Professor Rebecca L. Thomas has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award in Social Work to Sofia, Bulgaria, for the 2023-2024 academic year, from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Thomas teaches in the Policy Practice concentration at UConn School of Social Work (SSW) and is the director of the Center for International Social Work Studies at SSW. She represents the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) at the United Nations on the NGO Committee of migration, and also serves on the Katherine Kendal Institute of CSWE. Her research and scholarship include international social work, international development, climate-induced migration, and refugees and immigrants.

From January 2024, Thomas will be working at the New Bulgaria University situated in Sofia, on three initiatives, with implications for research, policy recommendations, and sustained collaboration. She will be teaching a course on Program Evaluation to Doctoral Students; expanding her research on the lived experiences of Ukrainian refugees in Bulgaria; and working with diverse stakeholders to strengthen social work practice and policy initiatives to advance the Rights of the Child in Bulgaria. These projects were developed in consultation with the leadership and faculty of the New Bulgaria University.

Thomas is among over 800 U.S. citizens who will teach or conduct research abroad for the 2023-2024 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. Fulbrighters engage in cutting-edge research and expand their professional networks, often continuing research collaborations started abroad and laying the groundwork for forging future partnerships between institutions. Upon returning to their home countries, institutions, labs, and classrooms, they share their stories and often become active supporters of international exchange, inviting foreign scholars to campus, and encouraging colleagues and students to go abroad.

"We congratulate Dr. Thomas on her Fulbright Scholar Program Award,” says SSW Dean Laura Curran. “This honor demonstrates her deep knowledge and expertise in international social work, research on refugees, and policy practice. It will also expand our School’s impact and support our mission to improve human well-being, both locally and globally.”

For more information about the Fulbright Program, visit https://fulbrightprogram.org.

Learn more about Thomas’s research.

In collaboration with colleagues in UConn Civil and Environmental Engineering, Assistant Professor Rupal Parekh has secured a $5 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency for Technical Assistance to Brownfields Communities (TAB).

The primary goal of this grant is to empower New England states, tribes, communities, and various stakeholders to collectively address the prevention, assessment, safe cleanup, and sustainable reuse of brownfields. Brownfields refers to land that is completely or partially abandoned and likely polluted from past human activity. The overarching objective is to provide technical assistance and foster community engagement to support leaders and residents in enhancing the livability of their living environments for people of all ages.

“UConn TAB will work to ensure that residents in communities historically impacted by economic disinvestment, health disparities, and environmental contamination have the opportunity to benefit from brownfields redevelopment,” says Parekh.

Learn more about Parekh's work.

Associate Professor Margaret Lloyd Sieger has been awarded a National Institute on Drug Abuse K01 research career development grant of $881,147. Her five-year study will examine the effect of family care plans, or safety and wellness plans for infants affected by prenatal substance use and for their mothers’ treatment and recovery.

“Connecticut is a model in implementing public health policy to support families affected by prenatal substance exposure,” says Lloyd Sieger. “The purpose of this research is to test whether the policy is having its intended effects—including improving maternal access to treatment and infant access to developmental supports—and to monitor any unintended consequences, such as adverse child experiences and race disparities. Long-term, our hope is to inform the national policy conversation with rigorous evidence on public health approaches to reducing harms associated with substance use in pregnancy.”

Read more about Lloyd Sieger's research.

To understand best practices and challenges associated with developing and implementing restorative justice diversion (RJD), Assistant Professor Sukhmani Singh, in partnership with Impact Justice, is a sub-awardee of a Bureau of Justice Category 2 Award. Over the course of this project, Dr. Singh and team are seeking to understand the training and technical assistance experiences of what it means to deliver Restorative Justice Diversion programming. Lessons learned from this collaborative study will be translated into an innovative technical and training assistance curriculum by the Restorative Justice Project team, Impact Justice. Dr. Singh is leading the research efforts of the process evaluation.

“Restorative Justice Diversion programming — deep engagement in practices that offer healing and repair to the very human experience of committing and receiving harm — has resurged in the United States particularly as states contend with what it means to develop, implement, and maintain community-based solutions to advancing care and justice,” says Singh. “The purpose of this project is to engage in dialogue with community-based organizations and their juvenile legal system counterparts — across 10 different jurisdictions in the country — in understanding lessons learned from having received training and technical assistance in working through the praxis of restorative justice diversion programming over the last decade. Lessons learned will inform the development and process evaluation of an innovative, cohort-based training and technical assistance model to new sites interested in exploring pre-prosecution restorative justice diversion for youth.”

Read more about Singh's research.

Read about her presentation at the Connecticut Sentencing Commission Meeting.

With a U.S. Department of Education CDFA 84.325C grant of $191,653, Professor Cristina Mogro-Wilson will focus on improving outcomes for infants and young children with disabilities by increasing the number of early childhood personnel and faculty from racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and enhancing equity content within early childhood preparation programs.

“In order to start providing more equitable services to kids and families with disabilities that come from diverse cultural backgrounds, we need a diverse workforce to meet those needs,” says Mogro-Wilson. “One of the aims of the Early Childhood Intervention Personnel Development Equity Center is to recruit and retain graduate students and faculty in institutes of higher education that are from diverse backgrounds.”

Read more about this research in UConn Today.

Read more about Mogro-Wilson's research.