment for social work research
- Re-envisioning our profession at this moment in history
- Exploring how to prepare the next generation of faculty and leaders
- Exploring how to increase our impact in policy and practice
The meeting was dynamic, far-reaching and inspiring as we talked about the future of our shared work. We prepared position paper which was vetted with leaders in attendance. A draft of this paper is available through me if anyone would like a preview. Our active participation in this group has been an important aspect of our role as a leading social work program. The collaboration was truly energizing!
The conference itself started with a special session dedicated to the Grand Challenges for Social Work. This is an initiative which has been in the works for more than five years. It is a call to action and a platform for communicating and focusing social work research in an entirely new way. Twelve new focus areas endeavor to amplify the power of social work research and increase impact of this valuable work. You can read more about the entire effort and watch a video which introduces the project. Each of the challenges involves a focal paper. I’m very proud that I was part of a working group that contributed to a supplemental paper in the “Close the Health Gap” challenge entitled “Reducing and Preventing Alcohol Misuse and Its Consequences.”
In the coming months, we’ll be having a number of discussions regarding the Grand Challenges effort to determine how to engage intentionally and strategically with these larger conversations. Stay tuned!
As always, the SSWR conference contains literally hundreds of papers, poster sessions and presentations covering a wide variety of social work-related topics. You can peruse the offerings from this year’s event online. To learn more about the SSWR organization, Dr. Bowen McBeath on our faculty is the treasurer of the national board of directors and can provide additional information.
Read on for more of the many goings on in our School this past term. Happy New Year!
Laura Nissen
Dean and Professor
Good News!
Portland State University Strategic Plan Published
Portland State’s university-wide Strategic Plan has been released!
Many thanks to the variety of School of Social Work representatives who participated in this effort. We will continue to be seeking ways to interface, collaborate and maximize the effectiveness, reach and impact of this plan through our own work in the School.
Key Facts About the School of Social Work
Did you know that the School of Social Work at Portland State University is ranked #33 in the nation, which puts it in the top 25% of social work programs in the United States? Or that our students have delivered 3.2 million hours of community service since 2010? Or that our brand new online Master of Social Work program has an unheard of 98% student retention rate after its first year?
We’re highlighting these and many other facts about the School in a special 12 week campaign that runs through March. Read a new fact posted each Thursday on the web or get each new key fact in your news feed by following us on Facebook!
Positive Youth Transitions
Mobilizing the expertise of over 100 leaders and staff from multiple youth and family agencies and systems in Oregon, a School of Social Work research project called Positive Youth Transitions helps foster youth transition into healthy adult lives.
New Avenues for Youth (NAFY), a long time agency partner of the School of Social Work, was concerned about the number of youth in their street youth programs who had been clients of the foster care system. In a desire to be part of the solution, they reached out to PSU School of Social Work faculty with expertise in youth programming and systems change.
Thanks to a generous gift from the Joyce N. Furman Charitable Trust, the School led a collective impact and action research initiative to change the system to better support foster youth.
While the investment started with Multnomah County, this planning approach caught the eye of statewide leadership, and researchers made contributions to the state’s five-year plan for stronger youth transitions. In addition, the team’s findings were presented at the annual conference of the Society for Social Work Research earlier this month.
New Faculty
While by no means new to the School, we’re delighted to welcome Leah Brookner to a new role as an Assistant Professor of Practice. Leah has spent the last five years providing clinical supervision and training at a local child welfare organization where she specialized in delivering psychoeducation to foster and adoptive parents, child welfare workers and community partners. Prior to that, she was a child and family therapist, working mainly with victims of trauma and profound neglect. She has been an adjunct instructor in the School of Social Work and University Studies Department since 2007.Leah earned her MSW from Portland State University in 2006 and Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University in 2003. She is close to completing her doctoral dissertation, which focuses on using therapeutic dogs in an early intervention setting.
