Professor Dede Sparks was selected the 2019-2020 Field Liaison of the Year by the Texas Field Educator’s Consortium. This award recognizes excellent work with field practicum students and contributions to social work education.
Spring 2020
Awards from the Office of Field Education
Supporting adoption and guardianship
Last October the Steve Hicks School’s Texas Institute for Child & Family Wellbeing released findings from the National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation. Through this five-year project, a multidisciplinary research team worked with eight sites across the nation (Texas, Vermont, Illinois, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Catawba County in North Carolina, […]
Making science inclusive
As a blind undergraduate studying psychology and trying to accumulate research participation hours, Nazanin Heydarian found that most studies either excluded her as a disabled student or were unwelcoming. She remembers showing up for a study and awkwardly rearranging the computer monitor and keyboard to accommodate her own usable vision while the research assistants watched […]
Spring 2020 Class Notes
We are proud of our alumni and the positive impact they are making in their communities. Submit your recent news here. ’68 Mary Ellen Branan, MSSW ’68, received her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston in 1991. She has published a poetry collection, Weavings (Blue Light Press, 2011), which won […]
Supporting doctoral students
Sherry Miller Melecki Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Social Work Sherry Melecki interacts daily with doctoral students through her job as graduate program coordinator at the Steve Hicks School. Since 2008, when she started, she has helped shepherd 94 doctoral students towards graduation. “It is exciting to see the students come in, so full of ideas […]
Why I Give: Tiffany Davis, MSSW ’95
Tiffany Davis remembers dressing up as a development officer—a navy blazer and khaki pants—for Career Day in middle school. Davis’ father has had a long career in higher education development. Her her mother became a development director at an independent school when she went back to the workplace after raising her children. “I always say […]
A win-win
Earl Maxwell Scholars Program Many Central Texas nonprofits can’t host social work interns because they don’t have master’s level social workers on staff who can supervise students. A new $1.7 million grant from the St. David’s Foundation addresses this challenge through the creation of the Earl Maxwell Scholars Program at the Steve Hicks School of […]
Why Your Support Matters: Jonathan Spinks, BSW ’21
As an at-risk youth growing up in Northeast Washington, D.C., Jonathan Spinks never imagined he’d be where he is today. “College wasn’t always seen as the track I’d follow, so money wasn’t set aside for me,” Spinks said. “But I was tired of my lifestyle and I was tired of hearing people tell me I […]
