School of Social Work News

Clinical Associate Professor Daicia Price has been named the School’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Program Director.  Previously, she was the program’s co-director.  As director, Price will lead the rollout and implementation of the DEI 2.0 plan. 

Price joined the School faculty in 2016.  She has clinical and macro practice experience in juvenile justice, community mental health, housing, schools and foster care, and is committed to sharing her personal and professional experiences and knowledge to support others. She engages with the community to disrupt and dismantle racism and oppression using a bioecological system and an African-centered framework.

Price has received numerous awards for her teaching and service including U-M’s Harold J. Johnson Diversity Service Award and the Provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize. In 2019, she was voted the School’s Teacher of the Year.  She was honored by the Washtenaw Community College Foundation Women’s Council in 2022 for her significant contributions to the community.

Professor Matthew Smith was appointed the Associate Dean for Research, effective January 2024. In this role, he oversees the Office of Research, which supports faculty research endeavors, fosters a vibrant research culture, and ensures compliance with relevant policies. 

Smith joined the School faculty in 2017. His research and scholarship focus on modifying and delivering behavioral interventions for a broad spectrum of vulnerable and underserved populations. He is the director of the Level Up: Employment Skills Simulation Lab, which develops and evaluates technology-based interventions to help obtain and sustain employment for people from marginalized and underserved communities. Specifically, Smith partners with members of the autism, mental health and returning citizen communities to develop employment-focused tools and evaluate them in real-world settings including high schools, community health agencies and prisons.

Professor Shawna Lee was appointed the new Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs (ADFA) as of January 2024. As ADFA, she is responsible for all academic personnel processes, including faculty recruiting, mentoring and development, promotion and tenure, and annual merit reviews.  

After receiving five degrees from U-M (including her MSW and PhD in Social Work and Psychology), Lee joined the School faculty as an associate professor in 2012. She is the director of the Parenting in Context Research Lab and was the director of the School’s Program Evaluation Group from 2019-2023. She is the principal investigator and was the inaugural director of U-M’s statewide Title IV-E educational program.

Lee’s research focuses on parenting, child development, child maltreatment prevention and fatherhood. She co-led the Michigan Child Welfare Inter-University Consortium to bring together over 18 schools of social work to provide access to child welfare education and training for students across the state. She worked with the Michigan Children's Services Agency to update the state child welfare certificate educational requirements. She serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief for the academic journal Children and Youth Services Review.

PhD student Joonyoung Cho has been named a 2024 Grand Challenges Doctoral Fellow. His project “Contact Frequency with Children Following Relocation Later in Life: Do Contact Modes and Proximity to a Child Matter?” addresses the Grand Challenge to Eradicate Social Isolation. These fellowships work to broaden the pipeline of social workers equipped for and committed to tackling and surmounting the Grand Challenges. PhD student Rita Hu received an honorable mention for her project “The Role of Social Relationships in The Internalization and Consequence of Self-Perceptions of Aging Across the Life Span.”

Assistant Professor Katrina Ellis has received the James S. Jackson Emerging Scholar Award from the Program for Research on Black Americans (PRBA) at the U-M’s Institute for Social Research. Ellis’ research seeks to improve racial health equity, with a specific focus on cancer and family-focused approaches to understanding, preventing, and managing health conditions among Black Americans.

The James S. Jackson Emerging Scholars Award is designed to support emerging scholars who are often at an especially creative and productive yet fragile career stage.  It is named in honor of U-M Professor James S. Jackson, the pioneering social psychologist known for his research on race and ethnicity, racism and health and aging among Black Americans and health and aging among Black Americans.

MSW student Kevin Nguyen has been appointed as an inaugural member of Michigan’s new LGBTQ+ Commission. Created by an executive order from Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the commission is responsible for reviewing, developing, and recommending policies focused on preventing discrimination against LGBTQ+ Michiganders. Nguyen also serves as a member of the Michigan Asian Pacific American Affairs Commission.

Assistant Professor Ashley Cureton received a Humanities Grant through Michigan Humanities, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Humanities Grants emphasize collaboration among cultural, educational and community-based organizations and institutions in order to serve Michigan’s people with public humanities programming.

Together with Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County and local schools throughout Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Cureton will work with refugee youth to capture their pre-migration and resettlement experiences. The project will include the creation of a literary comic book as a way to provide guidance to future resettled refugee youth, their families, refugee resettlement agencies and schools on how to manage the difficult process of resettlement. 

“Through the use of storytelling and the arts, we look forward to gaining a better understanding of how refugee youth across Washtenaw County navigate the resettlement process, which can often be quite overwhelming,” said Cureton.

Assistant Professor Fernanda Cross has been named a 2023 Anti-Racism Research & Community Impact Faculty Fellow. The Anti-Racism Collaborative is a partnership of U-M’s National Center for Institutional Diversity with the provost’s anti-racism initiatives and is intended to help support, connect and amplify scholars across the U-M campus who study racial inequality, racial equity and racial justice. The fellowship provides funding to support Cross’ research titled Addressing the Mental Health Needs of Latinx Youth in Washtenaw County.