Alumni Spotlight: Out of Grief Comes Social Change

From art to public housing policy, Sarah Whitlock, GSS ’13, has many interests, but it wasn’t until her brother became seriously ill that she found her passion.

As a social worker at New Alternatives For Children in Manhattan, she helps kids who have severe physical, emotional, and behavioral challenges and developmental disabilities. They come from all five boroughs of New York City, and many of them live at the poverty level, Whitlock says. She connects them with a range of health and social services, helping them find the support they need to remain at home with their family or, in some cases, find an adoptive family.

“I really love [working in] child welfare,” she says. “I think the biggest impact a social worker can make is with a child, before other outside factors come in. Nothing will keep you more grounded.”

Sarah Whitlock, GSS '13

 Whitlock’s path to social work was one lined with detours and transformative experiences. A native of Cheshire, Connecticut, she dreamed of becoming an artist. At Roger Williams University, she majored in visual arts, later adding minors in marine biology and sociology. “I was totally lost,” she says. “I wanted to do everything.”

After graduating in 2003, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a paralegal at a law firm, conducting research on low-income housing policy. Three years later, she left for New York City to take a job at the Nonprofit Finance Fund, analyzing social impact data and reviewing loans for nonprofit clients. She also would be close to her younger brother, Mark, who was living in the city while attending Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

Not long after she moved to the city, Mark was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Whitlock shared an apartment with her brother and supported him while he was undergoing treatments. After 18 months battling the disease, Mark passed away on May 19, 2010, two weeks before his law school graduation day.

“I had an awesome journey with him,” says Whitlock, who is an active volunteer with the National Brain Tumor Society. “Something happened to me while he was sick. That experience, I couldn’t go back to my office job. I wanted to do something more meaningful.”

She enrolled in Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) and found an immediate camaraderie with her fellow students. Like her, she says, they all had a significant reason for wanting to be a social worker. In the MSW program, she studied leadership and macro policy, and completed internships at the Brooklyn Family Defense Project and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center.

Sarah Whitlock addresses her class at the 2013 GSS
diploma ceremony.  Photo by Bruce Gilbert

“Sarah’s leadership skills were clearly evident” early on, says Susan Egan, Ph.D., associate dean for student services and administration. During the first half of the MSW program, Whitlock spoke with Egan about the need for a formal mentoring program. She and her fellow students recruited volunteers, implemented a training system, and began mentoring incoming students, Egan says. “In turn the mentees become mentors and the program continues to have success.” 

With the support of Whitlock’s peers, Fordham faculty and administrators selected her to speak at the GSS diploma ceremony at Avery Fisher Hall on May 20, 2013. 

It was an especially poignant day for Whitlock, as three years prior, on the same stage, she had accepted Mark’s posthumously awarded J.D. diploma.

“Today I want to remind you of why it was that you decided to become a social worker and urge you to never forget that reason,” she told her fellow classmates. “Never lose site of your own personal mission. You are here to change the world in whatever way means the most to you, and I know you can do it. You already have.”

Whitlock says she “loved every second of being at GSS,” and she’s staying connected to the school and her peers through the Fordham Social Workers Group, which she formed before graduating. The group, led by Whitlock with a committee of five other 2013 graduates, hosts picnics, support group meetings, training sessions, and happy hours for all GSS alumni.

“I didn’t connect so much to my [undergraduate] college experience because I wasn’t connected to what I was studying. But choosing my master’s program, I was committed to it,” Whitlock says. “It was so meaningful.”

—Rachel Buttner

Dancing Through the Dark Days of Imprisonment

Ray Brito is a member of Figures-in-Flight Released,
a dance group composed of formerly incarcerated men.
Photo by Michael Dames

With more than 2.4 million people currently behind bars, America is the world’s No. 1 incarcerator.

And of those who will be released, 50 percent will return to prison within their first three years of freedom.

“That’s a terrible thing to project around the world,” said Katherine Vockins, who presented the statistics at the National Organization of Forensic Social Work conference at Fordham on July 26.

Vockins is the founder and executive director of Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA). A businesswoman who also enjoyed community theater, Vockins devised the group while volunteering with her husband at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. A group of inmates asked for her help with a play they’d written, which Vockins helped turn into a production. Within the year, RTA was born.

