News Archive
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USC Provost C.L. Max Nikias presented the inaugural Pearmain Prize in Research on Aging to Kyriakos S. Markides—a leading scholar on aging and health issues—at USC Town and Gown on Feb. 16 as part of a celebration of the USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging.
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Associate Professor Kristin Ferguson of the USC School of Social Work has received a $742,033 federal stimulus grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to engage homeless youth in a vocational training program integrated with clinical services designed to improve their employment opportunities and mental health.
Homeless youth with mental illness face employment barriers and challenges inherent in living on the streets, including limited education and job skills. Moving these youth off the streets requires more than finding them low-wage jobs.
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Susan Burton knows what it is like to feel hopeless. After one of her children was shot and killed, she was in and out of prison six times on drug charges.
"When you leave prison," she said, "you get off a bus in downtown L.A. with $200, no I.D., no social security card."
With few resources available to her, Burton found it difficult to break out of the cycle.
"I got angry, and I told myself I was going to do something," she said.
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The University of Southern California's School of Social Work has joined the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) to launch an advanced practice in military social work education initiative to bridge the gap between the number of available prepared practitioners and the demand for social services with military personnel and their families. The initiative began Feb. 4 with a meeting of 35 experts from various social work higher education, professional association and military backgrounds.
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Professor Emeritus John Milner, who was a professor of social work at USC for 31 years, died at his home on Jan. 29. He was 97.
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Seth Kurzban, an assistant professor at the USC School of Social Work, has been appointed to the Gabe W. Miller Memorial Foundation advisory committee.
The foundation, inspired by its namesake who died in 2005 while an MSW student at the University of Denver, collects and distributes funds to individuals who can deliver, as Gabe did, service to those who need it most – physically and mentally disabled adults and children, rehabilitated former prisoners reintegrating into society, and children in need of support and role models.
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William Vega, one of the nation's leading experts on health disparities that affect aging ethnic minority populations, has been named executive director of the Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging, now based at the USC School of Social Work.
Named for the late Rep. Edward R. Roybal, the Roybal Institute is dedicated to translational research, policy advocacy and training that improves the health, mental health and care of older persons, particularly those from low-income and multiethnic backgrounds.
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The USC School of Social Work has established a new center to address the critical need to train social workers and other mental health practitioners to become better providers to veterans and their families.
The mission of the Center for Innovation and Research on Veterans and Military Families is to advance the individual, group and community well-being of American veterans and military families through value-driven education, training, research, partnerships and leadership.
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Suzanne Wenzel, a professor from the USC School of Social Work, has received nearly $2 million in federal stimulus money to help understand the sexual risk behavior of homeless men and their attitudes toward women in an effort to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS.
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A professor from the USC School of Social Work has been awarded $1.4 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to study how and why child abuse and neglect increases the risk for substance abuse in adolescents.
The two-year stimulus grant, funded through the National Institute of Drug Abuse, was awarded to Penelope Trickett, the David Lawrence Stein/Violet Goldberg Sachs Professor of Mental Health. She and her team will look at the risk and resilience mechanisms underlying the relationship between child maltreatment and adolescent substance abuse.