PhD student recognized for commitment to community-engaged research and advocacy
July 08, 2025 / by Jacqueline Mazarella- Students
Three years ago, Maiya Hotchkiss (they/them) arrived in Los Angeles to pursue joint Master of Social Work (MSW) and PhD degrees at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Upon beginning their studies, Hotchkiss investigated and volunteered with a few organizations in Los Angeles that served the transgender community. They felt it was important to develop collaborative relationships with L.A. organizations before conceptualizing a focus for potential research.
“That’s what I did and that’s what I continue to do,” Hotchkiss said. “I’ve had the opportunity to learn so much from these different experiences and now apply them in the start of my own career.”
Hotchkiss’ extraordinary commitment to community-engaged research, practice and advocacy was recently honored by USC with the 2025 Dick Cone Award for Graduate Engaged Scholarship, bestowed by the USC Joint Educational Project (J-E-P). The Dick Cone Award honors and elevates the efforts of graduate students bringing advanced awareness and skills to address specific community concerns. Richard “Dick” Cone, beloved director of J-E-P from 1980-2002, was a pioneer in the field of service-learning and community engagement. When announcing the choice for the 2025 award, the review committee noted the breadth and depth of Hotchkiss’ work with the LGBT community, in particular the strong emphasis on community ownership as a social worker, advocate and researcher.
“What distinguishes Maiya’s approach is their unwavering commitment to authentic partnership,” wrote the J-E-P review committee. “Co-authoring publications with community members, training community leaders and creating programs designed to persist beyond Maiya’s direct involvement.”
Hotchkiss was honored at the J-E-P’s annual awards banquet, and lauded as a dedicated scholar-activist who developed sustainable, community-centered research projects focused on violence prevention and health promotion among LGBT individuals, and consistently ensuring that those most affected by these issues remain central to developing solutions.
Just weeks later, Hotchkiss was also selected by the Grand Challenges for Social Work to receive Honorable Mention for the 2025 Doctoral Award in the End Homelessness challenge.
Finding their heart and soul
Prior to arriving in Los Angeles to begin their graduate studies, Hotchkiss learned about, and chose to embrace, community-engaged research while at a lab in New York focused on trauma and violence prevention among the transgender community. There, first as a volunteer research assistant, then promoted to project coordinator/laboratory manager, they helped develop and implement an empowerment self-defense course specifically for transgender women, who are statistically very high risk for experiencing an act of violence. Initially, the course was developed for cisgender college women, but Hotchkiss helped adapt it for the transgender community, working together with transgender women to incorporate their experiences into the course. This project and approach to research became the heart and soul of what they wanted to do in their career,
After receiving community feedback mid-project sharing concerns about high cost and a for-profit organization that would facilitate the training after the program was no longer funded by the pilot grant, the lab worked to create a pathway to the course that was free of charge. It was embedded within the Brooklyn Ghost Project, a transgender woman-owned and operated organization. Hotchkiss also supported the development of a pathway for community members to be trained to be facilitators of the self-defense program.
“It was fully community-owned and operated, and it still exists in New York,” Hotchkiss said. “We were able to leverage a two-year grant to design an intervention and implement it in a way that was ethical and accessible. So, that was when I knew this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
Gaining knowledge through mentorship
When Hotchkiss began doctoral studies at USC Social Work, they were assigned two faculty mentors to assist with their research focus of community engagement and structural impacts on health. As a research assistant under John Blosnich, associate professor and director of the Center for LGBT Health Equity, Hotchkiss is gleaning invaluable knowledge working on groundbreaking suicide prevention studies within the LGBT community. For Eric Rice, professor and co-director of the USC Center for AI in Society, Hotchkiss supports data collection efforts among youth experiencing homelessness who access services through the Los Angeles LGBT Center.
“I get great support from both of my mentors,” Hotchkiss said. “Because of the level of support, flexibility and trust that I receive, I feel heard. They deeply care about people. I feel like we push each other and learn from each other. My two mentors are pivotal.”
Hotchkiss says that LGBT individuals make up 40% of young adults without housing despite being around 7% of the general population. There is also increased suicidality among LGBT young people broadly, more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers.
“We don't yet know how suicide risk looks different for LGBT folks who are homeless compared to their cisgender/heterosexual homeless peers, and that is part of what I intend to find out,” Hotchkiss said. “It's about finding different angles on health issues that we agree, as a society, matter and then figuring out how they uniquely burden this community.”
With Blosnich, Hotchkiss supported program analysis efforts at the Alexis Project, a transgender health clinic and worked on qualitative analysis of interviews with individuals in industries that come in contact with those in distress, including child support workers, housing support workers and family attorneys. Blosnich also provided mentorship around identifying independent projects beyond Hotchkiss’ RAship, or research assistantship. Hotchkiss analyzed large secondary datasets to look at social determinants of health affecting the LGBT population, and has published three articles** from this research, with another two currently under review.
“Maiya has been a stellar student in our program,” Bosnich said. “I'm really lucky to get to work with them. Their unwavering support for rigorous science to improve the health and safety of gender diverse communities is of critical importance, especially in this moment in the US. While Maiya is comfortable behind a computer working with complex datasets, they are equally at home on the ground in communities. I think there is unique learning that takes place when one works eye-to-eye with community members. Maiya is truly making the most of their education here at USC and in the greater LA community.”
To further engage with the community, Hotchkiss volunteered with Casa de Zulma, the first federally funded housing shelter for transgender women in Los Angeles. Hotchkiss developed an evaluation survey to help the organization learn from the experiences of those who graduate from its program, and helped with clothing drives and community events.
“I've been trying to find ways to help them in this current political moment, though those pathways are dwindling,” Hotchkiss said.
The future of quality research
For Hotchkiss, community-engaged research means having community partnerships and collaborators as nonhierarchical as possible from the conceptualization phase of a project. Throughout their studies and volunteerism, Hotchkiss has remained committed to community-engaged interventions and community-engaged participatory research (CBPR) methods.
“A lot of folks are trying to do work that will help a community and be for a community, without actually knowing, talking to or being a part of those communities,” Hotchkiss said.“
Currently on track to complete their dissertation within the next year, Hotchkiss believes the future of quality research must lie in community-engaged research. Their dream job remains in the field of academia, educating and supporting the next generation of social workers, and continuing to expand direct community impact through research.
“I think research is going to get better the more we also talk about our shortcomings and not just talk about our successes.” Hotchkiss said. “The community needs health researchers and I want to get out there and apply my skills as soon as possible.”
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