Graduate School of Social Work 2023–2024 Progress Report
In 2023–24, we welcomed a new dean while continuing to advance justice across research, teaching, community partnerships and the discipline of social work. Learn more about our progress during the past year.
Strategic Goal: Engage
In partnerships across the University and the community, we launched an interdisciplinary institute to advance understanding and protection of nonhuman animals, studied the impact of a universal basic income intervention, and addressed health inequities. Our research expenditures continued to lead the University as well.
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Strategy | Reinforce and expand our bridge to and from the community
- Enlisting Religious Congregations to Solve Social Problems: Assistant Professor Marquisha Lawrence Scott’s research, teaching and community engagement focus on ensuring that community and religious congregations are equipped to serve their communities. Her work centers religious congregations as social problem-solvers, today and into the future. For a Brave Ideas for Social Change podcast episode, she discussed working with congregations to reimagine their role in communities and the broader society, relationships between congregations and social work, and her research into how congregations are grappling with climate change and eco justice.
- Mobilizing Mutual Aid: GSSW students, faculty and staff were part of an expansive community mutual aid network supporting thousands of unhoused South American migrants in the Denver metro area.
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Strategy | Advance training and knowledge that influence public policy
- Protecting Nonhuman Animals: The new Institute for Animal Sentience and Protection is a joint program of GSSW and the Sturm College of Law and is co-directed by social work Clinical Professor Philip Tedeschi and law Professor Justin Marceau, Brooks Institute Faculty Research Scholar of Animal Law and Policy and faculty director of the Animal Law Program. Founded with financial support from Robert Brinkmann, PhD, DVM, the institute is working to expand the scientific understanding of the cognitive and emotional capabilities of nonhuman animals and meaningfully advance their protection.
- Documenting the Impacts of Universal Basic Income: In the nation’s largest basic income study, GSSW’s Center for Housing and Homelessness Research has been studying the impact of the Denver Basic Income Project on homelessness. The Denver Basic Income Project gives unhoused Denver residents cash with no strings attached. Results show that the program has reduced homelessness and increased full-time employment.
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Strategy | Engage in scholarship and research that is driven by communities and rooted in social justice
- Maximizing Public Impact: GSSW Assistant Professor Erin Harrop was selected as a University of Denver Public Impact Fellow. The fellowship program provides faculty and staff with access to training for disseminating scholarship and research to public venues, including how to best utilize blogs, radio, television, op-eds and social media. Harrop works to elevate the voices of marginalized people in the health care system, including people living with eating disorders and substance use, those with multiply marginalized identities, and higher weight individuals facing weight stigma.
- Expanding Community-Engaged Research: Professor Daniel Brisson co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Community Practice devoted to Collaborations in Community Engaged Research. The issue centers attention on the “deep knowledge and lived experiences of community members who have often been sidelined by academic researchers rather than being included as rightful partners in social work scholarship.”
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Strategy | Continue our influential and innovative research legacy
- Leading in Research: GSSW’s Butler Institute for Families and Institute for Human–Animal Connection have been named official DU Research Institutes. This designation reflects their reputation as research leaders nationally and internationally. The two GSSW institutes are among just six DU programs to receive the new designation. To receive the designation, an entity was required to have a three- to five-year annual average of $1.5 million in research expenditures from external sources and contribute to the fabric of the University through the number of faculty involved and students taught and trained.
- Addressing Health Inequities: Assistant Professor Tyrone Hamler’s research is focused on health inequities, chronic illness, aging, and the intersection of mental and physical health. He also studies health equity in kidney disease for older Black Americans, who he says experience “double jeopardy” because they are members of an historically excluded group and older. Hamler hopes his work can help to reshape kidney care in the United States.
Increasing Research Expenditures: The University of Denver is among 146 universities designated as a Doctoral/Very High Research university (or “R1”) by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education and is the only private R1 school in the Rocky Mountain West. In 2023–24, GSSW researchers had 69 grants totaling $15.4 million in research expenditures — up from $12.8 million the previous year and the most of any college or school at the University. With more than $7 million in awards, the University’s top-funded investigator was Research Professor Robin Leake, executive director of GSSW’s Butler Institute for Families. GSSW Professor Michele Hanna was also among the University’s top PIs, with more than $1 million in external funding. Other externally funded projects included Associate Professor Ramona Beltrán’s Our Stories Our Medicine Archive, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine.
