Micro to Macro: Integrating Environmental Justice and Practicum Education

Karen Magruder, DSW, LCSW-S is an Associate Professor of Practice and DSW Director at the University of Texas at Arlington School of Social Work, where she brings to the classroom a broad background in aging, mental health, and environmental justice. She created a course on environmental justice and ecosocial work and currently serves on the CSWE Commission on Environmental Justice & Human Rights. She was trained by Al Gore as a Climate Reality Leader and has been active in environmental organizations in Dallas-Fort Worth, TX and Phoenix, AZ. She also holds a certificate in Climate Change & Health from Yale University. A dedicated and award-winning educator, Karen is passionate about integrating evidence-based and innovative techniques to promote student success in online learning. She manages a small private therapy practice, provides clinical supervision, and maintains a free social work education resources YouTube channel with over 12,000 subscribers and nearly 1 million views.

Dr. Leah Prussia (she/they) is an Associate Professor in the MSW program at the College of St. Scholastica. Leah is also a practicing clinician with over 20 years of experience as a mental health professional. Leah’s work focuses on fostering mind/body and personal/planetary relationships through neuroregulation and collaboration with the natural environment. Leah serves as the current Chair for CSWE’s Council on Environmental Justice and Human Rights. Leah is actively involved with Rights of Nature advocacy and is presently working with Waankam to secure rights for the St. Louis River Estuary, which holds spiritual and ecological significance for the Anishinaabe and those that consider the Twin Ports area home.

Mariann grew up belonging to a lake-and-woods ecosystem where humans, water, and woods nourished and cared for one another - a visceral lesson in reciprocity and interconnection. She deepened this awareness researching water use and gender relations alongside indigenous Palestinian communities in the West Bank. As an ordained member of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing, she brings engaged Buddhist mindfulness to healing. Systems, root-cause, and risk analysis, honed across careers in engineering and international agriculture, inform her social work practice and teaching. At Rutgers University School of Social Work, she is the management and policy practicum learning coordinator and assistant professor of teaching. Through her private practice, Mindfulness Therapy, LLC, she supports healing from trauma, addiction, and severed belonging. She is joyfully preparing to launch a nationwide peer-support group where helpers can practice empathy skills using motivational interviewing.

Yolanda Machado is Assistant Professor of Social Work and Program Director at the Department of Social Work and Anthropology at Auburn University at Montgomery, Alabama. Her classroom pedagogy, research scholarship, and service are informed by the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, ability, and class among Latinx and other transnational migrant communities of color in the U.S. and abroad. Her research interests include historic trauma, resilience and resistance in oppressed groups, systemic inequality and other barriers to access health care, self-sufficiency and inclusion of people with disabilities in social settings, social work education in Latin America, and environmental injustice and climate grief in vulnerable contexts. She has worked in direct practice, management positions, and as a social work instructor in rural and urban settings in Puerto Rico, Virginia, Georgia, and Florida. Yolanda has a teenage son living with autism. Their pastimes include walking in nature, reading, gardening, and cooking Puerto Rican tasty meals.

Dr. Keri Otte (she/her) is an Assistant Professor and MSW Practicum Director at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. Keri is a Master Naturalist, birder, and lover of all biotas since 2005. Keri’s area of research and focus is on environmental justice and ecology in social work education. Keri is also a practicing LCSW, focusing on the intersection of mental health and nature as a microcosm of relational dynamics. Keri is located in Central Wisconsin, the ancestral and unceded land of the Menomini and Anishinebewaki Nation.

Dr. Brooks Zitzmann (she/her) is a social work educator and practitioner with interests in spirituality and mental health, ecopsychology, and environmental justice. In both roles, she is passionate about building conceptual bridges and meaningful insights into the relationality of bio-eco-social-and-spiritual dimensions of life. She has built courses on ‘environmental justice as social work practice’ and on ‘sustenance and sustainability’ addressing urban land use for multi-solving eco-social problems. She has conducted qualitative research on community resilience post-Katrina and the process of ‘ecological conversion.’ She has served on the CSWE national taskforce to build the Curriculum Guide for Environmental Justice in Social Work Practice. Currently, she teaches at Tulane University and practices as a clinician. She has a personal daily meditation practice, co-facilitates hiking retreats, loves her corgis, and cares for her pollinator-friendly garden as ways to personally live out her sense of kinship with the more-than-human world.