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Alumni briefs: Crossman ’12, Martin ’00, Newton-Ward ’84, Rifkin ’13

Bobby Cagle (BA ’89, MSW ’98) is featured in a June 17 Athens Banner-Herald news story, “Director rolling out new plan for Georgia’s child welfare agency.” Cagle is the director for the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services.

Maria Crossman, MSW, ’12, received her licensure in June 2014 and just completed her first year as a Military and Family Life Counselor (MFLC) at a middle school in Harnett county, where she got to help middle schoolers who were military connected manage issues related to deployment, moving and reintegration. She and her husband, Jason French, welcomed their first child, Gabriel Jason French, on March 18, 2015. He weighed 8 lbs., 10 oz. and was 21 inches long.

Troy A. Martin, MSW ’00, received his Ph.D. in Educational Studies with a concentration in Cultural Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in May 2015.

Mike Newton-Ward, MSW ’84, was featured in the N.C. Dept. of Health and Human Services newsletter on May 27 in a story entitled, “Newtown-Ward honored by UNC School of Social Work.”

Allison Oxford Rifkin, MSW ’13, relocated to Sydney, Australia with her husband after graduation. She is now working as a pediatric hematology/oncology social worker in the Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children’s Hospital.

Aaron Thompson, Ph.D. ’12, received a $3.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, entitled “Evaluation of a Self-Monitoring Training Program for Elementary School Students.” Thompson is the PI on this intervention study and he will be working with his co-investigators in the College of Education to test the efficacy of the Self-Monitoring Training and Regulation Strategy (STARS), which he developed as a doctoral student. STARS is a selective intervention program for 5th grade students who exhibit signs of disruptive and challenging classroom behaviors. He has been conducting a pilot study of STARS and now, in only his third year, he has received this federal funding to test STARS in the Columbia Public Schools. Thompson is an assistant professor at the University of Missouri School of Social Work.