Ph.D. Howard University, Washington, DC

M.S.S.W. University of Louisville, Louisville, KY

Fellowship: National Institute of Mental Health

B.S. Social Work, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL

Professional/Research Interests

• Social Justice in Child Welfare Practice

  • Utilizing a social justice framework to guide decision-making in child welfare practice.

• Implicit Bias and African American Families

  • Challenging implicit bias in social work education and preparing students to practice with African American families.

• Child Welfare Leadership and Legacy

  • The impact of leadership and opportunities in child welfare, particularly through the Mississippi Child Welfare Institute Conference.

• Service Learning at HBCUs

  • Exploring partnerships between BSW students and service learning in urban communities, focusing on the role of HBCUs.

• Scholarly Productivity of Social Work Faculty at HBCUs

  • Analyzing the scholarly output of social work faculty at HBCUs and the appropriateness of using h-index scores to measure productivity.

• Police-Involved Homicide and Black Male Victims

  • Observations and analysis of police-involved homicides of unarmed Black males, with a focus on Black scholars' perspectives during the 2014 Baltimore Uprising.

• Youth Aging Out of Foster Care

  • Resiliency, motivation, and persistence of older youth aging out of foster care and attending HBCUs.

• Organizational Environment and Child Welfare Decisions

  • Examining how the organizational environment influences child welfare workers' permanency decisions.

• Contextual Factors in Permanency Decisions

  • Investigating the contextual factors that impact permanency decisions within the public child welfare system.