Two women from the School of Social Work were recognized with the Outstanding Senior Women Academic Achievement Award: Lambrine (Libby) Sideriadis, Ph.D. ’11 and Sarah Petela, MSW ’11.
Overall, twenty-one UConn students were recognized for their academic achievements as recipients of the 2011 Outstanding Senior Women Academic Achievement Awards and the 100 Years of Women Scholarships. Associate Dean Catherine Havens; Sarah Petela, MSW '11; Lambrine (Libby) Sideriadis, Ph.D. ’11; Dean Salome Raheim
The students received their awards during a ceremony held on May 6, 2011. The dean of each school selects a graduating woman who has demonstrated a dedication to research and service to the University community, as well as academic excellence.
The 100 Years of Women Scholarship is awarded annually to a current undergraduate or graduate student, or a high school senior planning to enroll at UConn. Each recipient is honored because she has shown a commitment to women’s issues through service to their community or school.
Professor Edna Comer and Extension Professor Peter Papallo have been selected as Current Trends in Family Intervention Curriculum Champions by the Graduate Training Initiative of the Connecticut Workforce Collaborative on Behavioral Health.
The Current Trends in Family Intervention curriculum is a full semester graduate level course that provides an overview of the concepts of evidence-based practice, the specific models of empirically supported in-home family treatment practiced across Connecticut, and the core competencies shared by all of the models.
This project was fully funded by the Center for Mental Health Services of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services (DHHS) under a Mental Health Transformation State Incentive Grant to Connecticut (Contract Number SM 57456). The curriculum was developed under subcontract to Yale University as an initiative of the Connecticut Workforce Collaborative on Behavioral Health.
Pete and Edna will be honored by the Collaborative at the Partners in Innovation Recognition Breakfast later this month. Because of their participation in this project, the School is also being honored at this event. DMHAS Commissioner Patricia Rehmer will open the ceremony.
Dean Salome Raheim was recently elected to the National Nominating Committee (NNC) of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) as a Graduate Dean Representative. She brings to this position the knowledge and networks developed during her three decade social work career. Her experiences include psychiatric social work in community mental health, social service program administration, social work education and research, higher education administration and national leadership in the profession.
Salome Raheim, Dean and Professor
She has served as a faculty member on the East Coast, the Midwest and New England in BSW programs in a historically black college and small liberal arts colleges and large multi-degree programs in schools within research intensive universities. Raheim’s history of active CSWE leadership contributes to her understanding of the issues facing social work education, including her service as chair of the Commission on the Role and Status of Women, chair of the Commission for Diversity and Social and Economic Justice and member of the CSWE board of directors (ex-officio). Her diverse background and understanding of the leadership CSWE needs will be an asset in identifying and nominating members who will contribute to the vitality of CSWE. Dean Raheim will serve a three year term from July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2014.
Human Rights in the United States – Beyond Exceptionalism (Cambridge University Press, 2011) brings to light emerging evidence of a shift toward a fuller engagement with inter-national human rights norms and their application to domestic policy dilemmas in the United States. The volume offers a rich history, spanning close to three centuries, of the marginalization of human rights discourse in the United States. Human Rights in the United States - Beyond Exceptionalism - Edited by Shareen Hertel and Kathryn LibalContributors analyze particular cases of U.S. human rights advocacy aimed at addressing persistent inequalities within the United States itself, including advocacy on the rights of persons with disabilities; indigenous peoples; lone mother-headed families; incarcerated persons; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people; and those displaced by natural disasters, most notably Hurricane Katrina. The book also explores key arenas in which legal scholars, policy practitioners, and grassroots activists are challenging multiple divides between “public” and “private” spheres (for example, in connection with children’s rights and domestic violence) and between “public” and “private” sectors (specifically, in relation to healthcare and business and human rights).
Michele Eggers and Jennifer Willett, first year doctoral students, have each been awarded competitive grants to study respectively in Santiago, Chile and Mombasa, Kenya this summer.
Michele Eggers
With support from the Tinker Foundation Graduate Field Research Grant (UConn Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies) for $2000 and the Human Rights Research Grant (UConn Human Rights Institute) for $2000, Ms. Eggers will go to Chile twice this year to conduct pre-dissertation research. She will investigate the nature of community-based responses to the economic, political, and social inequalities that permeate restrictive reproductive health policies.PhD Students Jennifer Willett and Michele Eggers During her first trip to Santiago this summer, Ms. Eggers will set up contacts and build relationships with individuals working toward the de-criminalization of reproductive health policies in social work, religious, legal, academic, health, and human rights organizations. During her second trip over winter break, she will conduct semi-structured interviews to better understand the infrastructure of advocacy as it relates to community organizing and human rights.
Jennifer Willett
As a recipient of a $2000 grant for human rights research from the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut, Ms. Willett will be able to pursue her interests in international environmental justice. This summer she will be interning for Eco-Ethics in Mombasa, Kenya. This organization is unique in the geographic area, where she has previously lived, in linking poverty and environmental problems, a key theme in the environmental justice movement. Eco-Ethics is primarily founded in environmental science and been able to establish an epidemiological link between persistent organic pollutants and health consequences in the slums of Mombasa. Through this internship, and by interviewing affected people, she will complete her pre-dissertation research on the impact of environmental problems on poor communities.
