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School of Social Work receives grant
The School of Social Work has received a $225,000 three-year federal grant to initiate a certificate program in public child welfare for the bachelor of social work degree. Paul Ammons, senior associate professor and director of the B.S.W. program, is project director. He will be supported by James Gaudin, professor of social work, and Alberta Ellett, assistant professor of social work.
“We are delighted to have this federal support to prepare B.S.W.-level social workers for practice in child welfare,” says School of Social Work Dean Bonnie L. Yegidis. “There is a critical need in the state of Georgia for social workers trained to help abused and neglected children and their families.”
Presently less than 10 percent of the more than 3,000 child welfare workers employed by the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services have professional social work degrees at the bachelor or master’s levels.
The grant will enable faculty, students, field instructors and child welfare agency personnel to collaborate in developing the curriculum for students who are committed to social work practice in public child welfare.
Education grant funds ‘Project Shop’
Three faculty in the College of Education are working to develop a 30-minute interactive video and CD-ROM that will help teach functional community skills to students with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities.
Project Shop is a partnership between two of the college’s departments, instructional technology and special education, two local school districts and private business. John Langone, head of special education; Lloyd Rieber, head of instructional technology; and Tom Clees, associate professor of special education, are project directors.
Parents, students with disabilities and teachers from Oconee, Oglethorpe and Greene counties will participate in the project. ASV, Inc., an Atlanta-based video production company, and Publix Super Markets, Inc., are commercial partners in the venture.
Funded by a two-year, $348,464 grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the project will create instructional materials using state-of-the-art computer technology to help these individuals acquire skills in employment, functional literacy, mobility and purchasing.
Moot court team heads to nationals
Three law school students are headed to the finals of the National Moot Court Competition--the nation’s oldest and most prestigious moot court tournament--and two mock trial teams also fared well in recent competition.
UGA’s moot court team of third-year students Jennifer Auer, Anne Allen Westbrook and Charlie Bethel was undefeated in the regional competition. They were awarded best team and best brief honors, and Bethel was selected as the tournament’s best oralist. They successfully argued the constitutionality of the federal wiretapping statute as it applies to media defendants and whether the civil damages provision of the statute confers discretionary power to district courts or whether the damages are mandatory in each case of a violation. The team will face 23 other teams--the top two from each region--in the national finals in New York City the week of Jan. 29.
UGA also finished second and won best brief honors in the Georgetown White Collar Crime Mock Trial Invitational, held in Washington, D.C. Third-year students Carin Burford and Kevin Weimer and second-year students Todd Hayes and Julie Hall advocated a hypothetical case of securities fraud.
In another mock trial competition, third-year students Scott Lenhart, Laura Peel, Lisa Muller and Steve Schroeder and second-year students Michael Cates, Laura Linville, John Oliphant and Stephanie Palmer finished fifth in the William Daniel Mock Trial Competition in Atlanta. Recognized as the most professional team in the competition, team members presented a hypothetical case involving domestic violence. |
