2019 Awardees

2019 Professional Recognition Award Recipients

  • Significant Lifetime Achievement in Social Work Education Award

    Dr. Iris Carlton-LaNey
    Professor | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
    The Significant Lifetime Achievement in Social Work Education Award is presented to Dr. Iris Carlton-LaNey. Dr. Carlton-LaNey is the Berg-Beach Distinguished Professor of Community Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her bachelor’s degree in social work from North Carolina A&T State University, where the complex themes of inclusivity and social justice were nurtured. She received her AM in social work from the University of Chicago and her PhD from the University of Maryland at Baltimore. Her research interests include aging issues and African American social welfare historyDr. Carlton-LaNey has several books to her credit, including Preserving and Strengthening Small Towns and Rural Communities (with Edwards & Reid) and African American Leadership: An Empowerment Tradition in Social Welfare History.

    In 2003 Dr. Carlton-LaNey was the recipient of the Council on Social Work Education’s Distinguished Recent Contributions in Social Work Education Award. In 2010 she received the National Association of Black Social Workers’ Distinguished Achievement in Social Work Education Award. In 2011 the CSWE Council on the Role and Status of Women in Social Work Education named her the Feminist Scholarship Honoree, and the Sisters of the Academy (SOTA) presented her with their inaugural Legacy Award. In 2012 the University of Maryland at Baltimore School of Social Work identified Dr. Carlton-LaNey as one of its 50 Heroes for Justice, and in 2015 the National Association of Social Workers named her a Social Work Pioneer. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper appointed Dr. Carlton-LaNey to the North Carolina Social Services Commission in 2017, and NASW-NC selected her as the 2018 Social Worker of the Year. Dr. Carlton-LaNey is committed to social work education that reflects the critical responsibility we have to take action for social justice.
  • Service and Leadership in Social Work Education Award

    Dr. Robert Vernon
    Emeritus Professor | Indiana University
    The Service and Leadership in Social Work Education Award is presented to Dr. Robert Vernon. Dr. Vernon developed three social work programs from start-up. He joined CSWE in 1978 and brought the BSW program at Keuka College through its first accreditation. Later, Dr. Vernon brought the BSW program at the University of Indianapolis through successful accreditation. CSWE asked him to disseminate his development work as a model for other programs. Recently, he and colleagues developed the completely online MSW Direct at Indiana University. Dr. Vernon has uniquely contributed to social work education by continually sharing information that helps other programs develop accreditable degrees.

    One of Dr. Vernon’s strengths is technology. Elected to the CSWE Board of Directors in 1999, he started and organized its Committee on Technology. This was at the crucial time when programs were first exploring online degrees. Then elected to the CSWE Commission on Accreditation, he started and organized its Committee on Research and Information Technology. This was substantial leadership at a major turning point in social work education.

    Dr. Vernon has always been passionate about telling people of the magic of social work. He produced two posters highlighting our profession. “The Power of Social Work,” created by Dr. Vernon and his students in 1995, was nationally distributed by the National Association of Social Workers. The 2000 “You’ll need a social worker…” poster has been downloaded and used by more than 300 programs. Committed to supporting communication between colleagues, Dr. Vernon is the owner of the BPD, MSW, and Distance Education list servers. He co-organized two national conferences on distance education and was actively involved in setting U.S. national standards for using technology in practice.
  • Distinguished Recent Contributions to Social Work Education Award

    Dr. Rocío Calvo
    Associate Professor | Boston College
    The Distinguished Recent Contributions to Social Work Education Award is presented to Rocío Calvo. Recognized as a leading scholar in the field of immigration and social welfare, Dr. Rocío Calvo has developed a body of work on the role of social service provision in the integration of immigrants that has become a model of positive disruption in social work. Dr. Calvo’s observation that Latinx immigrants value the quality of their interactions with providers of services as much as the specific services they receive led to the creation of the Latinx Leadership Initiative (LLI) in 2013. The LLI reimagines social work education, research, and practice by positioning the cultural assets of Latinx populations at the center of social work practice and scholarship. Since its foundation, the LLI has prepared more than 100 bilingual and bicultural MSW students and five doctoral candidates to work with Latinx communities toward sustainable solutions for complex problems. Dr. Calvo's work with the LLI has been supported by the Spencer Foundation.

    Dr. Calvo serves on the Diversity & Inclusion Steering Committee of Boston College, on the Autism Commission of Massachusetts, and on the Advisory Committee of the CSWE Center for Diversity and Social & Economic Justice. She is also the national co-leader of the Grand Challenge for Social Work “Achieve Equal Opportunity and Justice” of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, and president of the Association of Latina/Latino Social Work Educators. Awards for her work include the Mentor of the Year from the Boston College School of Social Work and a Mentoring Award from the CSWE Council on the Role and Status of Women in Social Work Education. Dr. Calvo also has been recognized as an influential St. Peter’s Woman by St. Peter’s College at Oxford University.
  • Service and Leadership in Social Work Education Award

    Dr. Terry Mizrahi
    Professor | Hunter College, City University of New York
    The Service and Leadership in Social Work Education Award is presented to Dr. Terry Mizrahi.  Dr. Mizrahi is a professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College of the City University of New York, where she co-chairs the Special Commission to Advance Macro Practice in Social Work and the National Social Work Voter Mobilization Campaign.

    Dr. Mizrahi was co-editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Social Work (20th edition) and authored several articles on health policy and health-care reform. She has written five books and monographs and 70 articles, book chapters, reviews, and manuals. Her book Getting Rid of Patients: Contradictions in the Socialization of Physicians (Rutgers University Press, 1986) was a groundbreaking work on the training of internal medicine house staff. She currently is working on a sequel.

    Dr. Mizrahi has done extensive research and training on coalition building and interprofessional collaboration between physicians and social workers and a study on the role of gender and organizing. She served as president of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) from 2001–2003 and is a founder of ACOSA’s Journal of Community Practice. Dr. Mizrahi has been designated as an NASW’s Pioneer.

    She received the Hunter Presidential Award for Excellence in Applied Research and in Community Leadership. In 2004 she won the Career Achievement Award from ACOSA and was inducted into Columbia University School of Social Work’s Alumni Hall of Fame. She completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Israel in 2006 and continues to train and consult there with academic and professional leaders.

    Dr. Mizrahi is a current and founding board member of the Child Welfare Organizing Project, a grassroots advocacy group of parents and professionals working to reform the child welfare system.