JANUARY 15, 2013
In the midst of a national groundswell for immigration reform, the Graduate School of Social Work co-sponsored a December 14 colloquium that officially launched its broad-based effort to aid immigrants’ transition into American democratic society.
The event, held in the Heights Room of Corcoran Commons, served as a formal welcome for GSSW’s Immigrant Integration Lab (IIL) and its director, GSSW Research Professor Westy Egmont. The IIL is a unique applied research lab whose academic and clinical expertise will provide resources, studies and leadership to national working groups, local agencies and professional leadership that focus on immigrant integration.
An audience of academics, social work and human services professionals, advocates and other interested parties gathered at the colloquium to hear talks on immigration-related trends and issues, in Massachusetts and the U.S. as well as elsewhere in the world, and the impact an initiative like IIL can have on immigrant integration.
In his welcoming remarks, GSSW Dean Alberto Godenzi affirmed the IIL's work as central to the mission of the school and of Boston College itself — which, he noted, had been founded 150 years ago to serve the children of Boston’s immigrants.