Strategic Goal: Envision
We continued to nurture meaningful relationships with our alumni, who represent the vast field of social work and readily share their experience and knowledge with current students. Our work also continued to redefine the field of social work, expanding knowledge in areas such as ecological justice and artificial intelligence.
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Strategy | Invest in meaningful relationships with alumni
- Exploring Interdisciplinary Career Experiences: University of Denver and GSSW alumni relations and career services teams hosted a series of free events for students, alumni and other members of the community. Featuring alumni, faculty and community partner panelists, these events included “Working in Interdisciplinary Team Environments: Denver Public Schools,” “The Mental Health Crisis Among Youth: An Interdisciplinary Event” and “Strategies for Starting a Non-Profit: An Interdisciplinary Event.” More than 200 people attended the sessions, which were intended to help social work students and alumni explore an agency or topic of interest from an interdisciplinary lens.
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Strategy | Advance and celebrate the uniqueness of our school
- Recognizing Excellence: U.S. News & World Report once again ranked GSSW among the nation’s Top 15 graduate schools of social work. GSSW was ranked No. 12 for 2024, tied with Boston University, Case Western Reserve University, Howard University, New York University, Ohio State University, Rutgers University–New Brunswick, and the University of Pittsburgh.
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Strategy | Enhance our financial, physical, and human capital
- Welcoming GSSW’s 8th Dean: At the end of the 2023–24 academic year, GSSW welcomed its 8th dean, Milton Morris Endowed Dean & Professor Henrika McCoy (MSW, MJ, PhD, LCSW). Known as an exceptional leader across social work practice, funded research and education, McCoy is also recognized nationally for her efforts to promote racial justice.
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Strategy | Illuminate the vast fields of social work practice and impact in the global community
- Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Social Work: Associate Professor Anamika Barman Adhikari is one of only a handful of U.S. social work scholars with expertise in using social network methodologies and advanced computational methods such as machine learning in research. In a Brave Ideas for Social Change podcast episode, she discussed the use of artificial intelligence in social work research and practice.
- Addressing Ecological Distress: Through research, in the classroom and in the community, GSSW faculty, staff and students are addressing the growing issue of ecological distress. The new course “Environmental Change Impacts and Resilience Strategies for Mental Health,” — part of the school’s Ecological Justice specialization pathway — offers a clinical mental health understanding of eco-distress and climate trauma to prepare students to help others dealing with those issues.
- Advocating for Environmental Justice: The American Academy of Social Work and Welfare’s grand challenge to “create social responses to a changing environment” is a call to action for social workers to advocate for environmental justice. Co-edited by GSSW Associate Professor of the Practice Rachel Forbes, a new book answers that call. Ecosocial Work: Environmental Practice and Advocacy (NASW Press, 2023) encourages readers to consider how protecting the planet while meeting social work’s aims advances the social work profession’s values and ethical mandates.
Alumni Spotlights
Serving the Community
For 2023 PhD graduate Miguel Trujillo, a doctorate was a way to help his community by creating systemic change.
Leadership in Social Work
As a senior instructor of clinical practice and director of behavioral health programs for Sheridan Health Services, MSW alumna Alyssa Hetschel (MSW ’14) balances clinical practice with organizational leadership.
Strategic Goal: Learn
Informed by our students and our community, we continued to innovate in how and what we teach.
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Strategy | Create a dynamic learning experience for all members of our community and prepare students to lead in a diverse society
- Centering Queer & Trans Joy: Co-developed by Professor Eugene Walls and PhD candidate and Adjunct Instructor Brendon Holloway, the revamped course Social Work Practice with LGBTQIA Communities is intended to facilitate students’ exploration of their own perceptions, biases and belief systems about LGBTQIA identities and communities. It also challenges students to envision how their own practice will be inclusive of LGBTQIA individuals and communities.
