GSSW Magazine 2009

As the world grows ever smaller, the challenges it presents to schools like Boston College’s Graduate School of Social Work grow ever larger. How the academy prepares social workers for the cultural complexities of this new world is of great importance not only for those in the profession but also for the peoples and communities around the globe with whom they interact. In this issue of BC Social Work, we explore what it means to engage the world—in the classroom, in the lab, and in the field.
 
In Ruth McRoy, who joined the GSSW faculty this year as the Donahue and DiFelice Professor, writer Vicki Sanders finds the personification of the globally engaged teacher, researcher, and scholar. McRoy’s recent travels to South Africa, her studies of child welfare and adoption, and her outreach agenda are just a few of the ways in which she is opening up new venues of collaboration and internationalization at GSSW.
 
Similarly, Sister Maryanne Loughry, the associate director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Australia who is a visiting scholar this year, is sharing her skills and knowledge of immigration and refugees as the School enters the third year of its Diversity Initiative. In the article "Compassion for the Displaced," Loughry maps out her plans for sensitizing the GSSW community to the complicated issues of the displaced here and abroad.
 
Elsewhere in this issue, we witness the horrors of violence on—and the power of art to heal—the children of Africa and the women of South Asia in two exhibitions. One woman’s crusade to save the starving children of Tanzania is chronicled in "Mama Mdogo." In "Multiple Choices" we read about how Professor Kevin Mahoney’s groundbreaking National Resource Center for Participant-Directed Services is offering people with disabilities newfound independence, and in "Ensuring That Longevity Is a Blessing" we learn that Professor James Lubben is the mastermind behind BC’s Institute on Aging. Photos by international program director Penny Alexander show firsthand the work of the MSW students in the Global Practice Concentration.
 
Each of these stories bears witness to the impact of the GSSW at home and in the field.