Dear GSS Community,

It is with great pride that I introduce the latest edition of The Social Worker, Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) magazine. Our magazine provides an opportunity to celebrate the many ways GSS community members represent the profound purpose and possibilities of the social work profession.

In these pages, you will find inspiring stories of our accomplished alumni who have embarked on diverse career paths, creating meaningful change in their communities and society. From integrated healthcare to school social work, program management to community organizing, our alumni are making a tangible impact in the lives of individuals and families. They serve as beacons of hope, demonstrating the power of a social work education and the extraordinary difference one person can make.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Social Worker / Summer 2023

THE SOCIAL WORKER | SUMMER 2023

The need for licensed clinical social workers is surging in New York City and across the country. Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service educates students to stand up for social justice and human dignity, preparing them to meet this growing need and become leaders in a rewarding field.

Fordham GSS Graduates 900+ Needed Social Workers into the Profession

Perhaps the only thing better than graduating students from their educational experience is welcoming them into it. 

At this year's M.S.W. Accepted Students Day, we heard from GSS's various departments and facilitated a panel discussion between three of our esteemed student ambassadors. Check out the photos:

As an official Non-Govenment Organization partner of the United Nations, Fordham GSS always has its sights on a global scale. Each year, we are lucky enough to have multiple students do their field placements with the UN, getting to flex their policy muscles and become global forces for good. 

We also get to help organize and host Social Work Day at the UN each year. This March event brings together some of the best and brightest minds in international social work to discuss prominent issues. This year's conversation focused on accessibility, and what social workers can do to ensure we are proactive in advocating to empower those who require accessibility services. Accessibility is a human right!

Read more about the conference below!

Alumni in Action

Shanice Peters, GSS ’22, Says PIPELINE Program Prepared Her for Program Director Position

GSS Block Party 2023: Celebrating the Social Work Profession

Essence Magazine featured Tabatha Ferrer, GSS ’16,  in an article titled “Conversations To Have With Your Kids As They Go Back To School According to Therapists.”

Cassidy Rosenblatt, GSS ’22, co-authored an article titled "COVID-19 Stigma and Depression Across Race, Ethnicity, and Residence" alongside multiple GSS faculty members.

Teresa Gaetani, GSS ’17, obtained a job working as a telehealth clinician for Behavioral Health Services North, Inc., serving a rural population in Warren/Washington counties. 

Tiffany Catalano, GSS ’20, completed post-graduate training through PESI, and is a Certified Grief Counseling Specialist, as well as a Credentialed Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselor.

Nicole Rachlin, GSS ’19, Nicole currently works for NYC’s Department of Education as a school social worker on the school-based support team, where she helps students get connected to special education services.

Natalie Gutierrez, GSS ’22, works full-time at the Child Center of NY as a Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW), and a fee-for-service clinician at Orchard Blue Counseling Services.

Bianca Signez, GSS ’21, a school social worker, fee-for-service therapist, and founder of the 501(c)(3) organization Beyond the Block NYC.

Chris McDuffie, GSS ’20, travels to Europe this summer to lecture on Buddhism and psychotherapy at the University of Athens, Oxford University, Vancouver University, and the Sorbonne. 

Antoine Lovell, GSS ’22, recently earned a $225,000 grant from the Trinity Church Wall Street Philanthropies to investigate risk factors among homeless emerging/young adults by using historical data from New York City public school students and the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS).

Salif Zongo, GSS ’23: ‘School for me is like a vessel of knowledge’

Education—and the mental and physical doors it opens—have always inspired Fordham social work student Salif Zongo to keep learning. Growing up in a small town in the Koudougou region of Burkina Faso, West Africa, Zongo walked nearly nine miles barefoot to get to school, sometimes fording a nearby flooded river to return home. This spring, he’ll graduate from Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service with a master’s degree in social work.

Education is a rare privilege in his hometown, and many students quit because it’s too challenging to get to school, but Zongo persisted because he believes knowledge is a potent tool, he said.

Creating Your Own Path: How an M.S.W. Degree Opened Doors for Maddox Emerick, GSS ’23

Like many of us, Maddox Emerick’s life was shifted in the spring of 2020, when the world came to a standstill due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Worldwide lockdowns kept Emerick—a trained performer since his time as an undergraduate theater major—off the stage and wondering what came next. 

