Past Awardees of the GADE Student Awards Program
Student Award for Social Work Research:
Student Award for Leadership & Service:
Student Award for Teaching in Social Work:
2016 GADE Student Award for Social Work Research: Nathanael Okpych
Article: Okpych, N. J., & Courtney, M. E. (2014). Does education pay for youth formerly in foster care? Comparison of employment outcomes with a national sample. Children and Youth Services Review, 43, 18-28.
Article: Baker, A. (2014), Eroding the wealth of women: Gender and the sub-primemortgage foreclosure crisis. Social Service Review, 88(1) 9-91
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Title: "Fidelity Decision-Making in Social and Behavioral Research: Alternative Measures of Dose and Other Considerations"
Authors: Tiffany Washington, MSW, Sheryl Zimmerman, PhD, John Cagle, PhD, David Reed, PhD, Lauren Cohen, MA, Anna Beeber, PhD, Lisa Gwyther, MSW
A brief description of the paper: "This article advances the discussion of treatment fidelity in social and behavioral intervention research by analyzing fidelity in an intervention study (“Families Matter in Long-Term Care”) conducted within participating long-term care settings of the Collaborative Studies of Long-Term Care (CS-LTC). We use the Behavior Change Consortium’s (BCC) best practices for enhancing treatment fidelity recommendations in the areas of study design, provider training, treatment delivery, treatment receipt, and treatment enactment to evaluate our fidelity-related decisions."
Yolanda Anyon (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) has four first-authored peer-reviewed publications, including one in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Her current scholarship is organized around three areas of inquiry: sources of racial and ethnic disparities in youth service systems, effective youth development programs for low-income adolescents of color and contextual influences on social service delivery in urban schools. Her research documented racial and ethnic differences in the use of school-based health and social services in an urban district.
Joanna Bisgaier (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice) has four first-authored peer-reviewed publications, including one in the New England Journal of Medicine. She studies disparities in children’s access to specialty medical care. Her research documents higher rates of appointment denials and longer wait times for publicly (vs. privately) insured children.
2015 GADE Student Award for Leadership and Service: Annelise Mennicke
Over the past three years, Annelise has greatly contributed to the direction of sexual violence prevention at Florida State University. As co-PI on a Rape Prevention Education grant from the CDC, she supervised ten peer educators who delivered trainings to over 1,900 fraternity and sorority members on sexual violence prevention tactics. She was asked by the Vice President of Student Affairs to co-chair a committee which brought in nationally renowned speakers, recommended which online training module on sexual violence prevention the university adopted, and consulted on the development of a uniquely FSU Bystander Intervention video. She was co-PI on a grant from the Avon Foundation for Women which funded travel and training for her and the Sexual Violence Prevention Coordinator to become certified instructors in the Green Dot Bystander Intervention; and following this certification, she worked with a multidisciplinary team to develop a plan for FSU to adopt Green Dot, which will formally launch in Spring 2016. As a tireless advocate to her community, her service and leadership efforts have led to observable and long-lasting changes.
Ning Tang, a social work doctoral student from the University of Alabama, has been dedicated to increasing the understanding and cooperation between Chinese social workers and American social workers since her arrival in the United States four years ago. Early in 2011, Ning organized her MSW classmates to write about their experiences being social work students in the U.S., and then translated and published those writings in non-profit Chinese social work publications, in order to help the social work students in China to learn about social work education in the U.S. In April 2013, Ning initiated a campus fundraising to support earthquake relief in Chengdu, China. In November 2013, Ning served as the translator and cultural liaison for Chinese visiting scholars in the 2013 China Collaborative meetings at the CSWE Annual Program Meeting, and continue to support her school’s collaboration with seven Chinese universities. Currently Ning is the director of a grassroots professional organization called International Association of Chinese Social Workers (IACSW), which she organized and co-found in summer 2012. With over 400 Chinese social work students, faculty, and practitioners being IACSW members and over 3,000 people subscribing to the organization’s website, IACSW has become a major source of information and knowledge sharing, and peer support available to Chinese social workers from around the world. In addition to serving IACSW, Ning is also a member of her school’s internal Diversity Committee and a board member of a non-profit social service agency in mainland China. Ning’s leadership purpose is to connect people, connect the world.
Representative to the Board of AGESW (2011-2013), University of Louisville
Laneshia McCord received this award because she created the Student Advocacy and Advisory Board (SAAB) to AGESW (The Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work). Since its creation, Laneshia has been the driving force behindSAAB, and has grown its membership to 21 social work doctoral students at 13 institutions.
Award Certificate 
The 2012 GADE Student Award for Leadership and Service honors Colleen Henry and Megan Moore from the University of California, Berkeley, for their contribution to excellence in doctoral education. Colleen and Megan transformed the doctoral student experience at Berkeley by establishing better channels of communication among students, faculty and administrators through the use of lectures, research exchanges, publishing seminars and mock qualifying examinations. Additionally, they helped build a culture of community among doctoral students by securing accessible workspace research facilities and increasing opportunities for socialization.
The 2011 GADE Leadership Award honors Eric Waithaka, Carrie Moylan, Kimberly Hudson, Amelia Derr, and Valerie Shapiro from the University of Washington.
University of Iowa, School of Social Work
Erin’s pedagogical orientation towards teaching is based on an active-learning approach that is strengths-based and empowering. She encourage students to use their voices and advocate for their own education. This helps students take ownership of their learning and facilitates personal growth, such as critical thinking skills and professionalism. In order to facilitate this learning experience for students, she engages in four primary activities: 1) I involves students in developing course content; 2) she uses practice-based teaching methods; 3) she practices modeling to help develop the classroom; and 4) she uses the classroom as a tool for developing professional social work behaviors. Through various teaching and assessment methods, she aims to reach all types of learners.
Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto
Teaching Philosophy: In the same way that I place therapeutic relationship at the center of my clinical practice framework, my teaching philosophy is grounded in my commitment to the development and intentional use of relationship with students. I have found that prioritizing the development of learning relationships is an essential prerequisite to students’ active and critical engagement in classroom learning and professional development.
As in therapeutic relationships, learning relationships too are complicated by the power structures inherent to our society and highly contingent upon our diverse, historically grounded social locations, including my own as an immigrant gay man of color. In addition to using many of my own clinical practice examples in case-based discussion, role play and simulation, actively and relationally navigating power, nuanced complexities, and the concomitant difficult emotions that arise within our classrooms also allows me to experientially teach and model such important clinical processes as the use of self and anti-oppressive principles. In so doing, I strive to create transformative educational spaces with students that embody and encourage the revitalization of social work’s historical commitment to social justice.
