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Four faculty become Society for Social Work and Research Fellows

Four professors from the UNC School of Social Work have been inducted into the inaugural class of Fellows of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) — Drs. Gary Bowen, Mark Fraser, Shenyang Guo and Matthew Howard.

Fellows of the Society for Social Work and Research are SSWR members who have served with distinction to advance the mission of the Society — to advance, disseminate, and translate research that addresses issues of social work practice and policy and promotes a diverse, equitable and just society.

The SSWR Fellowship was established by the Society to honor and to recognize current SSWR members for their individual accomplishments, leadership and contribution to SSWR as a scientific society. It is anticipated that SSWR Fellows will serve as role models and mentors for individuals pursuing careers in social work research and will continue to actively advance the mission of the Society.

Gary Bowen, Ph.D. is a Kenan Distinguished Professor at the School of Social Work. Bowen’s areas of expertise include school success; military families; community capacity building; work, family, and community linkages; family stress, coping, and social support; adolescent resiliency; and evaluation research. He co-directs the School Success Profile project in the School of Social Work with Natasha Bowen, Ph.D., and Dean Jack Richman, Ph.D. He was named a National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) Fellow in 2001 for his enduring contributions to the field of family studies through a career of teaching, scholarship, outreach, professional service and leadership. He served as president of NCFR from 2009-2011. Bowen has published extensively on the social environmental antecedents of school engagement and academic success of middle and high school students, as well as on the nature of the work and family interface in the U.S. military. He is currently working on a joint, Department of Defense-sponsored project with the University of Georgia on implementing a community capacity building project directed at providing support initiatives for military members and their families through mobilizing communities.

Mark Fraser, Ph.D., is the Tate Distinguished Professor and the associate dean for research at the School of Social Work. Fraser’s areas of expertise include children and families at risk; antisocial and aggressive behavior in childhood, early adolescence and adolescence; risk and resilience in childhood; and prevention of conduct problems in childhood and adolescence. He has co-authored or edited 9 books and more than 130 journal articles and chapters, writing extensively on risk and resilience, child behavior, child and family services, and research methods. Fraser is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, which he helped launch in 2009. In 2010, he was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Welfare. Fraser developed Making Choices, a curriculum that presents a series of cognitive problem-solving lessons intended to broaden children’s social knowledge and skills for successfully interacting with peers and adults. Making Choices has been so successful that it expanded internationally, and was adapted for use in schools in China.

Shenyang Guo, Ph.D., is the Wallace H. Kuralt, Sr. Distinguished Professor at the School of Social Work. He is the author of numerous research articles in child welfare, child mental health services, welfare, and health care. He has expertise in applying advanced statistical models to solving social welfare problems and has taught graduate courses that address event history analysis, hierarchical linear modeling, growth curve modeling, structural equation modeling, and program evaluation. He has given many invited workshops on statistical methods–including event history analysis and propensity score analysis–at the NIH Summer Institute, Children’s Bureau, Statistical Horizons, and at conferences of the Society of Social Work and Research. He led the data analysis planning for the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being longitudinal analysis and has developed analytic strategies that address issues of weighting, clustering, growth modeling, and propensity score analysis. He also directed the analysis of data from the Making Choices project, a NIDA-funded prevention trial. Guo has published many articles that include methodological works on the analysis of longitudinal data, maximum likelihood estimator, correction of rater effects, multivariate failure time data, program evaluation, and multi-level modeling. He is on the editorial board of Social Service Review and JSSWR, and a frequent guest reviewer for journals seeking a critique of advanced methodological analyses.

Matthew Howard, Ph.D., is the Frank A. Daniels Distinguished Professor for Human Services Policy Information and the associate dean for faculty development at the School of Social Work. Howard’s areas of expertise include inhalant substance abuse/disorders, substance use among juvenile offenders, alcohol dependence, psychiatric disorders among inhalant users, psychopathy among adolescent female offenders, and integrating evidence-based practice. Howard previously served as the editor-in-chief of Social Work Research, the flagship journal of the National Association of Social Workers; and is currently editor-in-chief of the North American editor for the British Journal of Social Work, a publication of the British Association of Social Workers. In 2010, he was elected as a member and Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. In 2013, he was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Welfare. A renowned researcher and publisher, Howard was ranked #9 by the British Journal of Social Work in its feature, “Influential Publications in Social Work Discourse: The 100 Most Highly Cited Articles in Disciplinary Journals: 2000-09″. He has also received numerous teaching awards and other professional honors during his career.

The Fellows were honored at an awards presentation on January 17 in conjunction with the SSWR annual conference in San Antonio, Texas.

The Society for Social Work and Research was founded in 1994 as a free-standing organization dedicated to the advancement of social work research. SSWR’s members represent more than 200 universities and institutions from around the world.