College Grad Transcends Gun Violence

Byron Taylor (MSW ’07) was featured on the front page of the Chicago Tribune on December 13, 2009. The story described how he was affected by the killing of a classmate in 1993, and how he was inspired to make something of his own life. After graduating from the Jane Addams College of Social Work, he went on to work as an addictions psychotherapist at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, and is studying for a doctorate in counseling psychology.

You can read the full Tribune article about Taylor - Click here.

Donald Dew - Alumnus Exhorts Graduates to “Make a Difference”

Donald Dew isn't given to promoting his work or himself. His social service agency on the West Side of Chicago is out of the way and easily overlooked. But as he points out: “If we weren't here, people would know it.”

Dew, 52, who received his MSW from the Jane Addams College of Social Work in 1980, is a 2009 recipient of UIC’s City Partner award. He also gave an enthusiastic address to graduating students at the College’s May 2009 commencement, encouraging them to be agents of change and to serve those in need. As president and CEO of the social service agency Habilitative Systems, Inc., he knows all about being a partner to those who need it—as well as a teacher, mentor, and social worker. He says his education in the College prepared him well for helping people from many walks of life.

“By the time I graduated from Jane Addams I had a pretty good idea of what the profession was all about,” he recalls. “In my first year, I did a field practicum at juvenile court. I worked with the public defender on behalf of people whose rights were in jeopardy. I did a rotation at West Side Veterans Hospital in my second year. In two years’ time I gained experience with school social work, mental health, law, family therapy, and group dynamics.”

Those opportunities served Dew in good stead in years to come. He came to Habilitative Systems, Inc. in 1984, and took over in 1989 when his predecessor died suddenly. HSI is a human services agency that operates dozens of programs serving more than 7,000 disabled people on Chicago’s west and south sides. Its mission is to provide integrated human services that help their clients achieve their highest level of self-sufficiency.

Over the years Dew has helped employ disabled individuals by setting up manufacturing systems in the HSI facilities, doing silk screening and making disposable pillows and jackets. “All of a sudden I was an entrepreneur, and I thought, this is different from social work, until I realized that no, I needed all my social work skills to run a business, too.” He has also overseen the construction of senior housing on the West Side, sponsored Special Olympics teams, and even set up the only community-based research institute on the West Side.

A College professor at the time, Eloise Cornelius, encouraged him to grow and develop. “She taught me about ego psychology. She told me, ‘Donald, you have got to break the bottleneck of your past experience. You can’t expect to get everything we teach you through the bottleneck.’ I developed my own ‘flowerpot philosophy.’ No person can expand beyond his or her own environment. If you provide a larger flowerpot and you give more opportunity for the roots to grow, the plant will grow bigger. Jane Addams was my larger flowerpot. From those beginnings at the College I was able to grow my worldview. The college provided me with new skill levels and opened the door for me to see where I needed to develop. I look back on those days and there was never a dull moment.”

Amy Starin - Returning for her PhD

Returning to college for a PhD as a middle-aged adult was a “luxury,” according to Amy Starin. Starin, who earned her PhD from the Jane Addams College of Social Work in July of 2008, has been here before. She received her MSW from the College in 1985. But after working for more than two decades in community mental health, private practice, and policy & administration with the Illinois Department of Human Services, Division of Mental Health, she identified her real interest and decided to focus on it.

“I realized my real interest was in becoming a better children’s mental health researcher and policy maker. The work I did at the College has had an enormous impact on the quality of my thinking and program design.”

As many as 90 percent of Jane Addams College PhD students are returning to college after pursuing jobs, often in social work or with social service agencies. Like Starin, they discover that becoming a student in midlife is especially rewarding.

“I had a remarkable experience,” says Starin, who returned to the College as a PhD candidate in 2003. “Mark Mattaini (then PhD program director, now Associate Professor) created a lovely community of students. There was a lot of support for our cohort.”

At the PhD level, she points out, classes are generally smaller those in the MSW programs, which leads to close contact with faculty. “It is a remarkable treat to be able to learn from scholars of the caliber of the folks I worked with. Mark Mattaini was my dissertation chair, and he spent a lot of time with me. The elegance with which he describes and teaches research is phenomenal.”

She also studied with analysis of practice models with Patricia O’Brien, and children’s mental health research with Sonya Leathers. “She really challenged me to get my statistics not only correct, but flawless,” Starin said of Leathers. “The level of scholarship required in the PhD program is significant. The professors are demanding but they provide you as much support as they challenge you. I wrote a paper for Dr. O’Brien’s class that was published in a clinical social work journal, that is the level of writing that is required. From every professor I have had in the college, I felt they were as interested in my projects as I was.”

Being ten years older than most of her fellow students was not a drawback. “My MSW really helped me establish a career and achieve a degree of success in my field. Going back to school was the ‘icing on the cake.’ Some of my professors are my peers age-wise, and I really have been able to approach them as more a collaborator/colleague. I have ongoing work projects with several of them that will benefit both the College and the children’s mental health community.”

After five years of study while continuing to work full time, she feels a great sense of accomplishment as well as gratitude. “Faculty make sure that research is relevant to real-world social justice issues, and to folks who are out there struggling in the real world that social work is committed to serving. Social work has served me very well professionally at every level. I have been able to be in positions where the work I do makes a difference to people. That’s what it’s all about, in the end.”