Welcoming GSSW’s 8th Dean

Shaping the Future of Social Work

McCoy started her academic career as an undergraduate business major at Washington University in St. Louis, but she quickly realized business school wasn’t for her. She subsequently changed her major to African and African American studies and sociology, took a cross-listed social work/sociology course about poverty in America and “fell in love.” At the time, she recalls, she had never heard of social work and had no idea that the volunteer work she was doing, coupled with what she was learning in her social work and African and African American studies classes, would become the foundation for a career of more than 30 years.

That one course led to an MSW from the University of Pennsylvania with a concentration in criminal justice, followed by a Master of Jurisprudence from Loyola University Chicago School of Law. McCoy says she felt that the law degree would make her a better social worker. “A lot of the clients I was working with had contact with the legal system, and I felt inadequate in supporting them as they tried to navigate the system.”

McCoy went on to earn her PhD from the Washington University in St. Louis Brown School of Social Work. Currently, she is an associate professor and the Ruby Lee Piester Centennial Fellow in Services to Children and Families at the University of Texas at Austin Steve Hicks School of Social Work, where she’s affiliated with the university’s Moritz Center for Societal Impact, its Initiative for Law, Societies, and Justice, and the Texas Center for Social Equity Promotion.

Prior, she was an associate professor at the University of Illinois Chicago Jane Addams College of Social Work. There, she served as interim associate dean for academic affairs and student services as well as director of the MSW program during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before earning her doctorate and eventually joining the tenure-track faculty, McCoy also served as the Jane Addams College of Social Work director of admissions and financial aid, and clinical assistant professor, giving her a unique perspective on the challenges faced by graduate social work education today.

“The tuition cost for MSW students is extraordinary,” McCoy says. “I borrowed every single dime for my master’s degree, so I know what it’s like to borrow for my education and have to pay that back.” That’s why one of her priorities at GSSW is addressing tuition and financial aid, so students “don’t have to be financially strapped for years to come.” She is excited about the challenge to think creatively about opportunities to increase funding for students — a priority for the school as the University launches a new capital campaign.

Funding also has implications for the diversity of the school’s students, McCoy notes. She plans to explore ways to diversify the study body and make MSW education financially feasible at GSSW. “Enrolling well-deserving yet underrepresented students who reflect our ever-changing global society is how you make sure the field is getting what I believe is the heart of social work — a commitment to serving all in need, including those who have the least,” McCoy says.

Part of that, she says, is addressing the very real need for financial support for field instruction. However, she believes that support should come in the form of scholarships, stipends or other types of financial aid that don’t require repayment and are not wages; for students in employment-based field instruction, she notes, it’s essential that learning hours are clearly designated and protected. “Field instruction is a class — with goals and learning objectives like all other classes — and it’s essential to protect students from being treated as employees and being laden with such expectations and responsibilities,” says McCoy, who has been a field instructor herself, as well as director of social work training for the psychiatry department at a children’s hospital. “When you pay students a wage for engaging in course-based learning, you intimate it is appropriate to treat them as employees. However, field instruction is the time to learn by obtaining and expanding knowledge gained in the classroom and in field instruction, not be treated as experts. Students will become employees soon enough.”

Addressing Structural & Systemic Racism

McCoy shares GSSW’s emphasis on community-engaged research. Her own research focuses on how mental health issues precipitate the involvement of Black boys into the juvenile legal system while also exploring how those mental health issues are identified and their related experiences and outcomes. She also works to better identify and understand the violent victimization experiences of Black male emerging adults and the related outcomes.

Recent projects include serving as co-investigator for the longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Social Development Study — funded by the National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — which measures delinquency and victimization at five sites of the National Institute on Drug Abuse Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. She previously served as PI for Understanding the Violent Victimization Experiences of Young Men of Color (SURVIVE), a three-year national study funded by $1.5 million from the National Institute of Justice.

When it comes to research, she says, “You can do research that matters, but you have to make the choice to do that. We can choose how we want our work to look and the kind of impact we make — is it making an actual difference in client lives? We should want our work to not simply sit on a shelf in a book.”

Universities, she says, need to communicate that impact means more than publishing in the next high-impact journal. “Publishing in a high-impact-factor journal means nothing if the people who could be directly impacted and/or shared their life expertise are never made aware what was learned or are able to use it in the ways that they need,” McCoy says. That’s why she emphasizes the importance of broad dissemination beyond peer-reviewed publications.

McCoy’s scholarship also examines the outcomes and experiences of disenfranchised and vulnerable populations and explores the impact of structural and systemic racism on Black people in America — a topic she writes and speaks on extensively. As a Black woman who has studied and worked in predominantly white institutions throughout her life, she emphasizes the important role of community in supporting student success. “You have to be intentional about providing opportunities and building community broadly,” McCoy says. “My access to strong and supportive communities has been fundamental to my success.”

Social workers are increasingly confronting systemic racism and anti-immigrant and anti-trans policies, among many other issues, notes McCoy, who has worked as in a range of settings as a crisis manager, therapist, school social worker and clinical social worker. “If you’re doing social work, you will face significant challenges.”

“We’re seeing a larger tide in our cultural and political circumstances that for many of us feels scary,” she adds. “Even though it feels for me like we’re stepping back many generations, I remember that [earlier generations] survived. Even in these difficult times I believe not only will we survive but we will thrive, and history tells us it’s possible.”

Energized by Possibilities

Many states now have laws on the books that limit what can be taught in classrooms at all levels or what services can be provided to trans people or individuals seeking reproductive health care. In that context, McCoy says, “Some schools of social work are really struggling to figure out how to meet Council on Social Work Education accreditation guidelines while staying within the boundaries of the law. Because GSSW has a very clear mission and values around diversity, equity, inclusion and justice, there’s a real opportunity for us to be an external leader in helping our colleagues navigate those dicey situations and provide what they need for their students. How can we be a resource for colleagues at other schools?”

McCoy is also energized by the possibilities for GSSW’s distance programs — from how to provide a sense of community for online students to maximizing the “untapped possibilities” of programs such as the Four Corners MSW and Western Colorado MSW programs.

With the job of becoming a dean before her, how will McCoy stay grounded? She enjoys the company of her cats, Donovan and Sierra, and has recently taken up birding and nature photography. She also loves to read, crochet, bake, and watch TV — everything from BBC programming and prestige TV to the “Young and the Restless,” which she’s watched since 6th grade. She is also a Diamond Life Member in her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., an international public service sorority that she has been a member of since her sophomore year in college and which has been integral to her belief in the importance of seeking and accomplishing justice.

For McCoy, social work remains central. “It’s hard to be a social worker, but I still love it,” she says. “Most of all, I love how we’re diverse in what we do, how we think and the many ways we make an impact.”