2024 MSW Student Awards

Edith M. Davis Award

Jeremy Price (MSW ’24)

The Davis Award recognizes the best paper focusing on a non-dominant racial or ethnic group or a person or persons of color. The award honors Professor Emerita Edith M. Davis, who was the founding director of the GSSW doctoral program. In his award-winning paper, “Nocturnal Death Syndrome Among Hmong Refugees,” Jeremy Price focused on the importance of acknowledging culture and cultural history when exploring different answers to physical health issues. Price explored the question of why so many Hmong refugee men died in their sleep after immigrating to the U.S. from Laos in the early 1980s. In this “beautifully written, innovative paper … the student does an excellent job summarizing the key literature and provides their own analyses to answer the question,” Adjunct Instructor Laura Heitman says. “Their exploration of culture and cultural history is in-depth, respectful and sophisticated.”

Tommi Frank Memorial Award

Asher Sergeenko-Reid (MSW ’24)

The Frank Memorial Award is named for the late Tommi Frank, MSW ’64. It recognizes the student judged by faculty to have submitted the most creative and imaginative paper or project in social work or social welfare. The award particularly values the creation of new concepts, arrangements of concepts and/or new ways of relating knowledge to practice, profoundness of thinking and the scholarly application of such thinking to the refinement of theory and/or practice and to applicability for use in practice. For the EmBODY course taught by Assistant Professor Erin Harrop, Asher Sergeenko-Reid created a video exploring the intersection between eco justice, white supremacy, disordered eating, body image and trauma through their own lived experience. Harrop says, “The student’s presentation was innovative, moving, vulnerable and courageous, creatively examining how social work values can be applied to the impact of trauma across multiple systems.”

Learn more about Asher Sergeenko-Reid’s work to address eco emotions.

Ina Mae Denham Award

Dee Auciello (MSW ’24)

Created by the Colorado Society for Clinical Social Work, the Denham Award is presented annually to the graduating student who writes the best clinical paper describing and analyzing their own actual case practice, including the rationale and application of appropriate interventions based on relevant theory and clinical literature. Dee Auciello received the award for their case study paper “Evidence-Based Grief-Intervention Plan,” which was written for the course Grief and Loss Across the Lifespan taught by Clinical Assistant Professor Amity Good. In the paper, Auciello provided clinical documentation and described the use of appropriate clinical skills when working with a person who is experiencing grief after losing family and friends and experiencing PTSD after being in combat. According to Good, “What made this paper stand out from the rest was the thorough analysis of the role of self and being a social worker when developing a professional relationship with a client. The student did an excellent job with self-reflection, exploring and acknowledging how issues of power, privilege, culture and a number of other factors may influence this specific client–social worker relationship.”

Dorothea C. Spellmann Award

Laurie Ann Miller (MSW ’24)

The Spellmann Award honors a student whose paper or project best demonstrates understanding, creativity and competence in work with groups or systems, including an understanding and appreciation of groups as a primary means of service with people. The award was named for Professor Emerita Dorothea Spellmann upon her retirement in 1972. Laurie Ann Miller’s award-winning project incorporated work with Cultivando, an organization that cultivates leadership in the Latino community and promotes health equity through advocacy, collaboration and social change. Completed for the course Public Impact for Policy, Community Organizing, and Research Dissemination taught by Associate Professor Amy He, the project included creative and culturally appropriate ways to intervene with the community and made excellent use of graphics to tell a story. Professor He says, “The presentation’s creativity supports the purpose and argument for the problem.” Students Molly Brown, Ida Cao and Elise Titiner also contributed to this group assignment.

William Bartholomew Memorial Award

Georgia Horne (MSW ’24)

The William Bartholomew Memorial Award was established in 2018 to honor the late William Bartholomew, MSW ’04, who devoted his professional life to individuals becoming empowered, fulfilling their potential, and overcoming barriers posed by factors such as trauma, addiction and oppression. The award honors students who embody principles of social justice, preservation of human dignity and a commitment to facilitating healing of human suffering. Georgia Horne grew up in a rural, remote and economically underserved area of Appalachia. Through her studies at GSSW, Horne completed the Global Social Work Certificate and the school’s international course in Bosnia, where she learned about the far-reaching ecological and social impacts of genocide. In an essay, Horne explored the common connections between political tensions, environmental degradation, economic exploitation, poor health care and the resulting brain drain impacting Bosnia and Appalachia. Horne has proposed a Fulbright research project wherein she would return to Bosnia to explore community resilience strategies that would integrate regenerative businesses with local environmental issues. She hopes to then apply her learnings to Appalachia and innovatively reach her own community’s social–ecological needs.

Dean Catherine F. Alter Merit Award

Precious Holcomb (MSW ’24)

Named for Dean Emerita Catherine F. Alter, GSSW dean from 1996–2006, this award recognizes a graduating student from GSSW’s Four Corners MSW Program who most closely epitomizes the best of professional social work: a keen intellect, a passionate dedication to empowering underserved populations, and a commitment to continuously improving practice. The recipient of this year’s Alter Award is Precious Holcomb, who interned at the Grief Center of Southwest Colorado, which provides children, families and individuals with one-on-one, family and group therapy with certified grief counselors. In a recent Durango Herald article, Holcomb noted that “Grief becomes like a part of your identity, like it gets integrated into like your story or narrative. It’s been an honor to walk through that.” Holcomb’s nominator says that “Precious demonstrates outstanding performance in the field and in the classroom” and “epitomizes the best of professional social work.”

MSW@Denver Merit Award

Hoor Jangda (MSW ’24)

This award recognizes a student from the MSW@Denver program who most closely epitomizes the best of professional social work: a keen intellect, a passionate dedication to empowering underserved populations, and a commitment to continuously improving practice. This year’s awardee is Hoor Jangda, whose “journey as a social worker comes from her lived experience and seeing the need to help others find the value in therapy and dedication to oneself,” her nominator wrote. “Hoor also demonstrated a unique ability to recognize when the use of one’s own voice to help make change is not only suggested but encouraged. Hoor had a course conflict that she handled beautifully through advocacy and reaching out for support. Hoor also has been a consistent advocate for her fellow classmates. She spoke up when she saw others needing support and wanted to help find that support. Her care for her fellow humans is clear!”

Dean Emil M. Sunley Award

Whitney Buckendorf (MSW ’24)

The Sunley Merit Award was first presented in 1971 by Dean Emil M. Sunley, in whose honor the award was created. It recognizes a graduating Denver Campus MSW student for meritorious service to the school or the profession of social work. This year’s Sunley Award winner is Whitney Buckendorf, whose service to the profession includes birth work. Her nominator wrote, “Through her work in class, she has reflected on how she has learned deep lessons in decolonial practice, praxis and activism by centering the racism experienced by women of color in perinatal care settings.” Notably, Buckendorf helped create a mutual aid group of refugee-identifying doulas. “Through this program, the doulas have been able to support their families, livelihoods and communities, and many of them have been able to incorporate their perinatal health training from their countries of origin,” her nominator added. “Whitney has also been a resettlement worker in refugee communities, so her training has informed how she attends to the traumatic experiences that may compound the birth experience of a newly arrived pregnant individual. She continues to advocate for the doula group because she sees how this instills access to language and culturally relevant practices in birthing spaces.”