Departing/Transitioning Faculty and Staff: 2014 – 2015

The Department of Social Work at NC State is proud to always have an excellent faculty and staff which serves as the backbone of the Department. So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye or watch them transition into a different role. Thank you all for your dedication and hard work. The Department wishes all of you the very best! Join us in thanking our departing or transitioning faculty and staff members for their service.

Faculty

Hannah Allison: Hannah has held many positions in the Department of Social Work. While she is delighted to pursue a PhD in Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she is sad to leave her Wolfpack Social Work family. As a graduate student in the Department of Social Work, Hannah served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. After completing her Master of Social Work degree, Hannah became our Department’s Academic Services Coordinator and later an Instructor in the undergraduate program. Hannah has too many wonderful memories from her time in the Department of Social Work to name a single one. She is incredibly grateful for the mentorship, friendship, and community she found in the department. From laughing with workstudy students and the front office staff to teaching a semester-long class for the very first time to watching her students and colleagues learn and grow together–there is not a minute she would trade. Hannah came to NC State unsure about Social Work and now cannot imagine her life without the Social Work family she created here.

Marcie Fisher-Borne:  Dr. Fisher-Borne has been an Assistant Professor in the department since fall of 2012. She chose social work as a discipline because of its long history of applied, interdisciplinary, practice-based research. Her overarching research goals have been to contribute to the body of knowledge that helps practitioners to understand how interventions focused on structural change impact health outcomes for marginalized populations. Specifically, her work has focused on developing and evaluating health interventions that build community and organizational partnerships to tackle health inequalities in the U.S. and Global South (i.e. Central America and Asia).

Through a competitive process in 2013, Dr. Fisher-Borne was awarded a contract from the American Cancer Society to assess the impact of community health advisers on reducing cancer disparities. The Cancer Disparities Reduction Collaborative is modeled on an evidence-based intervention from the Deep South Network for Cancer Control. She was contracted to evaluate the three-year pilot phase of intervention in the Deep South, in Appalachia, and with the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation.

The Stop Hunger Now Capacity Building Collaborative is perhaps one of the strongest examples of a strategic partnership that integrates Dr. Fisher-Borne’s scholarly activities with teaching and engagement. This partnership began in Fall of 2013 and incorporated the Masters of Social Work (MSW) candidates’ year-long research and evaluation course (and Capstone) to assist SHN with international hunger monitoring and evaluation efforts. Since Fall of 2013, MSW graduate students have worked in teams on multiple monitoring evaluation projects in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, the Philippines, and on multi-country projects evaluating food security initiatives.

On campus she has been involved with the Global Health Initiatives program and was on the Executive Committee for the Women and Gender Studies program.

She will be leaving the department to serve as Co-Principal Investigator of a CDC-funded national health systems intervention focused on increasing HPV vaccination among adolescents as a cancer prevention strategy. She will also serve as the Director of HPV Vaccination within the Cancer Control Science unit of the corporate office of the American Cancer Society.

Crystal Hayes: Crystal Hayes will begin her doctoral studies at the University of Connecticut School for Social Work fall 2015. Hayes is incredibly excited about the future, but she’s also sad to say goodbye to her NC State Department of Social Work family where she enjoys an amazing community of colleagues and students. Hayes held multiple appointments over the years in the Department of Social Work at NC State University. She served as the MSW Field Coordinator, the MSW Academic Advising Coordinator and Adjunct, and Senior lecturer teaching both in the undergraduate BSW and graduate MSW programs where she taught nine courses an academic year. In addition to teaching, Hayes was awarded the Faculty Fellowship “At Home in the World” grant in 2013 through the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity to explore developing a new interdisciplinary community based service-learning study abroad program in Cape Town, South Africa for graduate and undergraduate students. As an instructor, Hayes worked hard to create spaces where students were able to interact with the world in meaningful ways. She is proud of the work that she did to design courses that challenged students’ thinking about global community engagement and that encouraged them to consider critical questions about the causes of injustice around the world including our collective and individual roles in creating social change. Hayes also gained a great deal from the Social Work Department, her experiences in the department as an instructor generated several teaching and research interests for her that include, but are not limited to: social work education and social justice pedagogy, global violence against women, reproductive oppression, race, policing, and mass incarceration. Hayes looks forward to developing her skills as a researcher and scholar at UCONN and she thanks the entire department for helping to inspire her own intellectual interests. She especially thanks Dr. Bullock, Chair and mentor, for her support and tireless leadership.

