Richard D. Ager, Associate Professor; Director, Porter-Cason Institute; Director, Center for Life Long Learning; LCSW, Ph.D., University of Michigan in Psychology and Social Work.
Dr. Ager’s major areas of interest and research expertise are substance abuse, treatment outcome, family practice, and teaching/training counselors and students in evidence-based practices. As Director of the Porter Cason Institute, Ager facilitates the development and provisions of training in advanced family practice to students, faculty and community practitioners. As Director of the Center for Life Long Learning, Ager brings in experts speakers to provide workshops to help social workers keep abreast of current practices in our field.  Ager’s current research interest focuses on adapting an evidence-based practice employed in substance abuse to intimate partner violence. Dr. Ager’s teaching background includes clinical and community practice, organizational theory, human behavior and the social environment, qualitative research, and addictions.

Stephanie Baus, Clinical Assistant Professor; Ph.D., MSW, Tulane School of Social Work.
Professor Baus has practice experience in clinical social work, clinical supervision, research and administration. She currently teaches in the areas of critical thinking, team building, Evidence-based Practice, knowledge generation in social work (qualitative and quantitative research methods), data analysis and preparing students to complete the professional project. Her primary research interests are adult cognitive development and learning, innovations in social work education, and curriculum development and evaluation.

Fred Buttell, Professor; Director, Wisner Center for Research on Children and Families, Tulane School of Social Work; MSW, Ph.D., University of Alabama.
Dr. Buttell has extensive experience in providing social work intervention services to clients in community-based correction programs and in evaluating the effectiveness of these social work interventions. He teaches courses in clinical practice, HBSE, and research methods. Buttell's latest research interests focus on improving family functioning through the elimination of domestic violence and his primary research interest is on improving the effectiveness of batterer intervention programs.

Rebecca A. Chaisson, Assistant Professor; LCSW, MSW, Ph.D. Tulane University School of Social Work.
Dr. Chaisson has extensive practice experience in clinical work with individuals, couples, and families. In addition, she is an experienced administrator, trainer, consultant, and supervisor. Her current interests include cultural competency, cultural equity, and racial equity and social justice.

Charles R. Figley, Professor, Paul Henry Kurzweg Distinguished Chair; Director, Tulane Traumatology Institute; Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University.
Dr. Figley came to Tulane from Florida State University in July 2008. At FSU he was a full professor in the College of Social Work. He reached full professor status in 1983 at Purdue University, moved to FSU in 1989 and became director of the oldest Interdivisional Ph.D. Program in Marriage and Family (established in 1950). While there, Dr. Figley established the FSU Traumatology Institute in 1998 to focus on traumatic stress resilience. In 2000, the Institute was recognized as the best program of its kind by the University Continuing Education Association.

Dr. Figley received both graduate degrees from the Pennsylvania State University and his undergraduate degree from the University of Hawaii (all in the interdisciplinary field of human development). He has been editor of a number of journals (e.g., the Founding editor of the Journal of Traumatic Stress) and book series (e.g., the Innovations in Psychology book series with Taylor & Francis). Dr. Figley's current editorships include Editor (founder), Traumatology, the International Journal, 1995-present and Editor (founder), Routledge (formerly Brunner/Mazel ) Psychosocial Stress Book Series , 1983-present. He has published more than 200 scholarly works including twenty books and 114 refereed journal articles that reported on more than 35 research projects focusing primarily on stress and resiliency of individuals, families, and communities.

He is an elected fellow of five of the leading national professional associations and received many other honors in recognition for his scholarship. Dr. Figley is the recipient of numerous lectureships throughout the world including Northern Ireland, South Africa, England, Australia, Canada, and universities through the United States. He was awarded a senior Fulbright Research Fellowship to conduct research in Kuwait in 2004 and follow-up on work that was started in 1992, shortly after the liberation from and end of the occupation by Iraq. In 2004, Dr. Figley was named lifetime Alumni Fellow by the Pennsylvania State University, the highest honor awarded to its graduates.

So’Nia Gilkey, Assistant Professor; LCSW; LCDR; MSW, Clark University (1997); Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh.
Professor Gilkey is an assistant professor in the Tulane Graduate School of Social Work and a Lieutenant Commander Inactive Reserve Corp member for the National Public Health Services Corp. She is a licensed clinical social worker who has spent her career working in practice settings that focus on child and family wellbeing. Her areas of expertise include issues related to homelessness; traumatic experiences of children and families; psychosocial factors impacting wellbeing and resilience in vulnerable groups; disaster mental health in children and families; and psychosocial wellbeing of people living with HIV/AIDS. She has research publications on homelessness, children and disaster, and pediatric brain injuries; and has presented at several national and international conferences on related topics.

