FACULTY-STAFF EXCELLENCE
Making hard questions easier
A mobile app developed and released by Assistant Professor Adrienne Baldwin-White, Ph.D., is making it easier for health care providers to ask trauma-informed questions about their patients’ safety and well-being. T.I.M.E. (Trauma Informed Medicine Education) includes sections on the impact of trauma, best practices for providing trauma-informed care and forensic exams, how to set up an exam space that is trauma-informed and self-care tips for providers.
“Medical students understand the importance of trauma-informed care in medicine,” Baldwin-White says. “Having a trauma-informed approach means you can actually do your job better as a doctor.” ⇨ Learn more
Complementary fashion
A business partnership formed with a couple in Ghana helped Associate Professor Maurice Gattis, Ph.D., create a fashion line, Fort Mosé 1738, that carries a line of contemporary West African fashions. Fort Mosé 1738 refers to the first free Black community in the U.S., founded in 1738 for formerly enslaved people from West Africa. The company’s designs, created by his Ghanaian partners, are sold in-store and online via custom order and have been featured in fashion shows in Richmond and Washington, D.C.
“I think it complements working with LGBTQ youth and homelessness,” Gattis says. “It complements my discipline of macro social work and community development because this was a family (in Ghana) looking to expand their financial abilities.” ⇨ Learn more
Turning ‘Rage’ into verse
The fatal shootings in Monterey Park, California, during the Lunar New Year in January 2022 brought back painful memories for Assistant Professor Hollee McGinnis, Ph.D. To help process her emotions, she shared a poem with her M.S.W. social policy class, written in the aftermath of the 2021 killings in Atlanta that targeted victims of Asian descent.
“Rage” was presented at the Utah Women’s Narratives performance and subsequently published in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. “As is typical, when it is your in-group that is being hurt, you hurt that much more,” McGinnis told her students. ⇨ Learn more
Sharing her distinguished experience
Three-time VCU alum Shenita Williams, Ph.D., brought 25 years of experience as a school social worker when she joined the School of Social Work in 2022 as director of field education. She also brought honors with the VCU Distinguished Dissertation Award and the School of Education Distinguished Dissertation Award as she completed her doctoral degree.
Her dissertation identified the necessary components for school-based mental health systems to successfully address mental health needs of Black students. “I want the next generation of social workers to know they have the opportunity to effect change at a micro level, macro level and everything in between by collaborating with professionals in other fields of study,” Williams says. ⇨ Learn more