In the 18 years since, RTA has grown to serve 150 incarcerated men and women in five medium and maximum security prisons throughout New York state. It offers a variety of workshops, including theater, dance, creative writing, film, visual art, dramatic literature, and voice.

“We are using art to teach critical life skills and social skills, which social service agencies have said is the missing link when people come home after being in prison for a long time,” Vockins said.

RTA helps give the incarcerated population a much-needed outlet, said Vockins. “It’s a chance to have emotions, to show emotions, to acknowledge fear and happiness—to be human again. Because the mask worn behind the walls changes the way people act and feel.”

The benefits of these groups have been proven, she said: a John Jay College study found better disciplinary and coping skills in prisoners who have been exposed to the arts, while a SUNY Purchase College study showed that the RTA participants finished their GEDs and moved on to post-secondary education faster than average.

The creative arts facilitate a positive change in incarcerated men and women, one which serving a prison term does not provide, Vockins said.

“For humanitarian reasons, for public safety reasons, and for just good old-fashioned economic reasons, we should change the way people come out of prison. They should come out healed and ready to come back and do something positive,” she said.

Andre Noel first came in contact with RTA while serving 15 years in the Woodbourne Correctional Facility. RTA’s dance group, Figures-in-Flight, had such a profound impact on Noel that, after completing his sentence, he vowed to continue dancing. The result was Figures-in-Flight Released, which performed at the Lincoln Center campus as part of NOFSW.

“We bring a message with us,” said Noel, the company’s director. “We want to express to society that we’re all human beings—we’ve been reformed and we’ve changed our lives. We continue dancing not just for entertainment, but to show the world that we’re capable of becoming successful in whatever we choose to accomplish.”

The group also reaches out to youth groups in the hopes of sparing them the ordeal of prison.

“We were kids when we got incarcerated,” he said. “Kids need an outlet. We try to help kids who are at risk to also express themselves through movement—to channel their anger and everything they have going on their lives.”

Woodbourne dance instructor Susan Slotnik helped choreograph the group’s dances, although some are also improvised.

“None of our movements are random, and the same movement doesn’t necessarily have to mean the same thing for each of us,” said dancer Ray Brito, who served 19 years at Woodbourne. “When we do a reaching move, one might be trying to pull himself toward a particular goal while another might be thinking about reaching toward a loved one.”

Brito credits RTA with not only helping to change the course of his life, but also keeping him going during the dark days of his imprisonment.

“In prison, everything was cold. We all knew we were in prison and couldn’t forget that,” he said. “But in dance, the aim was to feel free…  to just pay attention to yourself and nothing else.

“Attention is the very foundation of our program,” he said. “You have to be able to stand at attention, to be able to feel every breath, every heartbeat while also staying in-tuned to everything that’s going on around you. That might sound simple, but coming from our backgrounds, most of us made the mistakes that we did because we didn’t pay attention.”

Andre Noel, director of Figures-in-Flight Released

Photos by Michael Dames

Figures-in-Flight Released members include Andre Noel, Ray Brito, Jeffrey Rivera, Andre Kelley, David Montalvo, and Jason Bermudez. The group as part of the National Organization of Forensic Social Work conference, co-sponsored by Be The Evidence International and the NOFSW.

— Joanna Klimaski Mercuri

Violence Is Not the Norm: GSS and BK Nation to Co-Host Peace Conference

A spate of violent incidents recently highlighted in the news has yet again called the nation’s attention to a problem plaguing the country.

Next week, activists will gather at Fordham to send the message that no amount of violence should be tolerated.

On Saturday, June 28, Fordham University and BK Nation, in conjunction with Erica Ford’s Life Camp, will host the inaugural “Peace is a Lifestyle” conference at Fordham’s Lincoln Center Campus. The conference will tackle serious societal issues including gun violence, hate crimes, bullying, and violence against women and girls.

Peace is a Lifestyle Conference
Saturday, June 28
9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Pope Auditorium | Lincoln Center Campus
113 West 60th Street, New York City

The daylong gathering will feature prominent speakers, as well as activists, advocates, academics, elected officials, and concerned community members of all ages.

