2015 Awardees

2015 Professional Recognition Award Recipients

  • Significant Lifetime Achievement in Social Work Education Award

    Jack Rothman
    Professor Emeritus | University of California, Los Angeles
    Dr. Jack Rothman’s professional accomplishments in social work education and practice span more than half a century. He has been a role model and mentor for three generations of social workers. For decades, his initial typology of community practice, first published in the 1960s, framed the discourse on teaching community organizing in social work education, and he was among the first social work educators to address the potential of community-based participatory research.

    Throughout his career Rothman promoted innovation and change and working for social justice. He did so with particular attention to serving vulnerable populations; reducing poverty; and integrating the views of clients and constituents, especially those from racial and ethnic minority groups, into the processes of planning, program development, organizing, advocacy, and research. These values informed the dozens of books, monographs, book chapters, and journal articles he published and formed the basis of countless conference presentations and lectures in the United States and other countries.

    Dr. Rothman’s organizational leadership includes positions held in the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration and the Council on Social Work Education. His other accomplishments include two senior Fulbright Research Fellowships (Great Britain and Israel); a Harry Lurie Fellowship; a Distinguished Service Award from Ohio State University; and consulting invitations from the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Task Force on Group Life in America, the Veterans Administration, and many other international, national, state, and local bodies.

    The numerous awards he has received from professional colleagues in the United States and abroad reflect the breadth of his contributions and the esteem in which his professional colleagues hold him. To this day, Professor Emeritus Jack Rothman continues to inspire, provoke, teach, and encourage his colleagues.
  • Significant Lifetime Achievement in Social Work Education Award

    Katherine Briar Lawson
    Dean | State University of New York, Albany
    The Lifetime Achievement Award in Social Work Education is presented to Dr. Katherine Briar-Lawson, dean of the State University of New York, Albany, School of Social Work. What she has accomplished in her more than 50 years in the social work profession is not only impressive, but also has left a lasting legacy for social work education and the social work profession. Her breadth and depth of knowledge are reflected in her nine books and more than 80 book chapters and journal articles. Her work on diversity, addiction, poverty, aging, international social work, community organization, social work education, clinical work, and many other areas has opened new doors of knowledge and practice. The confidence that funding agencies have had in her research and practice has resulted in more than $50 million in grants.
     
    Dr. Briar-Lawson’s career has expanded the substantive academic contributions reflected in the social work journals for which she has provided guidance. Her leadership in the National Association of Deans and Directors of Schools of Social Work has fostered the expansion and creative reconceptualization of social work education.

    Katherine Briar-Lawson is an exceptional and charismatic human being, who is highly respected by peers and students. She has been a role model for thousands of social workers, students, and faculty members throughout her career in academia and in governmental and not-for-profit venues. Her naming as a Social Work Pioneer by the National Association of Social Workers confirms the critical path she developed for other social work professionals.
    On the basis of her contributions to social work education, the social work profession, and the most vulnerable among us, Dean Briar-Lawson has met the highest standards of this lifetime achievement award.
  • Distinguished Recent Contributions in Social Work Education Award

    Lori K Holleran Steiker
    Associate Professor | University of Texas at Austin
    Dr. Lori K. Holleran Steiker is receiving the Distinguished Recent Contributions to Social Work Education Award for teaching excellence; scholarship; and research with adolescents, young adults, and their families in the area of substance use disorders. Her groundbreaking work augmented the research on cultural adaptation of substance abuse prevention curricula by promoting a strengths-based approach rather than a deficit-based model for the framework of substance abuse recovery. Her research on substance use addresses intervention, prevention, and recovery.

    A prolific writer, she has published 63 articles and chapters and co-authored a book, and she has two books in press. In addition, Dr. Holleran Steiker has received more than 20 administrative, collegial, and student teaching awards, as well as numerous community and research awards. In fall 2014 she founded one of the few recovery high schools in the United States, which addresses the needs of adolescents with substance use problems by providing them the support they need to graduate and further their education. University High School in Austin opened with 14 students and receives support from various community agencies along with University of Texas at Austin departments, programs, educators, and students.

    Dr. Holleran Steiker is a strong voice and advocate of recovery from personal, professional, and research perspectives. Her extensive publications on substance abuse prevention and cultural adaptation and her signature course, Young People and Drugs, as well as her exceptional accomplishments as a practitioner, scholar, and educator distinguish her as worthy of this prestigious award.