Oregon High School Ethics Bowl Participation Doubles in Its Second Year at PSU
On January 23 the second annual Oregon High School Ethics Bowl took place at Portland State University, co-organized by the Philosophy Department and the School of Social Work. The event more than doubled in size from last year. 85 high school students formed 22 teams from 12 high schools across Oregon and Southern Washington. They were helped by over 100 volunteer teachers, coaches, moderators, and judges.
After the morning elimination rounds, Camas High School, Lincoln High School Team 2, and Sam Barlow High School advanced to the finals. In a very impressive final round, Lincoln 2 and Camas nearly tied, with Camas High School winning the 2016 Oregon High School Ethics Bowl by a tiny margin. Camas will go on to compete in the National High School Ethics Bowl competition in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on April 15 & 16th.
Congratulations to co-chair and School of Social Work assistant professor Greg Pugh and all the students, faculty and volunteers who made this year’s bowl such a smashing success!
Faculty News and Contributions
Our own Tamara Sale, director of care for the Early Assessment and Support Alliance (EASA) program, was recently featured in a New York Times article about that program’s leading edge treatment of psychosis and schizophrenia. This School of Social Work affiliated project is administered by the School’s Regional Research Institute.
Katharine Cahn, Executive Director of the Child Welfare Partnership in the School of Social Work, recently served on a panel at the Portland State University Office of Academic Affairs Winter Symposium 2016. This year’s symposium approached the topic “What does it mean to be educated in the 21st century?” Katharine spoke on the topic “Balancing Personal Wellness with the Need for Productivity.”
School of Social Work alumna and adjunct faculty Peg Sandeen was featured in the latest issue of Portland State Magazine, PSU’s alumni magazine, for her work as director of the Portland-based Death with Dignity National Center.
Her work with the center and as adjunct faculty has had a profound effect on how our nation looks at end-of-life choices.
Two School of Social Work Master of Social Work (MSW) are running for public office this spring. Diego Hernandez MSW ’12 and Tawna Sanchez MSW ’12 are both candidates for state representative seats in Oregon in the May primary election.
Five communities using Reclaiming Futures — a national public health and juvenile justice reform framework that promotes effective treatment practices — saved $11 million in one year. A recent national evaluation of this program housed in the School of Social Work showed that juvenile drug courts implementing the Reclaiming Futures model saw significant reductions in crime and delinquency, which drove these notable fiscal savings.
Blakeslee, B., Turner, S., Schmidt, J. (2015) Addressing homelessness among youth aging out of care: A social networks approach. Webinar presentation at the Regional Research Institute, Portland, Oregon.
Bradley, S, May, E. “MSW Online Field Seminar and Liaison– Curriculum Development and Implementation” presentation accepted for the SW Distance Education Conference.
Friesen, B., Buekea, N. & Koroloff, N. (2015). Stepping up: Successful advocacy by youth and young adult-led organizations. Conference presentation at FFCMH, Washington, DC.
Hawash, L. “Facilitating sustainable recruitment, retention and community building within an MSW Online program” presentation accepted for the SW Distance Education Conference.
Kennedy, M.O., (2015). Increasing Self-Determination of Foster Youth Positively Impacts Transition, School and Employment Outcomes. Poster presentation at DCDT, Portland, OR.
Phillips, L., Powers, L.E., Geenen, S., Schmidt, J., Winges-Yanez, N., McNeely, I.C., Merritt, L., Williamson, C., Turner, S., Zweben, H., Bodner, C. and the Research Consortium to Increase the Success of Youth in Foster Care (2015). Better Futures: A validated model for increasing the postsecondary preparation and participation of youth in foster care with mental health challenges. Children and Youth Services Review, 57, 50-59.
Powers, L. E. (2015). Contributing meaning to research: Integrating methodological rigor with participatory action. Conference presentation for the Evidence-based Practice and Implementation Science Colloquium at the TASH National Conference, Portland, OR.
