The Center for Societal Impact (CSI), the newest research and scholarly center within the Steve Hicks School of Social Work (SHS), has received funding to connect more children to families for adoption. Funding the Center and its mission was a legislative priority for the 88th Texas Legislative Session, which recently approved $12 million as part […]
Features
Rubén Parra-Cardona: Expanding Our Reach with New Global Engagement Office
Rubén Parra-Cardona, Ph.D., knows first-hand the value of a global education. Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, Dr. Parra-Cardona obtained his undergraduate psychology degree in Central Mexico, then moved to New York to earn a masters at Syracuse University and later a Ph.D. at Texas Tech University. Early in his career, Dr. Parra-Cardona worked as a community […]
Sandy Magaña: Supporting Families of Individuals with Disabilities
More than seven million people in the U.S. and 475,000 Texans have intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Sandy Magaña, Ph.D., MSW, serves as the Professor in Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disabilities at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work (SHS) and Executive Director of The Texas Center for Disability Studies – and she has long focused […]
Thea Posel: Law and Social Work Converge in Mitigation Services
Thea Posel, J.D., was fascinated by crime from a young age. Growing up in the state of Washington, she cut out photos and stories about crimes from magazines and pasted them into notebooks. After high school, she worked at a public defender’s office while taking community college classes in criminal justice. Following college, she briefly […]
UT Austin health-related disciplines come together at the COVID-19 vaccination clinic
On a Wednesday morning this past February, after the winter storm that left Texas paralyzed for a week, a long line of people lined up outside Gregory Gym, in the heart of the Forty Acres. People waited patiently, masked under the warm sun and with the proverbial six feet of distance apart from each other. […]
Alumna Lauren Gutierrez shares her social work journey on social media
Near the end of completing her bachelor’s in psychology, first-gen college student from San Antonio Lauren Gutierrez felt lost at UT Austin. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she said. “I thought I wanted to be an ER physician or work somewhere in the medical field. I just wasn’t feeling any of the […]
Alumnae in politics: Advocating for change in Austin’s education system
Ten-year-old Noelita Lugo was overjoyed to join her big sister in class at the University of Houston. As the youngest child of two working parents, she often spent time with her two older siblings because they were her baby sitters. As a fifth grader, it was the moment she sat alongside her big sister in […]
Alumnae in politics: Running for Comal County Commissioner
Colette Nies had no intentions of becoming a social worker, until meeting with her advisor at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. “We were talking about my work in anti-torture policy and food policy and he asked ‘why aren’t you getting a masters in social work,’” she said. “I didn’t know any social workers and I was […]
Alumnae in politics: Running for the Texas Senate
Coming from small town Mineola, Texas, Audrey Spanko had no idea what social work was. But when she finally discovered the field, she knew it was exactly where she needed to be. She obtained her bachelor of social work degree from UT Austin in 2011 and began direct service work in hospitals, clinics and nonprofit […]
Social work alumna creates errand service for Austin’s Latinx community
Ayuda. This word encapsulates what the coronavirus pandemic has caused so many across the world to need: help. But its Spanish translation highlights the need for a specific community, one to which Diana Anzaldua, MSSW ’17, belongs. A few months into the pandemic, Anzaldua co-founded Ayuda, a collaborative errand service to help members of Austin’s […]