Ph.D. Students
Our Ph.D. program offers students the opportunity to be mentored by nationally prominent faculty with expertise in diverse areas of practice, policy, and research. Established in 1946, the program is one of the oldest in the United States. Graduates of the program include internationally-recognized scholars in diverse areas of study.
Growing up poor sparked student's interest in microfinance from participant perspective
Hoa
Nguyen has been thinking about microfinance for years.
Before coming to the U.S., she had worked for the
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and United
Nations Development Program in her native Vietnam. Now a
Ph. D. student at the School of Social Work, Nguyen
(pronounced wen) decided to delve into the finer points
of a microfinance program from the perspective of
participants. “Growing up in a poor family in a poor
country like Vietnam, I understand how difficult it is
to escape from poverty and how poverty constrains
people’s life opportunities,” Nguyen said.
more>>>
Ph.D. Student’s Research Into Fathers With Advanced Cancer Diagnoses
Missy Lundquist, Ph. D. candidate at the School of Social Work, has practiced with families suffering from cancer for a long time. After receiving a $40,000 Doctoral Training Grant in Oncology Social Work from the American Cancer Society last summer, she created a research proposal delving into fathers’ experiences of parenting when they have a terminal diagnosis. Traditional masculinity is built upon being physically strong, and financially sound—both of which can be taken away by cancer and its treatment, Lundquist said. "Can you still fulfill your role that you envisioned for yourself?" Lundquist asked. "I don’t know." more>>
Understanding refugee homelessness through
a social capital
lens
When University of Minnesota School of Social Work Ph.D. candidate Hyojin Im started studying homeless refugees, she couldn’t find anything in the literature on the topic. Starting with a survey tool, she set out to measure homelessness in this population through a lens of social capital. She wanted to know what caused it, and how refugees dealt with housing crises. Three years later, she has made this project her dissertation, conducting qualitative interviews in shelters around the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. “Ever since I began studying cultural psychology as an undergraduate, I have been interested in cultural issues,” said Im, and this research fits within those key interests. more>>>
Other Student News
Shweta Singh, a third year doctoral student, has published with colleagues Anita Larson and Crystal Lewis an article titled "Sanctions and education outcomes for children in TANF families" in the most recent issue of Child & Youth Services.
Annette Semanchin Jones, a third year doctoral student, has received the prestigious American Humane Association's Quality Improvement Center dissertation research award. This will support her dissertation research for up to two years. Congratulations! Read more about the award at http://www.differentialresponseqic.org/.
Doctoral student Hyojin Im was given the Best Student Abstract Award from the Joint World Conference on Social Development and Social Work, held in Hong Kong, China, in June 2010. Congratulations, Hyojin!
School of Social Work Ph.D. candidate Suzanne Lohrbach has been named academic director of child welfare for the American Humane Association, a national organization that advocates for the protection of children and animals.
Timothy Zuel, SSW recent doctorate, has co-authored a new article titled Are Attendance Gains Sustained? A Follow-up on the Educational and Child Welfare Outcomes of Students with Child Welfare Involvement for Educational Neglect in the NASW journal Children and Schools (2010, v. 33, n. 1).
Jae Ran Kim, SSW doctoral candidate, recently offered a webinar through the Minnesota Department of Human Services project called Adoptees Have Answers. Jae Ran Kim is a nationally recognized Minnesota adoption keynote speaker. Her webinar presented key research on the psychological development of adoptees. A CD is now available for purchase. She also maintains popular blogs on adoption issues at http://jaerankim.wordpress.com/.
Alankaar Sharma, SSW doctoral candidate and Visiting Scholar at the University of Iowa, has been interviewed for a two-part podcast on Tuskegee and the Negro Project: The Intersections of Race, Gender, and Public Health. The series is produced by the University of Buffalo School of Social Work. You can access the podcasts at http://www.socialwork.buffalo.edu/podcast/episode.asp?ep=58.
Kofi Denso, SSW doctoral student, has recently published an edited book with Professor David Gillespie of Washington University's Brown School of Social Work. The title of the book is Disaster Concept and Issues: A Guide for Social Work Education and Practice." It was published by the Council on Social Work Education.
Hyojin Im, SSW doctoral student, received the "Best Student Abstract Award" from Hong Kong University at the 2010 Joint World Conference on Social Work and Social Development held in Hong Kong in June 2010. Her paper, titled Role of social capital and help-seeking in refugee resettlement: Toward housing stability is about the role of social capital and unique help-seeking. Hyojin also received a $25,000 Annie E. Casey Foundation innovation grant for her dissertation, A socio-ecological model of refugee mental health and housing insecurity: With a focus on roles of social capital and acculturation. With support from refugee resettlement agencies and refugee communities, this dissertation will conduct individual and focus-group interviews with homeless refugee families and refugee community leaders in Minnesota to identify various cultural barriers to housing stability and proper health and social services, and explore interplay between mental health and housing experiences. Hyojin’s dissertation project also got a $4,000 grant from Minnesota Family Housing Fund.
Missy Lundquist, SSW doctoral student, has won the highly competitive and prestigious doctoral level Training Grant in Oncology Social Work from the American Cancer Society. This is a two-year $40,000 fellowship. Congratulations Missy!
Jae Ran Kim has written the foreword and introduction to a new book on Korean adoptees titled HERE: A visual history of adopted Koreans in Minnesota. From the publisher: Minnesota has one of the highest number of adopted Koreans, per capita, in the world, and yet there is nothing in our state’s annals to document this. This book was conceived to recognize the 13,000–15,000 of us who have immigrated to Minnesota, and to celebrate our existence, experiences, and perspectives, which are as diverse as our faces. We are everyday people, yet unique. We are girls, boys, women, men, babies, teens, and adults; singles, partnered, married, gay, straight, and transgendered; sons and daughters, mothers and fathers. We are a living, breathing part of Minnesota history. This book has no agenda—it is neither for nor against international adoption. We merely present the spectrum of our adopted community and how we have altered the face of Minnesota since the 1950s. Most important, we felt the urgent need to create this book as a resource not only for the present population, but also for future adoptees. After all, many of us do not have access to our Korean families and ancestry, and this book may provide the only touchstone many of us will ever have. To read more, go to the book's homepage.