Dr. Gilkey currently serves as a co-developer and faculty instructor of an HIV/AIDS certificate program for people living with HIV/AIDS in Rwanda, East Africa as part of a collaborative project with the Tulane Payson Center for International Development and Tulane School of Social Work. In addition, Dr. Gilkey teaches core courses on international social work, and oversees student led research projects in international settings. Dr. Gilkey serves as a consultant for the Louisiana Department of Health and Human Services on issues related to children, families and disaster, and has participated in two national documentaries on post-disaster mental health and long-term recovery for children, families and social workers who serve as mental health first responders post-disaster.

Heather Gillis, Clinical Assistant Professor, Director of Field Education and Coordinator of TSSW's Community Service/Federal Work Study Program; Ph.D., Tulane School of Social Work; MSSW, University of Tennessee.
Since 1999, Professor Gillis has focused her teaching efforts on field education, methods of practice, learning and research for practice, and preparing students to complete the professional project. Professor Gillis is a licensed clinical social worker and a board-approved clinical supervisor who has worked in direct practice for more than 20 years.

Laura Haas, Clinical Associate Professor; Ph.D., Tulane University; MBA, Georgia State University.
Dr. Haas joined the School of Social Work in May 2012 after spending several years as a highly productive member of the Payson Center for International Development and the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She has served as the full time country director based in Rwanda and was responsible for overseeing numerous large scale research and capacity building projects in Rwanda. At Tulane, Dr. Haas will provide the School with a wide variety of grant and programmatic support. See her CV for a full listing of her academic projects.

With the School of Social Work, Dr. Haas is based full time in Washington, D.C., where she is the director of the Knowledge Center of the National Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU).  The Knowledge Center was developed in 2007 to strengthen the capacity of African higher education institutions through the development of partnerships between African and U.S. higher education institutions.  Laura, in her role as director, will be concentrating on the following goals:

• Increase investments in long term African-U.S. higher education partnerships;
• Increase awareness of the importance of higher education (HE) to development in Africa;
• Assist in the development and strengthening of African-U.S. higher education partnerships; and
• Build capacity for HE institutions to be more effective in development.
  
  

Madeline Lee, Assistant Professor; MSSW, Columbia University; Ph.D., Washington University.
Dr. Lee’s broad research interest is in improving services for vulnerable children and families involved in the intersection of the mental health, child welfare, and special education systems. This interest is inspired by her direct social work practice as a clinician at a children’s residential treatment facility in Los Angeles and her policy experience at the Council on Accreditation in New York City. Supported by the Fahs-Beck Fund for Research and Experimentation and the National Institute of Mental Health (F31 MH086218-01), Dr. Lee’s dissertation began to explore accreditation as a potential tool for quality improvement at children’s mental health agencies.

Dr. Lee holds a PhD from the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis where she was an NIMH Pre-Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Mental Health Services Research. She received her Master of Science in Social Work from Columbia University and her bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles. Reflecting her experience and interests, Dr. Lee teaches in the areas of social welfare policy and research methods. 

Judith S. Lewis, Associate Professor; MSW, Syracuse University, Ph.D., University of Maryland.
Dr. Lewis has taught courses across the curriculum including research, human behavior, practice methods, and field.  Her research interests and activities center around campus and community violence prevention, social justice models for clinical/community practice, resilience in older adults, and integration of field and curriculum.  Dr. Lewis is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and a Board Approved Clinical Supervisor (BACS) with particular practice expertise in the area of social work with groups.

Marva L. Lewis, Associate Professor, Ph.D. in Sociocultural Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder.
Dr. Lewis' program of research focuses on the development of culturally valid research methods and measures of racism-based stress during pregnancy, Colorism in African American families, and parental acceptance or rejection of children. Specifically her basic and applied research includes:

1. Basic research on racism-based stress as an unrecognized factor in racial disparities in perinatal infant outcomes in African American women.
2. Applied research using narrative therapy techniques and measures to strengthen African American family intergenerational relationships based on issues of Colorism as a legacy of the historical trauma of slavery.
3. The prevention and reduction of child abuse and neglect and strengthening parent-child attachment through the use of the hair combing task, and a parent-education curriculum, Talk, Touch & Listen While Combing Hair, for use with a  community-based parent support group using visualization methods and peer support, infant mental health concepts and techniques.
4. The development of an evidenced-based tool for use by individuals, organizations, and groups on the topic of Diversity, Privilege and Oppression.

Ronald E. Marks, Dean; M.P.H., M.S.W., Ph.D.
Dr. Marks is dean of the School of Social Work at Tulane University where he has been a professor for twenty years.  Prior to becoming dean, he served in various capacities at the School including associate dean and director of the MSW program, director of the doctoral program and director of the gerontology center.

