Students spend Spring Break building a home in Honduras

It was no day at the beach for several MSW students who traded their swimsuits for a tool belt and spent Spring Break wielding hammers for Habitat for Humanity. For five days they bent rebar, used handsaws, moved dirt and stones, and mixed cement while working on a home in Tegucigalpa for a grandmother and her three grandchildren. But it wasn't all work and no play. The students took in the local culture by exploring the downtown area and craft villages, learning to make local food, hiking six miles in a cloud forest and attending a lively soccer game.

Participants included trip leaders Suzie Aragona and Caty Carpenter; Katie Ahrens, Adrienne Rooks, Adriane Casalotti, Blair Payne, Stephen Wiseman, Robin Siska, Ashley Trice, Kayla Fuga, Elizabeth Shandley and Kristin Lukasiewicz.

"We raised over $20,000 in large part due to the generosity of students, staff and professors," said Aragona, who offers a heartfelt thanks to everyone at the School who helped make this trip possible.

Look for more about this project, and a relief trip to Mississippi, in the upcoming issue of Contact magazine.


Conference spotlights developmental disabilities

The 2008 Conference on Developmental Disabilities was held in High Point on March 4-6. This annual event is one of the largest in North Carolina focusing on developmental disabilities. It attracted over 650 people from the private and public sectors, including persons with disabilities and their family members, and others with an interest to learn and discuss new ideas and strategies to provide effective supports. Featured presenters included a mix of local and national experts.

The conference was sponsored by the North Carolina Division of MH/DD/SAS with support from the UNC School of Social Work’s Developmental Disabilities Training Institute. Organizers included Christopher Egan, Linda Langley, Michael Sharpe, Jessi Elworth, Julie Wacker and Johnna Hughes.

Session handouts and presentation materials are posted on the DDTI Web site.


Chapel Hill Child Welfare Education Collaborative celebrates another successful year

The Chapel Hill Child Welfare Education Collaborative held its annual end-of-year celebration on April 28 at Spanky’s Restaurant on Franklin Street. They honored the School's 14 graduating scholars as well as the continuing scholars, taking time to acknowledge a great academic year. The guest speaker, Travis Albritton, 2003 Collaborative graduate and director of the Triangle Distance Education MSW Program, provided words of encouragement and praise. Collaborative scholar Rhonda Reese gave a special “spoken word” presentation. The event included a final tribute and presentation to Joanne Caye who left the Collaborative at the end of the Fall semester. Nancy Dickinson, executive director of the Jordan Institute for Families and Evelyn Williams, director of the North Carolina Child Welfare Education Collaborative, joined in the festivities as well.


Video conference to focus on "Men's Health Disparities"

The School of Social Work's auditorium is the site of the 14th annual Summer Public Health Research Video conference on Minority Health. The program begins at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 3 and will be broadcast by satellite and on the internet. School of Social Work faculty Sharon Holmes Thomas, Amelia Roberts and Kathleen Rounds are involved with the conference planning. For more information and to register, please click here.

Betsy Bledsoe recently received two grants. She is the principal investigator of "University-Agency Partnerships for Evidence-Based Practices: A National Survey." Her co-principal investigator is Jennifer Bellamy of the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. This $40,000 grant is from the Silberman Faculty Grant Program. Bledsoe is also a co-investigator of "Feasibility of Screening and Recruitment of Community-Dwelling Mothers for a New Project: Reducing Depressive Symptoms in Low-Income, LEP Latina Mothers." This $9,600 grant is from the Faculty Summer Research Funds, UNC School of Nursing. Linda Beeber is the principal investigator of this grant which will serve as pilot data to support a R-01 application to NIMH (under review).

Mark Fraser presented "The Effectiveness of a School-Based Social Skills Training Program: Preliminary Findings From a Group Randomized Trial" on April 11. It was part of the 2008 Spring Seminar Series sponsored by the UNC Injury Prevention Research Center. Fraser spoke about the "Making Choices" project, designed to prevent youth violence by strengthening the social problem-solving skills of elementary school children. At the conclusion of his presentation, Fraser and colleagues Shenyang Guo, Allan Ellis and Rod Rose discussed implications for school-based violence prevention.

Michal Grinstein-Weiss received a $17,500 grant from the National Poverty Center for “Testing Long-Term Impacts of Individual Development Accounts and Asset Building on Social and Economic Well-Being.” She will work with William Gale, The Brookings Institution; William Rohe, Center for Urban and Regional Studies; and Michael Sherraden, Washington University, Center for Social Development. The focus of the National Poverty Center’s 2008 small grant competition is on the effects of assets, debt, savings, and financial resources on the lives of low-income persons and families.

Matthew Howard, with Brian Perron of the University of Michigan School of Social Work, found that nearly one out of four teens who use an asthma inhaler say their intent is to get high. Findings from a new University of Michigan study identified high levels of asthma inhaler misuse among anti-social youths, who displayed higher levels of distress and were more likely to abuse other substances. More info



Susan Parish presented a paper entitled "Income Poverty and Material Hardship Among U.S. Women With Disabilities" at the Summit on Economic Justice. Held in Atlanta in April, the conference was sponsored by the National Organization for Women Foundation, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and the National Council of Negro Women.







Emelie Edwards Brown, MSW '05 and Rhett Brown, MSW '06, married in 2005 and welcomed their first child, son Daniel Gradyn Edwards Brown, on February 8, 2008. He was 10 lbs. and 21.75" long. Emelie Brown is an in-home therapist and community support specialist with Carolina Outreach.






Sylvia Knopp Polgar, MSW '81, of Wilmington, died April 9, 2008 at Lower Cape Fear Hospice Center. Polgar earned her PhD in sociology at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1974, and taught courses in sociology, social work and anthropology at UNC-Wilmington from 1976 to 1995. In addition, she served her community in many leadership roles, encouraging community relations and public health. Memorial services will be held in Wilmington in late May or early June, at a time and place to be announced. Obituary

Dawn Wilson, MSW '90, started a new position as special projects coordinator with the Catawba County Department of Social Services. Her primary project is a study funded by The Duke Endowment that looks at the well-being of children ages 0-12 in foster care through engagement of families and provision of post-permanency services to reunified, adoptive and kinship/guardianship families. She is currently in the first year of project design and works closely with the project evaluators, Duke Endowment and Child Trends in Washington, D.C.


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