NYU Silver School of Social Work

As a summer Graduate Student Assistant in our Office of Career & Professional Development, Sejal Mehta, MSW ’22, developed a bi-weekly, Instagram Live “Silver Social Change Series” to kick off the Fall 2021 semester. Based on Deepa Iyer’s Social Change Ecosystem Map, which Sejal came across in summer 2020, the series will help students identify their strengths and values and how they influence the roles they play in the pursuit of social justice.

Her own experience with early stage melanoma in her mid-20s led Meredith Ruden, MSW ’09/DSW ’18, to leave a burgeoning career in advertising sales to pursue oncology social work. Today, she is putting her NYU Silver education to work as the Clinical Director of a Manhattan group practice and as the Founder and President of The Feather Foundation, which provides online emotional, financial, and practical support for parents with cancer.

While earning his degree at Silver, Michael Sanders (front row center), MSW ’19—father, army veteran, and entrepreneur—was the vice president of the NYU Military Alliance, an NYU Social Sector Leadership Diversity Fellow, a Silver Student Leadership Council Fellow, a member of the Students of Color Collective, and one of two students on the School’s Social Justice Praxis Committee. Michael, who is now a Social Service Advocate at the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Boston, observed, “Being a social worker means fighting for social justice and never forgetting our responsibility to our clients, to ourselves, and to society as a whole.”

The communities that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 are the same ones disproportionately involved with the child welfare system. Associate Professor Darcey Merritt is studying the challenges and barriers the pandemic has posed for these vulnerable families as well the caseworkers who deliver services to them.

McSilver Associate Professor in Poverty Studies and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Robert L. Hawkins has considerable expertise in domestic and international poverty and welfare, social capital use and development, community participatory research, and race and social policy. He was selected to participate in a working group funded by the European Commission that is comprised of 30 senior American and European policymakers, academics, trade union representatives, and civil society leaders to exchange views and best practices on the future of work, with a focus on labor market change and social protection policies.