Suzanne Martin: Before Suzanne became the Undergraduate Advising Coordinator for the Department she was an MSW student. Suzanne spent her two years as a student accessing every opportunity for professional and leadership development both at the Departmental and University levels. During both years, she served as NC State’s MSW Student Liaison for the National Association of Social Workers – NC Chapter (NASW-NC) as well as serving on the Department of Social Work Advisory Board as an MSW Student Representative.
Her first year as an MSW student she completed her field placement at HopeLine, Inc. A local non-profit which provides free crisis intervention and suicide prevention. Suzanne was the Secretary for the Graduate Student Social Work Association (GSSWA) in addition to being a member of Phi Alpha, the National Honor Social Work Honor Society. That same year she simultaneously completed three NC State certificate programs: Equal Opportunity Institute (EOI), Graduate Leadership Development Series (GLDS), and Visionary Leadership Certificate (VLC) program.

Her second year in the MSW program, Suzanne completed her field placement here on campus with the Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity (OIED) working as the Education and Outreach Graduate Assistant providing training about diversity and equal opportunity. Her passion for leadership development continued as she was selected as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the Department of Social Work. During this time she successfully completed the Certificate of Accomplishment in Teaching (CoAT) program. Suzanne also helped lead her social work student colleagues as the 2013-2014 Phi Alpha President, Epsilon Kappa Chapter. She also completed her Advanced Social Work Research course as part of the Stop Hunger Now & Department of Social Work Collaboration. She traveled, with several student colleagues and Assistant Professor Dr. Marcie Fisher-Borne, to the Dominican Republic to conduct on-the-ground program monitoring and evaluation data for our Stop Hunger Now partners.
Contributions to the Department – Suzanne’s love for the Department has continued from her time as a student to her role as the Undergraduate Advising Coordinator. She has taken her experiences as a student as well as her leadership tools and put them to great use helping our BSW students achieve success. She has developed many administrative tools and procedures to enhance the efficiency of advising for students as well as faculty advisors. She engages each and every student in meaningful discussions about their current goals while supporting them to consider the expansive opportunities as future social work professionals. Suzanne truly values the dignity and worth of every person and students have often remarked at how she “creates a space where all are welcome.”
Accomplishments – Suzanne has won several awards while here at NC State – in the Visionary Leadership Certificate (VCL) program, she won the 2013 Ronald C. Butler Leadership Award from the Center for Student Leadership, Ethics, and Public Service (CSLEPS). This award is given annually to one student who is recognized for the most outstanding portfolio among other VLC participants. Suzanne also won the 2014 Equity for Women Award – Student Award, presented by NC State’s Council on the Status of Women. This award is made annually to recognize faculty, staff and students for their outstanding leadership in establishing equity for women at NC State.
What’s Next? – We are proud to announce Suzanne has been accepted into NC State’s Public Administration PhD program and will begin her coursework this coming Fall 2015! In addition to this opportunity to continue her education, she will begin working with the American Cancer Society (ACS) as the Program Manager for the National Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) Vaccination Roundtable. She looks forward to spending time with her daughter, Noel, and partner, Tom while continuing her education and career aspirations. Don’t worry, you will still see Suzanne around the Department – she will be serving on our Advisory Board to stay connected!

Jocelyn DeVance Taliaferro: Dr. Taliaferro has served as a Park Faculty Scholar and Director of the Graduate Program for Social work since 2010. These roles have left little room for research and collaboration. Dr. Taliaferro is now co-editing a book that provides conceptual frameworks and pedagogical consideration for teaching The Wire. This co-edited volume is in process of completion and publication by McFarland Books. She will spend the fall completing this book for publication. In addition, she will be exploring a new research trajectory — immersing herself in the latest literature on parental involvement. Parental involvement has been a peripheral interest for Dr. Taliaferro and she recently served on a dissertation committee for Dina DeVose. DeVose’s research was entitled At the Intersection of Can and Can’t: Parental School Involvement from the Perspective of the Low-SES African-American Mother. Dr. Taliaferro plans to revisit the literature on parental involvement and plan/initiate an engaged research project regarding parental involvement. She would like to resume a research trajectory that will focus on parental involvement and operational citizenship. She wants to begin to develop an engaged research project that will explore the boundaries of parental involvement for Low SES parents in multiple geographic locations (which are to be determined), while providing an intervention in the form of an educational program for parents regarding formal and informal parental participation in schools from a theoretical perspective of operational citizenship and advocacy. Dr. Taliaferro says that while she will miss interaction with students and colleagues, she looks forward to engaging fully in her research.

Staff

Amanda (Mandy) Petty: Petty has moved from the Department of Social Work to the College of Education at NC State.