Research and Training Center for Pathways to Positive Futures. (2015). Sugerencias para tus Reuniones en Equipo: Una Guía para Jóvenes. Spanish translation of Tips for your team meetings: A guide for youth. (2013). Portland, OR: Research and Training Center for Pathways to Positive Futures, Portland State University.
Research and Training Center for Pathways to Positive Futures. (2015). “Durante las Reuniones no Soporto Cuando…” Una Guía para Facilitadores y Miembros del Equipo. Spanish translation of “During Meetings I Can’t Stand it When…” A Guide for Facilitators and Team Members. (2013). Portland, OR: Research and Training Center for Pathways to Positive Futures, Portland State University.
Schmidt, J., Turner, S., Asula, D. (2015). Take charge for the future: Strategies for enhancing self-determination with high-school and college students. Conference presentation at Blueprint for Success, Los Angeles, California.
Schmidt, J., Kennedy, M.O. (2015). Stability of racial and ethnic self-identification among youths in foster care. Poster presentation at CSWE, Denver, CO.
Schmidt, J., Croskey, A., McNeely, C. & Bell B. (2015). Better futures: Supporting young people with mental health challenges in foster care to participate in higher education. Conference presentation at DCDT, Portland, OR.
Schmidt, J., Farkas, J., Crosland, K., Napolitano, D., & Smith, B. (2015). Supporting Youth with Intellectual/ Developmental (I/DD) and other Disabilities in Foster Care: Examples from the field. Conference presentation at AUCD, Washington, DC.
Walker, J., Lieberman, B., Heine, S., Moser, C., Baird, C., Croskey, A., Duron, S., Boehringer, H., Jackson, S., & Welch, M. (2015). Training and supporting young people who provide peer support. Presented at the National Wraparound Implementation Academy, Portland, OR.
Articles and Resources for Social Work and Human Resource Professionals
You’ve gotten your degree and have landed that first social work job. What else do you need to be a successful professional? Check out these 9 Tools for Your Professional Social Worker Toolkit.
Health systems improvement and reform is big right now and integrating community health workers into care teams a critical piece of the work being done. Read this issue of Transforming Care from The Commonwealth Fund to learn about new models of care, payment approaches, and patient engagement strategies that have the potential to reshape our delivery system to better meet the needs of the nation’s sickest and most vulnerable patients.
Where do you get most of your news of the world? What are skills needed for digital literacy? Do you use social media for any part of your school or professional work? Will universal digital literacy lead to world peace? The age of digital literacy is now, and it touches social work in a variety of ways. Read this blog post on the age of #digitalliteracy and the media revolution.
Higher Education
Check out seven truly transformational shifts that will create the classroom of the future in this article from teach thought.
Read how to cite social media in scholarly writing in another great post from teach thought.
Read these 3 super helpful rules of academic blogging posted in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Oregon
Can Portland give displaced residents a path back? Read about gentrification in Portland in this OregonLive article.
20 pieces of legislation have significant impacts on communities of color in Oregon. Read about what they are and how the impact these communities in Facing Race in Oregon: 2015 Oregon Racial Equity Report.
very proud of our students, faculty, researchers, staff and partner organizations for the courageous, important and targeted work that they do every day to improve the lives of so many.
Our autumn ended with some additional strategic planning focus at the School developing additional ideas about what “excellence in teaching” and “excellence in research” looked like. We are most grateful to Drs. 
December provided a great opportunity to network with the 
Year in Review
with a particular focus on our new clinical concentration. Christiana did her Ph.D. and a subsequent three-year post-doctoral research fellowship at Boston University School of Social Work. She came to PSU from a faculty position at the University of Nebraska-Omaha Grace Abbott School of Social Work. Her area of specialty is providing individual and group specialized outpatient cognitive behavioral therapy for hoarding disorder. 
