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The following awards presented by the Council on the Role and Status of Women in Social Work Education will take place at the Feminist Networking Breakfast during the CSWE Annual Conference. The Feminist Netowrking Breakfast: Saturday, October 25, 2025, 7:30 AM - 8:30 AM.
Community Impact Award
The Community Impact Award recognizes community practice, which shapes the process of social work education by exemplifying the feminist leadership models.
Please join us in celebrating the 2025 Community Impact Awardee: Dr. Mayra López-Humphreys.
Dr. Mayra López-Humphreys, Ph.D, LMSW
Associate Professor, Interim Chair, Hunter College
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Dr. Mayra López-Humphreys is an Associate Professor and Interim Chair of the Community Organizing Method at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, CUNY. A womanist Latine scholar-practitioner, her work bridges academia and community, centering participatory action research, peer mentoring, and transformative pedagogy to foster equity, healing, and systemic change. As Principal Investigator of the state-funded Homeless Services Training Resource System (HSTRS), she leads training initiatives for shelter staff across New York State, improving service delivery for justice-involved and housing-insecure populations. Through long-standing partnerships with Exodus Transitional Community in East Harlem, she has spearheaded evaluations of the Peace Brokers initiative and the Transitional Hotel Project, documenting trauma-informed, culturally grounded interventions that promote community safety, agency, and reentry success. Her pedagogical innovations include integrating Intergroup Dialogue and oral history simulation projects in her Community Organizing courses, engaging MSW students in community-rooted justice work alongside the States of Incarceration initiative. Previously, at the College of Staten Island, she led the Staten Island Equity & Belonging Project and co-directed DOHMH-funded CBPAR initiatives that amplified NYCHA resident voices in advocating for mental health equity and structural belonging. She also developed public forums centering disability justice using World Café models. Dr. López-Humphreys’ scholarship on Equity & Belonging, restorative mentoring, and affective learning is widely published. Her work embodies a womanist praxis rooted in reciprocity, relational accountability, mutual healing, and collective transformation, guiding her teaching, research, and community leadership.
Feminist Manuscript Award
The Feminist Manuscript Award recognizes manuscript authors who draw upon feminist and womanist theory, research methods, educational practices.
Please join us in celebrating the 2025 Feminist Manuscript Awardee: Dr. Sameena Azhar.
Dr. Sameena Azhar, Ph.D, LCSW, MPH
Associate Professor, Fordham University
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Sameena Azhar is an Associate Professor at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. She has over two decades of clinical and research experience in the fields of mental health, addiction and HIV care. Sameena completed a PhD from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, a Master’s in Social Work and Public Health from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice, and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a licensed clinical social worker in the states of California and Illinois. Guided by the lenses of critical race theory and postcolonial feminism, her research focuses on three main areas: (1) gender, HIV and sex work; (2) race, health and criminal legal involvement; and (3) social work practice with communities impacted by intersectional marginalization. Her research has been funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the U.S. Department of Education, the American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS), Ford Foundation, and the National Institute of Drug Abuse. She received the 2023 Best Paper Award from the Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in Social Work, the 2021 Affilia Award for Distinguished Feminist Scholarship and Praxis in Social Work, and the 2018 Society for Social Work Doctoral Fellows Award. When she is not irate with the collapse of the American social welfare state, Sameena plays jazz piano and grows black dahlias.
Student Feminist Manuscript Award
The Student Feminist Manuscript award recognizes a BSW or MSW student who shows an understanding of and dedication to the feminisms as it pertains to social work theory, research, practice, policy, and education.
Please join us in celebrating the 2025 Student Feminist Manuscript Awardee: Megan Fowler.
Megan Fowler, MSW, ACSW
Doctoral Candidate, University at Albany, SUNY
Megan (she/ze/they) is a transformative change scholar, contemplative practitioner, cultural strategist, and healing-based educator whose work resides at the generative edges of eco-social work thought. Committed to reimagining social work as a field accountable to both human and morethan-human worlds, Megan is dedicated to amplifying practices and pathways that nurture the vitality, vision, and care needed to meet the complexities of global polycrisis, where interconnected crises threaten our social, political, and ecological systems. Megan’s interdisciplinary scholarship draws from critical, decolonial, and queer eco-feminist theories, as well as contemplative wisdom traditions and planetary health discourse, to explore how embodiment and mind-body-spirit practices can catalyze individual and collective transformation. Megan’s research pays particular attention to the affective, somatic, spiritual, and relational dimensions of our climate and ecological crises—those often-overlooked experiential terrains where meaning, growth, resilience, and moral imagination are forged. Their dissertation, grounded in participatory, artsbased, and phenomenological methods, examines the lived experiences of contemplative Earth-care practitioners, tracing how mindfulness, meditation, and other somatic practices support ecological belonging, ecoemotional resilience, and future world-building. Megan’s scholarly praxis brings the inner subjective world into generative dialogue with broader systems of power, advancing an embodied research and teaching methodology rooted in reciprocity, somatic literacies, and ways of being, thinking, and relating 'otherwise,' beyond life-negating scripts and supremacist logics. Across research, pedagogy, and practice, Megan (re)envisions a future of social work as a radical and emergent invocation, one capable of co-creating just and regenerative futures toward both social and planetary well-being.
Violence Against Women and Children Award
The Violence Against Women and Children Manuscript Award is awarded to author(s) whose work most advances feminist knowledge in the field of violence against women and children. The purpose of this award is to recognize outstanding scholarship of early career scholars working in the area of violence against women and children in social work education.
