CSW General

The Verizon Foundation has long supported projects that address vital community issues, including domestic violence.  This month, Verizon increased its support of the Institute for Family Violence Studies (IFVS) at the College of Social Work, awarding the IFVS a grant of $140,000 to create the first stage of a national Prevention Toolkit on Officer-Involved Domestic Violence.  Recognizing that domestic violence can occur in all occupations and is present in all socio-economic groups, the toolkit is designed to help criminal justice officers keep their own f

Classmates of retired Air Force veteran Sandra Thornton Baty may well have made an understatement when they said that she “has done it all in the mental health field.” Spending more than twenty years in the U.S. Air Force (USAF), Sandra has contributed to the mental health of countless veterans and their families.  To mention just a few of her many accomplishments in 18 years in mental health, Sandra has:

Fall 2012 begins a special international partnership in social work.  The FSU College of Social Work and Jönköping University in Jönköping, Sweden collaborated to provide an exciting exchange opportunity for both universities’ students.

Over the past several decades, there has been an explosion of research demonstrating that our feelings and thoughts are closely tied to the function of our brains, so much so that the 1990s were heralded as the “Decade of the Brain” by the Library of Congress and the National Institutes of Health.

One of the College of Social Work’s unique qualities is that it is home base to two well-respected scholarly journals.  Both journals were founded and are currently edited by FSU College of Social Work faculty members. The Journal of Poetry Therapy is edited by Dean Nick Mazza and Research on Social Work Practiceis edited by Professor Bruce Thyer.  Both faculty members’  talents have served to create these resources that continue to enrich research and practice in social work and related disciplines.

CSW Associate Professor, Dr. Jean Munn has co-authored a chapter for the medical text, Primary Care Geriatrics, along with Dr. Ken Brummel-Smith and Debra Danforth of the FSU COM. The focus of the chapter, interdisciplinary collaboration on medical teams, has led to the development of a course available to students in medicine, nursing, and social work to be offered summer 2013. The course will model an interdisciplinary team format, posing case studies and comprising equal team membership for each discipline.

When I was at the Wakulla County School Board District Office for a district wellness meeting, one of the topics brought to the table was a new event, “Ability in the Park.”  The event was created to show the community that students with disabilities also had “abilities” and strengths that could be showcased or revealed in order to remove some of the stigma associated with those who have different methods of learning and different obstacles. I began thinking of the students within my own school who are disabled either physically, intellectually, or have communication difficulties

On January 31st I turned twenty years old, and on that same day I left the comfort of Tallahassee for the experience of Colquitt, Georgia. Colquitt, Georgia, is a small town in the southwestern part of Georgia, and it has quite the story to tell. A lot of people assume that for a community to be lively and exciting it must be in a large city, or other urban area. Colquitt, Georgia disproves that assumption with simply its murals alone. This town was full of history, rich storytelling potential to tap into, and the passion necessary to form a healthy, creative community.

You can make Seminoles safer. The College of Social Work will be participating in the Great Give, FSU’s online giving campaign taking place April 18-19, 2013. This 36-hour campaign allows those who care deeply about FSU to contribute gifts to support unique projects throughout the University.

This year, the College of Social Work is seeking to raise funds for its own special project, the FSU Toolkit on Healthy Relationships, which focuses on violence prevention education and is made up of three components that will be available online and free to the public:

Florida has the highest percentage of aging persons in the United States. As a part of the FSU College of Social Work’s Health and Aging Initiative, the Gerontological Society of America and the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education awarded a grant to Amy L.