Families Concentration in the Master of Social Work program and will be teaching across the curriculum. He earned his BSW in Social Work from Haifa University, Israel, his MSW in Social Work from New York University, and his Ph.D. from Fordham University in New York City. Oren’s research focuses on risk factors for suicidal ideation among adolescents and young adults diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). 
Marina Barcelo, MSW, has joined the School as our new student support & inclusion specialist. Marina holds her MSW, a Master in Women’s & Gender Studies, and a Certificate in Non-Profit Management & Philanthropy from Loyola University in Chicago. She most recently served as Director of Equity & Community Engagement at NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon and the Oregon Foundation for Reproductive Health. 
Gayle Schneider has recently been named the development officer for the School of Social Work at the PSU Foundation. Gayle brings a combined 24 years of higher education fundraising and advancement operations experience both at Portland State University and the University of Portland. 
office manager. Ridley is no stranger to the School, having worked in an interim role a couple of years ago. Ridley is finishing his bachelor’s degree in Psychology while working for PSU. He has been working for the Academic Scheduling team for two years after holding an interim position in the School of Social Work in 2013. Welcome back, Ridley! 
Erika Woods, who most recently served as MSW Program Assistant for
water surfing, stand up paddle boarding and swimming, I can without reservation state that I am now well acquainted with all 12 of the Portland bridges (thanks Dr. Mary Oschwald!). I am looking forward to teaching courses in the MSW and PhD programs this fall, as well as working with colleagues to put the final touches on the redesign of our critically informed PhD program. I’m excited about ongoing and new collaborations with other disciplines on campus, and I look forward to continued engagement with a number of exciting projects including: 1) work with local exotic dancers and NASW around policy reform in the adult entertainment industry, 2) intimate partner violence research with Dr. Gita Mehrotra and Dr. Ericka Kimball, 3) motivational interviewing training and research with local and regional organizations, and 4) editorial work with Social Work’s flagship feminist journal, Affilia: Women in Social Work. Some of my upcoming scholarship focuses on Orientalism in Social Work, critiques of social work’s involvement in the moral crusade against sex trafficking, a new motivational interviewing trainer evaluation scale, and research on the impact of decriminalization of sex work in New Zealand on social work practice.
I have been looking forward to this academic year as well. I am teaching an entirely new set of courses, beginning with Planning and Leading Communities and Organizations. Although I was saddened to see my old courses retired, I have enjoyed preparing for PLCO , and I feel an immense sense of excitement as I envision my year unfolding in the classroom. In a way, this year may serve as a teaching sabbatical for me, giving me a chance to experiment with new materials and approaches, hopefully to the benefit of our students. In terms of research, my teams have been productive over the summer, and our analyses and manuscript development will continue over the year. For me, the research process provides an opportunity to engage in discovery, since the work I do is often exploratory and not always well understood by practitioners. As a result, I always hope that my research collaborations will unearth new findings and new and practical ways of approaching old topics. One of my teams is devising new methods of visualizing child welfare administrative data, to help system leaders better track the progress of children, youth, and families over time. Another team is exploring the perspectives of private and public agency managers on human service contracts. With another team, I am trying to understand how to help human service organizations better integrate research and other types of evidence into their programs, managers and front-line workers, and services.
A project of the Regional Research Institute for Human Services — a research arm of the School of Social Work — was recently featured in PSU Magazine, PSU’s alumni magazine. My Life — a program that pairs foster youth with mentors who help them build life skills, including finding jobs and getting into college — is led by professors Laurie Powers and Sarah Geenen. Last year, My Life was named one of the best programs of its kind in the United States by the Center for Study of Social Policy in Washington, D.C.
symposium for the HRSA- funded Integrated Care Project. Responding to workforce needs resulting from changes in the health and mental health care environment in the state, this three-year project is designed to prepare students for careers in integrated primary and behavioral health care. Thirty two advanced MSW students in Portland, Bend and Eugene are participating this year. and are engaged in integrated field placements, a field seminar, and other enrichment activities. The symposium featured presentations on the state’s integrated care infrastructure, skills for effective teamwork, social work practice in integrated care, uses of technology, and cultural adaptations for social work practice in integrated care. The Integrated Care Project offers wonderful opportunities for Social Work students to be at the cutting edge of innovations in health care.
