Biography

I grew up in Buffalo, New York, the oldest of seven children in a middle-class family. My father was a glazier and then a union representative and my mother stayed at home to take care of kids and household. As an oldest child, I think that I naturally tended to take care of my siblings and help out my parents with family responsibilities. I also learned to pay attention to others in my neighbourhood. We lived in a residential area with lots of family with children. My parents' home had a side yard next to the driveway which became a play area for us and our friends. My father had a rule regarding this. Whenever we played a game, all children in the neighbourhood were welcome to join us. We were not allowed to exclude anyone because they were too young or not skilled enough to play the game well. I think this was one of my earliest influences about the importance of inclusion.

I did not always agree with my father's views. I was a teen during the Vietnam war and my anti-war opinions led to many arguments between me and my father. We also argued about my belief that discrimination and poorly resourced schools and services in low-income neighbourhoods made it difficult for residents to succeed in life. He disputed this, saying that people could choose to be successful, based on his experiences growing up in poverty during the 1930s. He had difficulty hearing my statements that being white and having mentors at the local Boys Club helped him succeed.

I attended LaSalle University in Philadelphia where I received a Bachelor's degree, majoring in Sociology. Being away from home helped me expand my horizons. I took courses in sociology and psychology because I was interested in helping people in some way. I chose to major in Sociology because they had a criminal justice program (before criminal justice became a more popular program which helped train people for police and corrections jobs). I liked it because we went on field trips to prisons, courts, and community agencies. I also had an internship at an agency which linked clients with appropriate agencies -- this was before personal computers made this a much easier task. Even then, I was interested in integrating what I learned with real life situations. I was also very involved in theater during this time, which led to a life-long interest in theater (regularly attending theater, supporting my son's interest in theater, and volunteering for a youth summer theater program for several years). Buffalo is a wonderful place to live when you are devoted to theater since it is the home of many quality theater groups. There was always more to see than we had time or resources to attend.

After graduation, I returned to Buffalo, initially working in a residential facility for boys (which did not work out well for me) and then working for the Erie County Department of Social Services as a caseworker. When I was working with low-income, elderly, and disabled clients, and later as a child protection worker, I would regularly refer clients to social workers for help. I realized that I did not know how to best help them, but social workers somehow would know what to do. This is when I first started thinking about returning to school to study for a Masters in Social Work degree. I wanted to learn about social work so that I could help those clients.

At the same time, I met Chelly and we decided to get married. She has not only inspired me, but she has many times prodded me to make commitments and accomplish things that I was prone to overthink and procrastinate. She also connected me with her family members who have made me part of their family, which I very much appreciate.

Chelly and I went to school together for our MSW degrees. She specialized in macro social work while I specialized in micro social work, which meant that we each had opportunities to learn things which would not normally be present. For example, I accompanied her to a macro social work seminar in Washington, DC, while she participated in conversations with a group of my classmates about our experiences learning about individual and family counseling. Since we were both going to school full-time, we were supporting ourselves with student loans, savings, my part-time job being an on-call, after hours child protection worker, and the support of our families and friends. For two years, we were regularly invited to dinner by her parents, my parents, and the parents of very close friends. We did our laundry at Chelly's parents' house while we were there for dinner, and whenever weather permitted, we rode bicycles to school in order to save money on gasoline.

After we graduated, Chelly got a job at Catholic Charities Geriatrics unit (influenced by her field placement there), and after one year working in a day treatment program for adults with chronic mental disorders, I also joined Catholic Charities, in the Marriage Counseling Center which was my second field placement. I learned a lot from my co-workers and my clients, and I also had many opportunities to attend workshops and conferences which expanded my skills. In particular, the first east-coast conference by the staff of the Brief Therapy Institute (Palo Alto, California) changed the way that I viewed counseling and psychotherapy. Those positions also gave me the experience to become a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New York state.

In 1987, I began working for a health-maintenance-organization (Health Care Plan later changed its name to Univera). This gave me opportunities to work with many types of clients (people who were stressed out by work, school, or family issues; children who were having school or family problems; people coping with myriad physical illness; and people experiencing acute or chronic mental disorders). I provided individual and family counseling and I facilitated several counseling groups (I ran a group for people with anxiety disorders for several years, and I also provided group counseling for pre-teen boys and for parents and their adolescent children). My work with clients was based on my philosophy that people have strengths which help them manage or overcome problems or challenges, although they sometimes need help recognizing and accessing those strengths. I realized that like family physicians who prescribed treatment and then told patients to return if the treatment did not work, I could rely on clients to follow through with the treatments that we developed together and then they could choose if or when they would return. I also looked for naturally occurring supportive relationships or services from clients' families, friends, and communities. Helping clients use these relationships or services for ongoing support was stronger than focusing on the professional counseling services that I was able to provide.

Health Care Plan/Univera provided a significant benefit for its professional employees: an annual allowance to pay for continuing education. This helped me attend many workshops and conferences which improved my practice skills. I learned how to provide solution-focused treatment for individuals and families, cognitive-behavioral techniques for ameliorating symptoms of depression and anxiety, sex-therapy, methods for treating dissociative disorders and for helping people coping with trauma, including the use of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. I attended trainings given by many of my heroes: Jay Haley, Salvador Minuchin, Michael White, Peggy Papp, Froma Walsh, Bill O'Hanlon, Russell Barkley, and Ann Masten. I am still disappointed that I did not get an opportunity to hear Virginia Satir, although I learned a lot from her books and videos.

Although I enjoyed my work with clients, I was becoming increasingly frustrated with my employer's policies, which pressured me to see more clients without any additional compensation (I had reached the salary cap for my position) and also required that my treatment plans be approved by someone in the insurance division of the company. I had been teaching courses in family interventions and couples interventions in the MSW program at the University at Buffalo, which I enjoyed, but I knew that if I wanted to become a full-time university professor in social work, I would need to return to school to earn a PhD. I decided to do that in 2001.

I joined the University at Buffalo School of Social Work PhD program and, based on my counseling experiences with families, I studied how resilience helped families manage adversity. I received a PhD in 2005 with the dissertation An Exploratory Study of the Nature of Family Resilience, which was recognized at the 18th National Symposium on Doctoral Research in Social Work at Ohio State University. At this time, I was teaching social work courses and a Communication Seminar for dentistry students at the University at Buffalo, and I developed training curricula related to adolescent violence and counseling for adoptive parents for the Center for the Development of Human Services in Buffalo. I joined the faculty of the School of Social Work at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada in 2006.

I have had many opportunities to learn and expand my skills during my time in Windsor. I learned about teaching adults, used backwards design to create higher education courses, helped develop a MSW program for working professionals, evaluated and updated BSW and MSW programs, and broadened my teaching experiences. While I primarily taught practice courses, I also had opportunities to teach human behaviour, research, policy, and field seminar courses. I developed two new graduate courses: Professional Writing for Social Work (which emphasized communicating the purpose for writing, synthesizing and analysizing information from multiple sources, and writing research, grant applications, and client interview notes) and Challenges in Human Behaviour (which asked students how different theoretical perspectives influenced how social workers assessed and planned interventions for common areas of practice, such as economic adversity, violence, physical and mental health, and advocating for people related to diverse cutureal backgrounds or LGBTQ).

Despite my 2016 retirement from the University of Windsor, I continue to work on projects including open-access, online learning modules about professional writing for human services, family resilience, and community development in Windsor's Ford City.