Jennifer Simmelink has had her paper entitled Temporary Citizenship: US Immigration Law and Liberian Refugees in Minnesota accepted for presentation at a conference on Deportation and Development of Citizenship, sponsored by the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University. She will travel to the UK in mid-December to attend the conference and make her presentation.
Alankaar Sharma has had his history paper on the Negro Project of American Social Hygiene Association accepted for publication in Journal of African American Studies.
A paper by doctoral student Eunsu Ju has been accepted by the highly respected Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. The journal encompasses issues and practices in policy analysis and public management and lists economists, academics, public managerS, and operations researchers among its contributors. The title of Eunsu’s paper is Is Random Assignment Good Enough? Comments to the Hollister-Nathan Exchange on Random Assignment that will be printed in the Spring 2009 issue. His paper addresses the rebuttals on random assignment between Nathan and Hollister, whose papers can be found in the same journal (Vol. 27 Issue 2 & 3 ).
Congratulations to SSW doctoral student Matt Bogenschutz who received the Future Leader Award from the Institute on Community Integration (ICI) in recognition of his "sincere commitment to improving the quality of services and supports to individuals with developmental disabilities and their families." Matt was recognized as a natural teacher and mentor whose collaboration skills are outstanding. Citing his intelligence and vision, Matt was acknowledged for merging "knowledge from his professional experiences with insight from the field of research."
Congratulations to Iris Heavy Runner Pretty Paint who successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation on Tuesday, May 6! Her dissertation is titled, Tribal College Student Retention. Professor Ron Rooney was Iris's adviser.
Valandra and Alankaar Sharma presented at the Midwest Qualitative Research Conference with Gilgun
Doctoral students Valandra and Alankaar Sharma presented several papers with Prof. Jane Gilgun at the 14th Annual Midwest Qualitative Research Conference in mid-April. The three of them are presenting Critical Race Theory and Discourse Analysis. Valandra’s solo presentation is titled “Do Numbers Count? The Experiences of Multicultural andInternational Students of Color at Two College Campuses.
Wells & Ruhland Begin New Child Protection Research
Ebony Ruhland, Ph.D. student
Professor Susan Wells and doctoral student Ebony Ruhland continue their evidence-based family services study that is investigating the association between child protective service delivery and child and family outcomes. The question that troubles legislators, service providers and families alike is whether child protective interventions result in a better outcome for the child. This project will use available records and follow-up interviews with service providers and families to begin to establish linkages between services and outcomes. Upon study completion, this information could be used to develop larger studies such as a comparative longitudinal study of families served by non-voluntary child protective services, voluntary community services, and those not currently engaged in the voluntary or non-voluntary social service systems. This study is currently in its first phase which includes the identification of existing models of evidence-based practice in child welfare focused family services. This study is funded by the University of Minnesota’s internal Grant-in-Aid program that helps faculty and students with seed money to start new lines of investigation. Read more information on a recent community forum on evidenced-based practice in child welfare.
Preventing Placement Disruptions in Foster Care
The PATH Wisconsin – Bremer project is a year-long research collaboration between PATH Wisconsin, Inc. and the University of Minnesota aimed at identifying ways of preventing placement disruptions in foster care. The first phase of the project consisted of a comprehensive review of the literature on preventing placement disruptions in foster care that was conducted between August 2007 and January 2008. The literature review is organized into two broad topic areas: 1) risk and protective factors for placement stability and 2) preventing disruptions in foster care.
Ph.D. student Annette Semanchin Jones with Prof. Wells.
The final report of the literature review highlights the key findings in the two broad topic areas and discusses potential implications for practice for foster care agencies working to prevent placement disruptions for youth in foster care. Some of the key findings are in the following areas of foster parent recruitment and retention; initial assessment of foster/adoptive parents; foster parent training; foster family supportive services; caseworker training and retention and evidence-based models and promising practices. The final report also includes and annotated bibliography of pertinent research and a supplemental User’s Guide to Evidence-Based Practice in Preventing Placement Disruptions in Foster Care. This user’s guide includes an “easy-to-use” outline of the findings from the larger search that relate to evidence-based practices in preventing placement disruptions in foster care.
The second phase of the project will focus on an examination of how the research findings can apply to PATH Wisconsin’s current service delivery and outcome evaluation processes. Key lessons from this project will be presented at the National Conference of Foster Family Treatment Association in July 2008, and will also include a discussion around the value of university/provider partnerships in identifying promising practices in the field of foster care, including potential benefits of these partnerships, such as enhancing knowledge of current academic research in the area of treatment foster care; and increasing opportunities to apply research to practice.
Ph.D. Alumni News
Dean Tan
Ngoh-Tiong Tan, Ph.D. ('88), has been named the Dean, School of Human Development and Social Services at the Singapore Institute of Management, better known as UniSIM. He will oversee graduate programs in social work and counseling as well as undergraduate programs in social work, counseling, human resources, and child education. Prof. Tan was a tenured Professor at Augsburg College before he joined UniSIM. He spent 17 years at the National University of Singapore's Department of Social Work. Over the years, he has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, Cambridge University, UC Berkeley, Oslo University and Sydney University. He has extensive experience and research in social work, social enterprise, dispute and conflict resolution, parenting and community mediation, dynamics of change and crisis and disaster management.