The new leadership of the School of Social Work’s Student Support Network met recently with Dean Laura Nissen to discuss its plans for the coming year.
Faculty member Dr. Alma Trinidad received the “Social Work Best Paper Award” for her article “Critical Indigenous Pedagogy of Place: How Centering Hawaiian Epistemology and Values in Practice Affects People on Ecosystemic Levels” at the national Council of Social Work Education conference held in Denver in mid-October. The paper is published in the 2014 Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity. 
Dean Laura Nissen was part of a deans and directors panel entitled “Social Innovation / Social Work Leadership in Social Innovation” at the recent fall meeting of the National Association of Deans and Directors of Schools of Social Work. Pictured at right with Laura are Dean Debra McPhee, Fordham University, Dean Alberto Godenzi, Boston College and Dean Jeffery Edleson, University of California at Berkeley.
team. In my role I look forward to supporting the evolution of our program as we educate the next generation of social workers throughout Oregon. I hope to build our capacity as a School to support, enhance, and advance the work being done in our unique and diverse communities, with special focus on our important MSW Program Distance Options in Ashland, Bend, Eugene, and Salem.
Nine social work students from Northern Ireland visited the Portland State University campus on July 30, 2015 thanks to Tim Hartnett, adjunct professor here in the School of Social Work, visiting research fellow in the Queen’s University School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and executive director of CODA here in Portland. Tim has built a long standing partnership with Queens College and for the second year in a row brought students to Portland to learn about social service work here in the US. Dean Laura Nissen and BSW Director Michael Taylor hosted them on campus and talked about addictions work in the US system. Here’s to international collaboration and our common goals around serving those in need!
Leading feminist scholars from the US and Canada gathered at Portland State University recently for the annual editorial board meeting of Affilia: Women and Social Work, social work’s leading feminist journal. A reception at the Simon Benson House hosted by School of Social Work Dean Laura Nissen, Stephanie Wahab, and editorial board members and consulting editors Gita Mehrotra and Ben Anderson-Nathe kicked off the meeting Friday evening. We were honored to host these amazing scholars and welcome them to sunny Portland!
Brian Everall, our intrepid Systems Analyst (and resident computer expert) managed to significantly accelerate our modest budgeted “few upgrade computers a year” plan by scoring ALL “new to us” upgrades from the Portland State computer trust. While not brand new machines, they are a substantial update and should serve our students very well for the next few years. Please join me in giving Brian a heartfelt thank you!!!
March 10, 2015 marked the Social Work Day of Action in Salem sponsored by NASW-Oregon. It was a busy and interesting day of learning, interacting and advocating for numerous important policies impacting social work practice. Primarily focusing on HB’s 2002 (On ending racial profiling in Oregon), on 2009 (Increasing the state’s minimum wage), on 2307 (Ending conversion therapy for GLBTQ youth in Oregon), and 3059 (Increasing rights and improving working conditions of live entertainers in Oregon).
Over 100 social workers were in attendance – with over half of the group representing PSU’s BSW, and MSW programs (both distance and Portland sites). We were addressed by Senate President Peter Courtney, by Labor Comissioner Brad Avakian, by Oregon State Treasurer Ted Wheeler, and by Rep. Joe Gallegos (also a PSU SSW Alum!). Then we met with individual legislators to discuss current policies being advanced through the legislative process. Kudos to everyone involved – an enjoyable and impactful day to engage with policymaking and issues that matter. Special thanks to Salem Distance Coordinator, Michelle Martinez-Thompson for her leadership and energy in making the day such a success. Here’s a quick photo album from our busy day with just a few snapshots of our experiences. For those that might be planning to testify on any items – 
connect 