Please join us in celebrating the 2025 Violence Against Women and Children Awardees: Dr. Kathryn Showalter, Dr. Katherine Marçal, Dr. Mi Sun. Choi.
Dr. Kathryn Showalter, Ph.D
Assistant Professor, University of Kentucky
Kathryn Showalter is an Assistant Professor in the College of Social Work at the University of Kentucky. She conducted a Postdoctoral Fellowship at The University of Michigan and attended The Ohio State University for her doctorate education. Dr. Showalter is interested in the intersection of intimate partner violence and the employment stability. She has developed a technology inclusive measurement of IPV and abuserinitiated workplace disruptions to better understand how survivors in various sectors of employment suffer from abuse. Dr. Showalter is motivated to study and create IPV survivor-focused policy that protects all women from discrimination in the workplace on the basis of personal violence across the U.S.
Dr. Katherine Marçal, Ph.D, MSW
Assistant Professor, Rutgers University
Dr. Marçal is as Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Rutgers University. She earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in social work from Washington University in St. Louis. Her research applies a systems science approach to investigating maternal mental health, child well-being, and family violence in housing insecure and homeless households, as well as strategies to prevent eviction and homelessness for vulnerable families with children. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
Dr. Mi Sun Choi, Ph.D
Assistant Professor, Silla University
Mi Sun Choi, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Welfare at Silla University in Busan, South Korea. She earned her doctoral degree from the College of Social Work at The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on aging and work, intergenerational relations in the workplace, and employment among marginalized populations, including older adults and women who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV). Dr. Choi is committed to developing inclusive and equitable approaches to workforce participation for vulnerable groups. Her work aims to understand the structural and psychosocial barriers these populations face in securing and maintaining employment. She has conducted both qualitative and quantitative studies to examine how social policies, workplace practices, and community-based supports influence the employment experiences of older adults and IPV survivors. Her research is grounded in mixed methods and community-based approaches, often involving collaboration with local organizations and stakeholders. In both Korea and the U.S., she has been actively involved in projects supporting age-friendly communities and employment equity initiatives. By bridging research and practice, Dr. Choi seeks to inform policy and program development that promotes social and economic inclusion. She currently serves as an affiliate of the Age-Friendly Innovation Center at The Ohio State University. She is actively engaged in international research collaborations focused on aging, work, and social justice.
Feminist Scholar Award
Feminist Scholar Award honors a scholar who advances feminist knowledge, including Womanist and Xicanism perspectives. Advancement of knowledge may be through social work theory, research, practice, policy, and education.
Please join us in celebrating the 2025 Feminist Scholar Awardee: Dr. Denise McLane-Davison.
Denise McLane-Davison, Ph.D, A.M.
Professor, Graduate Program Director, Toronto Metropolitan University
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Dr. Denise McLane-Davison is an award-winning Afrofuturistic womanist scholar, Professor, and Graduate Program Director at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), Ontario, Canada. A first-generation college graduate from Chicago’s South Side, she embodies the liberatory traditions of Black Feminist, Womanist, and Africana epistemologies. Her research spans womanist leadership, HIV/AIDS activism, health equity, and the preservation of Black social work history, including her work as former National Historian and Archivist for the National Association of Black Social Workers. As Chair of the Commission on Research and member of the Board of Directors for the Council on Social Work Education, Dr. McLane-Davison leads efforts to decolonize knowledge production and promote inclusive research infrastructures. Her 2025 Oxford University Press publication, African-Centered Social Work offers a groundbreaking research tool rooted in cultural integrity. Internationally recognized for her contributions to justice-centered pedagogy and community-based scholarship, she has received the Zenobia L. Hikes Teaching-Research Award, NASW Maryland Educator of the Year, and The HistoryMakers Digital Humanities Fellowship. Her womanist-centered leadership also extends to Advisory Board Member of Harvest Collective, TMU’s Black Food Sovereignty Initiative, and Co-Chair of Social Action Committee of the Greater Toronto Area Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. However, at her core, she is a daughter, mother, Gigi, and mentor—forever committed to cultivating freedom fighters and transforming futures.
Mentor Recognitions
The Council on the Role and Status of Women in Social Work Education is responsible for providing awareness about the status and role of individuals who identify as women in social work education. The Council works for the full participation of individuals who identify as women, uplifting the work of individuals who identify as women in social work education, and facilitating mentorships for peers, junior faculty, and students through their education journey and into leadership positions in social work education.
| 2025 Mentors | Nominators |
| Dr. Shelita Jackson | Renessa Banks, Alexis Bell, Tia Glaspie, Lila, Elliott, Kimberly Chinn |
| Dr. Denise McLane Davison | Anna Ortega-Williams |
| Dr. Johnnie Hamilton-Mason | Denise McLane-Davison |
| Dr. Saundra Starks | Denise McLane-Davison |
| Dr. Dana Wilson | Denise McLane-Davison |
| Dr. M. Sebrena Jackson | Laura Hopson |
| Dr. Yarnecia Dyson | Crystal Campbell |
| Dr. Suk-hee Kim | Sarah Martin |
| Dr. Johanna Creswell Báez | Cheryl Aguilar |
| Dr. Laneshia Conner | Rujeko Machinga-Asaolu |
| Dr. Kathryn Showalter | Rujeko Machinga-Asaolu |
| Dr. Debora Ortega | Tyler Han, Stephanie Lechuga-Pena, Ashley Daftary |
| Dr. Kristel Scoresby | Blake Conley |