“We want to galvanize a lasting coalition of anti-violence advocates from around the five boroughs. There are a lot of groups that are loosely working together, but we feel that there needs to be more of a collaboration, sharing information and resources,” said Kevin Powell, president and co-founder of BK Nation.

“It’s also important for the city to see this, because there is no [single] office in New York City that funds these sorts of efforts, which we think are critical. There are smaller offices that deal with discrete issues, but we feel there needs to be an overarching initiative to address violence.”

Powell, who will deliver the conference’s keynote address, has already worked extensively to curb violence in New York City through BK Nation, a national organization that promotes community activism to address matters such as education, civic engagement, health and wellness, and job and small business creation.

“Violence is an epidemic in our country. If you look at the last couple weeks alone, with the shootings in California and Oregon, you’re almost bracing yourself for the next tragedy,” Powell said. “We don’t think violence should ever be normalized in our society. There should be an outcry about these types of things happening. It should never be the case that people feel the solution to a problem is to commit a violent act against others.”

In addition to identifying pressing violence-related issues in the city, the conference will explore possible solutions and actions that communities can take to bring the city closer toward peace.

“In the wake of violent acts that are taking place both here and around the world, people in our communities are feeling hopeless. We are increasingly aware of the violence, but unaware of the groundbreaking work that’s being done in the anti-violence movement,” said Priscilla Dyer, special projects administrator for the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS).

“With this conference, we hope to go beyond talking about the problems to formulating viable solutions moving forward,” she said.

The conference is free and open to the public. For more information, visit the conference website, email Priscilla Dyer, or call 212-636-6623.

— Joanna Klimaski Mercuri

GSS to Hold Memorial Lecture for Dean Emeritus

Bryan Samuels

James Dumpson, Ph.D

Tuesday marked one year since Fordham lost one of its most esteemed scholars, James R. Dumpson, Ph.D., a tireless advocate for the poor and a former dean of the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS).

Next week, GSS will host a memorial lecture to honor Dumpson, who died Nov. 5, 2012 at the age of 103.

James R. Dumpson Memorial Lecture
Tuesday, Nov. 12 | 4 p.m.
Corrigan Conference Center / 12th-Floor Lounge
Lincoln Center Campus | 113 West 60th Street, NYC 10023

The featured speaker will be Bryan Samuels, executive director of Chapin Hall Center for Children in Chicago and former commissioner of the Administration for Children, Youth, and Families. Samuels’s lecture will center on child welfare, a topic about which Dumpson was passionate.

The memorial lecture is part of an ongoing series associated with the James R. Dumpson Chair in Child Welfare Research, a position created in 1980 to honor Dumpson and utilize the University’s education and research resources to improve the quality of life for vulnerable children.

The chair, which is currently held by Brenda G. McGowan, D.S.W., evokes Dumpson’s commitment to children by focusing its teaching, research, and advocacy on New York City children most in danger of losing their rights or not enjoying an adequate quality of life.

A reception will follow the lecture. RSVP by emailing Priscilla Dyer, or call (212) 636-6623.

Dumpson began at Fordham in 1957 as a visiting associate professor in the Graduate Institute of Mission Studies. After leaving to serve as deputy commissioner in the Department of Welfare, he returned to Fordham in 1967 to take the helm at GSS, becoming the first African-American dean of a non-black school of social work.

To read more about Dumpson and see a timeline of his career highlights, click here.

Read Dumpson’s obituary in The New York Times here.

— Joanna Klimaski

GSS Conference Explores Women and Arts-based Social Work

In conjunction with Women’s History Month, the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) sponsors its Seventh Annual Women and Girls Symposium on Wednesday, March 23rd at 6 p.m. on the Lincoln Center campus in the 12th Floor Lounge Lowenstein Center.

This year’s symposium is "Social Work and the Arts for women and Girls: Innovations from the Field.” FROM THE FIELD looks at new outcomes from arts-based care and creative social work for women and girls. Its three keynote speakers are:

—Sandra Bennett-Pagan, LSCS, regional women’s health coordinator for the United States Department of Health and Human Services-Office of Women’s Health;
—Drena Fagan, LMSW, LCAT, a social worker and certified arts therapist at New York Creative Arts Therapists PLLC; and
—Nathaly Rubio-Torio, executive director and co-founder of Voces de Latinas.