“I’d always had social work in the back of my mind, and I thought, this is the world encouraging me to think about it more,” Emerick said. “I’d been exposed to clinical social work, and also some other types of case management, while I was growing up. And I’d always been told, ‘You’d make a great therapist.’”

‘I Still Can’t Believe It’: Incoming M.S.W. Candidate Earns Centennial Scholarship After 18 Years in Social Services 

Juan Pena became an advocate at an early age. His mother came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1979 to make a better life. She was a single mother. She worked multiple jobs. All while continuing to adapt to this new country and language.

Pena accompanied his mother and younger sister to housing and public assistance appointments. He helped translate documents and interviews for his mother as she navigated the multiple processes to manifest that better life for herself and her children. He was six years old at the time.

Now, thanks to a partnership between Fordham GSS and Catholic Charities, he is pursuing his dream of becoming a Master of Social Work on a full scholarship.

Fordham GSS students and alumni pursue social work because they want to earn a degree that matters. Sometimes, this results in them leaving behind careers they've built for years but no longer enjoy. They want to get out of Excel and make an impact. 

Luckily, the M.S.W. degree's versatility allows them to shift their careers into a medley of different settings. Whether they become clinical therapists, nonprofit leaders, or political advocates, they are using their acquired skills and knowledge to leave a mark on the world they can be proud of. 

We sat down with a few members of the GSS Community who came to social work from the corporate workforce, and asked them two main questions: What was your motivation? And how is it going so far?

Their stories are below.  

Since 2018, Fordham GSS's Ravazzin Center on Aging and Intergenerational Studies has collaborated with Goddard Riverside Community Center on a community assets and needs assessment at Amsterdam Houses and the Amsterdam Addition public housing development. The study aimed to “understand the specific needs of community residents by engaging their collective voices through a formal process utilizing a mixed methodological research approach.”

The results of the study have since been used to inform program development targeted to resident interests and build community at Goddard Riverside’s Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center.

Societal isolation of older adults was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but has been a global problem even before the virus began spreading. And on April 12, 2023, Fordham GSS’s Ravazzin Center on Aging and Intergenerational Studies held a conference at the Westchester Campus to discuss this issue and find possible solutions. The conference was also co-sponsored by the State Society on Aging of New York and the Westchester County Department of Senior Programs and Services.

Women and Girls Institute Discusses Intersection of Technology and Art at Annual Conference

Since its inception in 2001, the Fordham Institute for Women and Girls has prioritized the safety and well-being of women worldwide. And while society has raised the bar on inequality issues in the last 22 years, there is still much more work to do. The Institute for Women and Girls held its annual conference to advocate for that work this month.

“I’m encouraged by hearing about women who have a high-level administrative or political position,” said Elaine Congress, D.S.W., GSS professor and associate dean, co-chair of the Institute, in her opening remarks. “But I’m also discouraged. Violence against women has increased everywhere, and indigenous women have been particular victims here in the United States. There’s a serious threat to reproductive freedom, migrant women are under siege, and most of all, many women around the world have had their basic freedoms, and the pursuit of education thwarted.”

Her Migrant Hub Celebrates International Women’s Day with Spring Symposium Focusing on Asylum Seekers’ Rights

Her Migrant Hub, a project founded by GSS Professors Dr. Dana Alonzo and Dr. Marciana Popescu, connects women asylum seekers to health and mental health care services and other resources in New York City. Funded by a grant from the Mother Cabrini Foundation, Her Migrant Hub brings together a team of Fordham GSS students and NYC women asylum seekers with lived experience experiences of forced migration, working to address identified needs and challenges. 

“The idea is to support women who are seeking asylum and to make their transition and waiting period more bearable and sustainable,” Popescu said in a 2021 interview with Fordham News, when the project first began. 

Nearly two years later, Her Migrant Hub is still living its mission. On March 6, this manifested in the project’s first spring symposium, “Her Story, Her Journey, Her Rights: Centering the Voices of Women Asylum Seekers on Innovation and Advocacy.”