As Dean of the school, he supervises 18 full time faculty and 15 adjunct faculty, 12 staff and oversees the operation of the programs which serve about 250 graduate students each year. Dr. Marks has supervised over 30 master’s theses and chaired and served on over 25 doctoral dissertations.  Many of his publications are studies of community based social service programs in the areas of adolescent life, homelessness, and family and aging services addressing the stress associated with providing care to frail aging relatives.

His Ph.D. is in social welfare from the School of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh.  He also has an MSW and a masters degree in public health.

Over the last six years, Dr. Marks has been working to establish international field opportunities for the MSW students at the School and has led programs to Central America, Cuba and most recently in north India where for the last four years he has been developing a project working with Tibetan refugees.  These programs are designed to provide opportunities for students to grow personally and professionally and see the linkage between the two.

Jane Parker, Clinical Associate Professor and Director, Institute for Psychosocial Health; Ph.D., Tulane School of Social Work; LCSW, MPH, Tulane School of Public Health; MSW, University of Southern Mississippi.
Dr. Parker is a licensed clinical social worker, teacher and administrator whose practice and research interests are in leadership development and effective crisis interventions with individuals, groups and communities. She consults with national and international companies on issues of organization development and programs to boost resiliency in primary responders.  In addition to coordinating the Certificate Program in Disaster Mental Health at TSSW, Professor Parker provides community training in supervision and psychosocial health.

Reginald Parquet, Clinical Assistant Professor; MSW, Ph.D., Tulane University.
Dr. Parquet joined the Tulane School of Social Work in August 1999. His teaching expertise is in practice, research and field seminar. Professor Parquet's primary research interests are in substance abuse intervention and treatment of at-risk, inner city children, families, and communities utilizing a strengths perspective and capacity building. Additionally, he is involved in designing and delivering community-based services and interventions, which draw upon the culture, subjugated knowledge, assets, and wisdom of the indigenous population. His current research examines the effectiveness of service variables on self-sufficiency attainment among residents of public housing.

Lynn Pearlmutter, Associate Professor; MA, Ph.D. Tulane University.
Dr. Pearlmutter served as field supervisor and adjunct professor for many years prior to joining the full-time faculty. Before joining TSSW's faculty, she worked for over 20 years in agency practices in Chicago, Berkeley, Pittsburgh and New Orleans, specializing in child, family, couples and group therapy. Dr. Pearlmutter's dissertation, practice, workshops and publications focus on her area of specialization: couples therapy.

Dr. Tonya Renee Thurman, Research Associate Professor; Country Director, Tulane International South Africa; MPH, Ph.D.
Dr. Thurman has a Masters of Public Health and PhD in International Health & Development. Dr. Thurman specializes in the areas of program design, evaluation methodologies, operations research and capacity building pertaining to initiatives for highly vulnerable children. She serves as Director of the Center for Research on Highly Vulnerable Children, a multi-disciplinary initiative dedicated to compiling an evidence base for programs serving disadvantaged children. She currently resides in South Africa as Country Director for the Tulane International office while directing several major USAID-funded longitudinal evaluation studies focused on in-country programs for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). Her activities in South Africa extend beyond rigorous evaluations to include participation in the development of individual case studies of OVC program models supported by PEPFAR, with 36 in press to date, along with ongoing technical assistance to community and government OVC stakeholders.  Also in sub-Saharan Africa, she led the first and largest U.S. government-funded series of OVC public health evaluations in Kenya and Tanzania, and played a central role in the longitudinal evaluation of a mentoring program for youth-headed households in Rwanda. Her focus on highly vulnerable children is complemented by her prior research on AIDS-related issues, such as a sexual violence study in Lesotho, Priority Local AIDS Control Studies (PLACE) in Lesotho and Malawi, and an evaluation of a case management program for people living with HIV/AIDS in Rwanda. Her experience pertaining to vulnerable children extends beyond Africa to include efforts to strengthen the design, monitoring and evaluation of programs for street children and child prostitutes within Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Closer to home, Dr. Thurman served as an evaluation specialist analyzing the impacts of a school-based psychosocial program for elementary school students affected by Hurricane Katrina. Beyond the methodological rigor of these activities, each of the projects she leads is carefully geared toward improving policy and programming for vulnerable children.  .

Qingwen Xu, Associate Professor; LL.M., New York University; PhD, University of Denver.
Qingwen Xu received her Ph.D. in social work from the University of Denver in 2002 and LL.M. from New York University in 2000.  Before joining Tulane School of Social Work, she taught at Boston College and San Francisco State University.  Her research adopts a comparative perspective and focuses on analyzing the social service law and studying its relationships with other legal systems, particularly the migration system; investigating the impact of legal vulnerability on individual and family’s health and mental health; and studying people’s perception of and behavior in the community and exploring community-based interventions to improve the health and mental health outcomes among community members.