CORSW Community Impact Award
The Council on the Role and Status of Women in Social Work Education (CORSW) Community Impact Award recognizes community praxis, which is shaped through the process of social work education and which exemplifies the values of feminist leadership models in social work education, using the following criteria:
- The recipient (or organization) should have an affiliation with one or more accredited social work education programs (i.e., community engaged research partnership, field education placements, or other service learning opportunities).
- The recipient engages in feminist praxis and leadership in a community setting, drawing on theories, models, competencies, and practice behaviors from their social work education.
- The recipient is able to clearly articulate how their approach to practice, program, and/or policy reform shapes an awareness of how social work education is lived out in the real world of the community, contributing to feminist leadership and social work’s grand challenges.
2022 Community Impact Award Recipient
Dr. Joon Choi is currently the Interim Associate Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs at the University of Georgia School of Social Work. She will start her tenure as the Director of Georgia State University School of Social Work on January 1, 2023. She also serves as a Commissioner on the Georgia Commission on Family Violence and is core faculty at the Injury Prevention Research Center at Emory (IPRCE).
She worked in the field of domestic violence for 20 years, first as a counselor/advocate for Asian immigrant women in New York City and later as a founding member of a CDC-funded domestic violence prevention program for Asian communities in Michigan. As a researcher, Dr. Choi’s research focuses on developing prevention and intervention strategies to reduce disparities among immigrant and minority populations in the areas of intimate partner violence, substance use, and HIV. Dr. Choi’s work exemplifies community praxis and feminist leadership in that it demonstrates the type of community impact social work researchers and educators can make by working with community members and organizations to solve complex social problems.
All of Dr. Choi’s scholarly endeavors have involved the active participation of diverse community stakeholders. For her Department of Justice-funded research on intimate partner violence, Dr. Choi partnered with two Korean immigrant community agencies and faith leaders to develop and implement virtual case simulation training for Korean immigrant faith leaders. Engaging them as partners in this process from the start helped ensure that the program was culturally responsive to the community's needs and sustainable after research activities ended. According to partner agencies, “Through our work with Dr. Choi, we have gained valuable experience in developing partnerships with faith leaders, opening a new door for prevention” &
“This project has made a significant community impact by helping break the taboo of intimate partner violence and allowed us to start normalizing talking about intimate partner violence in terms of prevention and education.”