{"id":219631,"date":"2024-10-08T08:05:35","date_gmt":"2024-10-08T12:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=219631"},"modified":"2025-09-09T07:41:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T11:41:24","slug":"professor-earns-prestigious-award-for-advancing-education-in-international-social-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2024\/10\/professor-earns-prestigious-award-for-advancing-education-in-international-social-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Earns Prestigious Award for Advancing Education in International Social Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty years ago, when Rebecca Thomas joined the UConn School of Social Work<\/a>, she didn\u2019t consider herself someone who specialized in global human rights \u2013 let alone someone who\u2019d become an expert in the subject matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just Rebecca, born and raised in another country, sensitive to issues of global concerns,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Then Thomas met colleague Lynne Healey, now a professor emeritus from UConn, who became a mentor, friend, and colleague. Together, they coupled on many projects, including the literal writing of their widely recognized textbook, \u201cInternational Social Work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas says her professional development as an international social worker helped shape her sense of self. And soon, \u201cjust Rebecca,\u201d became chair of the Council on Social Work Education\u2019s Global Commission, a current board member on the Katherine Kendall Institute of Council of Social Work Education, a Fulbright Scholar, and a representative of the International Association of the Schools of Social Work on the NGO Committee on Migration at the United Nations.<\/p>\n

Now, she\u2019s a 2024 PIE Award winner<\/a> from the Council on Social Work Education, a prestigious honor given annually to a trio of winners – individual, organization, and student \u2013 for their innovative work and dedication to international social work.<\/p>\n

The Partners in International Education awards precede the Hokenstad International Lecture at the 2024 CSWE Annual Program Meeting in late October.<\/p>\n

\u201cI vacillate between feeling like I have a strong knowledge base and being humbled by the vast body of knowledge of colleagues,\u201d says Thomas, a UConn professor and director of the Center for International Social Work Studies, which just celebrated its 30th anniversary. \u201cI recently was with the Southeast Europe Academic Women\u2019s Leadership Network, for instance, and these women were from all over the Balkans and talking about their global perspective on social work. The adage applies, \u2018The more you know, the more you realize how much you don\u2019t know.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas has just returned from her Fulbright in Bulgaria where she and graduate assistant Fizza Saghir completed 30 interviews with displaced persons, many from Ukraine, and 20 interviews with service providers as part of a study that\u2019s similar to one she did in Armenia.<\/p>\n

She says she connected with Yerevan State University in Armenia years ago when UConn helped the school develop its Master of Social Work policy program. Now, Thomas directs a joint academic exchange between UConn and Yerevan.<\/p>\n

Despite the leadership opportunities and accolades she\u2019s earned, working with students is perhaps one of the things she\u2019s most proud of, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m passionate about teaching. I get excited about the exchange of ideas,\u201d Thomas says. \u201cHelping students to see the interconnectedness of global issues and the local issues they are trying to address here in Connecticut is so important. Yesterday, I was talking to a doctoral student about a paper we\u2019re writing together, and our discussion was so interesting because we each had different perspectives. Engaging in a dialogue, having off-the-cuff conversations has been meaningful to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She adds that students need to understand they don\u2019t have to spend time overseas to do international global work. Change can happen right here, like when a former student, who was a refugee from Albania via Greece, was in kindergarten and the school saw her struggling because of the language barrier. Her elementary teacher got someone to translate, and her learning exploded.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Americans, we see migrants in every sphere of our lives. They are in our classrooms. They are in our health systems. Our NESW code of ethics requires that we understand the perspectives of those who are living together here in community,\u201d Thomas says. \u201cWe need to be sensitive to issues of immigration, like for my former student. These are not isolated situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more about Thomas\u2019 work here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Helping students to see the interconnectedness of global issues and the local issues they are trying to address here in Connecticut is so important’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":219633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1870],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-219631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ssw"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 05:50:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219631"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219635,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219631\/revisions\/219635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/219633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219631"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=219631"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=219631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}