- Working Cross-Culturally: GSSW’s Global Social Work Certificate gives students the skills needed to work cross-culturally in the United States and abroad. One of those students is Christy Janiszewski, who interned with the Comfort Dog Project in Uganda.
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Strategy | Meet workforce needs through specialized skill-based training
- Increasing Career Impact: GSSW’s 13 dual-degree programs expand the impact of a social work degree by pairing it with graduate degrees in areas such as business, law, international studies, public policy, public health and theology. Dual-degree alumna Nikki Allen (MSW/MA ’06, LCSW, LAC) has joined the GSSW faculty as a clinical assistant professor.
- Expanding the Behavioral Health Workforce: GSSW has received a grant of more than $1 million from the Colorado Department of Higher Education to help expand and diversify the state’s behavioral health workforce. Led by Professor and Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Michele Hanna and Clinical Professor Michael Talamantes, the one-year grant funds scholarships for low-income MSW students specializing in behavioral health and is an extension of GSSW’s Collaborative Learning and Innovative Educational Models of Behavioral Health (CLIMB@DU) stipend program, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration.
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34% In 2023–24, 34% of GSSW students were students of color, an increase from 32% the previous year.
Strategic Goal: Transform
Our operations and academic programs continued to focus on diversity, equity, inclusion and justice. Our Four Corners and Western Colorado MSW Programs continued to make lasting positive impacts on the region’s rural communities.
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Strategy | Challenge and disrupt systems of oppression within and outside our school
- Addressing White Supremacy in Social Work: Several GSSW faculty members and alumni contributed to the recent book Social Work, White Supremacy, and Racial Justice: Reckoning With Our History, Interrogating Our Present, Re-Imagining Our Future (Oxford University Press, 2023). Co-edited by GSSW Dean Emeritus James Herbert Williams, the book explores social work’s complex history of upholding white supremacy alongside a goal of achieving racial justice and practicing within racist institutions and systems while simultaneously working to dismantle them.
- Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice: To give individuals and organizations more pathways to advance diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ), GSSW’s Equity Labs has expanded its offerings to include the Equity Institute, an opportunity for individuals to engage in DEIJ work.
- Exploring Abolition and Social Work: Three GSSW faculty members and a doctoral candidate contributed to a new book, Abolition and Social Work: Possibilities, Paradoxes, and the Practice of Community Care (Haymarket Books, 2024). Assistant Professor Autumn Asher BlackDeer coauthored the chapter “Abolition: The Missing Link in Historical Efforts to Address Racism and Colonialism Within the Profession of Social Work.” Assistant Professor Sophia Sarantakos authored a chapter on “Reaching for the Abolitionist Horizon Within White Professionalized Social-Change Work.” Associate Professor Ramona Beltrán and doctoral candidate Annie Zean Dunbar coauthored “Indigenist Abolition: Strategies for Decolonization, Healing, and Imagination in Social Work Practice.”
Partnering in Inclusive Practices: GSSW Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Michele Hanna participated as part of a yearlong University of Denver DEI leadership training and partnership program. Other participants included the associate deans for DEI from the University’s Morgridge College of Education and Sturm College of Law, the DEI director for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Vice Chancellor of DEI Christopher Whitt and Associate Vice Chancellor for DEI Lauren Hammond.
Convening Conversations about Diversity: GSSW hosted a gathering time and moment of silence for all GSSW community members in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. The following month, Associate Dean for DEI Michele Hanna and the GSSW administration hosted a space with PhD students to discuss contemporary world events. GSSW also partnered with the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Korbel School of International Studies and the Provost’s Office to host a Teach-In Series Event: Israel–Palestine Historical Legacies.
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Strategy | Increase the accessibility of social work higher education for those who have historically been excluded
- Impacting Rural Communities: Over the past decade, more than 100 social workers have graduated from GSSW’s Western Colorado MSW Program, which is designed to meet the unique needs of the state’s rural population.
- Celebrating Four Corners Graduates: In 2023–24, 11 new social workers graduated from GSSW’s Four Corners MSW Program. They’ll serve rural and tribal communities in the Four Corners region.
