Pioneers in social work and the arts: International social work experts applaud UNE program

Director of the University of New England School of Social Work Shelley Cohen Konrad was an invited scholar at the first international Social Work & the Arts Roundtable, held at the IslandWood Inn on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

The event included twenty-four interdisciplinary colleagues from the United States, United Kingdom and Israel to examine the role of the arts in social work education and practice. It was hosted by Dean Marilyn Flynn, Ph.D., and Program Chair Michal Sela-Amit, Ph.D., of the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California.

Two days of intensive discussion were peppered with long woodland walks, arts activities and powerful networking among diverse educators who wish to promote the arts as a universal language for healing trauma and promoting social justice. The UNE School of Social Work’s Applied Arts and Social Justice Certificate program was lauded as one of the first in the U. S. to fully integrate the arts into social work curriculum.

Cohen Konrad was one of 4 scholars asked to present a paper at the roundtable. She was chosen because of her legacy of publications on relational practice and her lifelong commitment to infusing the arts in education and scholarship. “I received such positive feedback from my colleagues in social work education at this roundtable,” said Cohen Konrad. “They told me that schools of social work around the country are eager to learn from UNE’s hands-on, community-informed curriculum that permits students to complete the Applied Arts and Social Justice certificate within the context of the Master of Social Work program.”

The group also included Ephrat Huss, Ph.D., of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, globally known for her published works on using the arts with marginalized populations in Israel; Princeton Professor of Philosophy and the Arts, L. Gordon Graham, Ph.D.; and Tina Sacks, Ph.D., from the Berkeley School of Social Welfare, a prize-winning documentarian who, along with her husband Carlos Javier Ortiz, have created powerful works about the impact of community violence and racism. Roundtable members will meet annually and a publication about the arts and social work will be published sometime in 2018.

To learn more about the University of New England’s Westbrook College of Health Professions visit www.une.edu/wchp

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