Since the emphasis is on healing and the arts, this year’s celebration also features a musical performance by Las Hermanas Marquez.

For a full schedule of events or to RSVP go to the website.

The mission of the Fordham Institute for Women and Girls is to promote the well-being of women and girls who experience poverty, violence, health problems and workplace discrimination.

—Janet Sassi

TLC Commissioner Visits GSS Class

At the same time that the recession-weakened nation experiences headlined slashes in public services, Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) students are being trained to identify and implement low-cost or no-cost ways to help the needy, and to become a force which shows that society can improve despite the Great Recession.

New York City Taxi and Limousine Commissioner David Yassky addressed this topic when he spoke to students in Professor Allan Luks’s Advocacy and Public Policy class on Feb. 1. "It's always hard to get social changes approved," said Yassky, "but I don't think it's any harder now to get change, as long as it doesn't cost a lot of money. And you, as social workers, through your daily experiences, can identify such solutions and fight to get them adopted."

Each one of the second-year students in Luks’s course must identify and advocate for a new, small public policy that can improve society at little cost. The students have had no problem finding these issues and their public policy solutions. Some examples include: stopping users of suboxone, a methadone-like drug, from selling their supply to get others high; requiring people who are HIV positive to inform those they are sexually active with; have public TV and radio regularly post social indexes on how well or poorly society is solving its social ills and invite public involvement where changes are most needed; offering affordable transportation for low-income cancer patients, who now may be late or even miss appointments; regular mental health seminars in high schools so students can identify warning signs in themselves and others and prevent the violent behaviors; a requirement that public housing conditions that cause asthma be fixed within a month rather than a year; and allowing pregnant women to avoid going through school metal detectors.

"Social workers are required by their profession to identify solutions to public problems and advocate for their implementation," said Luks, who also directs Fordham’s Center for Nonprofit Leaders. "For the needy, who are most affected by the Great Recession, these small ideas of social workers become a balance that says optimism for the future is still possible."

A former nonprofit executive with more than two decades of experience, Luks tells students of his successful efforts to champion laws that have since become national models. In the 1980s, he led the adoption of New York City's law requiring posters in bars and restaurants warning about drinking during pregnancy, which resulted in national legislation. He also advocated successfully for the city law preventing job discrimination against recovered alcoholics, which was then adopted by many states and cities. In 2007, he led the call for the state law requiring mentoring programs to inform parents about whether or not they did background checks on their mentors.

“Social workers starting out today have high tuition bills, a high cost of living and the worry of their charitable employers cutting back,” he said. “So, there is pressure on them to just do the work they are employed to do and not to go beyond and start trying to change public policies.

“The goal of the Fordham program is to show the second-year graduate students that social workers are one vital counterweight to the Great Recession.”

Be the Evidence You Want to See

Mahatma Ghandi famously said ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Eleanor Roosevelt, in her speech to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, said “Where do human rights begin? In small places, close to home . . . the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works.””

Tina Maschi, Ph.D., assistant professor of social work in the Graduate School of Social Service, is taking those concepts and applying them to a new lecture series at the Lincoln Center campus. Maschi, through her position as a 2010 Hartford Foundation scholar, has launched the Be The Evidence project at Fordham—a series of lectures and workshops designed to improve individual and community responses to today’s most critical social issues.

The first event on Feb. 8 features Thomas Larson, LSCW, a clinical social worker and federal probation officer, speaking on how to work with “involuntary” clients (i.e. persons who are forced into therapy, such as prisoners or juvenile offenders.) Several other events will follow over the course of the year.

Maschi said she was inspired to do the series by current debates in social work and other social service professions on how human rights and social justice can be realized. Whether in social work, medicine or psychology, whether a counselor, a scientist or a reformer, Maschi suggests we all ask ourselves whether we, ourselves, are “evidence” that the changes we’ve wanted to see have come about.

“We as humans tend to externalize problems as if they are outside of ourselves,” said Maschi. “In order to change these external problems or social ills, the change must start from within– if I want to combat oppression, have I carefully examined myself to eradicate any ways in which my actions oppress others?”

The inaugural lecture will be Feb. 8 at 7:30 in Room 713 of the Lowenstein Center on the Lincoln Center campus. The next event, on torture in U.S. prisons, will be March 17.

—Janet Sassi