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

GSS Professor Lauded for Mentoring Latinas

Ellen Silber, Ph.D., of the Graduate School of Social Service’s Institute for Women and Girls, was named a 2008 Purpose Prize Fellow by Civic Ventures, a national think tank on boomers. Silber was named a fellow for Mentoring Latinas, a program in which college Latinas mentor middle school Latinas to inspire them to graduate from high school and go on to college. She founded the program in 2003, and Fordham College at Rose Hill has participated in the program since the spring of 2007.

“Recognition as a Purpose Prize Fellow by Civic Ventures means a great deal to me,” Silber said. “Adolescent Latinas can realize their dreams with the help of their mentors, and being a Fellow inspires me to try even harder to acquire the resources to expand the program.”

The Purpose Prize is a $9 million program for people over 60 who are taking on society’s biggest challenges. The prize, now in its third year, is the nation’s only large-scale investment in social innovators in the second half of life.

Panel on Women in Leadership Positions

Women are underrepresented in management in part because they are faced with a no-win conundrum which has not changed since the 1970s, according to Roslyn H. Chernesky, D.S.W., professor of social service at Fordham.

Chernesky, along with Ruth Brandwein, Ph.D., professor of social policy and director of the Social Justice Center at the Stony Brook University School of Social Welfare, will talk about the glass ceiling in a panel “The Conundrum of Women in Leadership Positions,” sponsored by Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service’s Institute for Women and Girls on Monday.

WHO: Roslyn Chernesky, D.S.W., and Ruth Brandwein, Ph.D.
WHAT: The Conundrum of Women in Leadership Positions
WHEN: Monday, October 27, 2008 | 5:30 p.m.
WHERE: Pope Auditorium, Lincoln Center campus
RSVP: Priscilla Dyer (212) 636-6623, dyer@fordham.edu
The panel is free and open to the public.