Sherry Cummings
President
scumming@utk.edu

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
College of Social Work
http://www.csw.utk.edu

Sherry M. Cummings, Ph.D., is Associate Dean and Associate Professor in the College of Social Work at the University of Tennessee. She is the current president of Association for Gerontological Education in Social Work (AGE-SW). Dr. Cummings was a John A. Hartford Gerontological Faculty Scholar, 2001-2003. Dr. Cummings’ research focuses on aging and mental health, especially issues related to depression among older adults in diverse settings including assisted living and the community, and on older adults with severe mental illness. Additionally, her research explores the impact of such mental health issues on familial caregivers. Her research has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals in the social work, gerontological and mental health arenas. Her publications include Cummings, S. M & Galambos, C. (Eds.). (2004). Diversity and aging in the social environment. New York: Haworth Press and Cummings, S. C. & Kropf, N. P. Handbook of Psychosocial Interventions with Older Adults: Evidence-Based Approaches, which will be published by Haworth Press in April 2008.

Carmen Morano
Vice President
cmorano@hunter.cuny.edu

Hunter College
http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/socwork/

Marla Berg-Weger
Past President
bergwm@slu.edu

St. Louis University
http://www.slu.edu/x7041.xml

Marla Berg-Weger, Ph.D., LCSW, is the Senior Associate Provost for Academic Affairs at Saint Louis University and a Professor in the School of Social Work and additionally is currently serving as the Interim Dean of the College of Public Service. Her scholarly work has focused on aging, family caregiving and social work practice. She has written two books and nearly thirty book chapters and journal articles in these areas. For the past five years, she has been a member of an interprofessional team focused on research and education in the area of older adults and driving. In addition to working as a social work scholar and educator, Dr. Berg-Weger has been a social worker for over twenty-five years and worked in the areas of aging services, medical social work, domestic violence treatment and mental health services. She is the recent president of the Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work, a national organization of social work faculty and students committed to educating social workers on aging-related issues.

Ashley Brooks-Danso

CSWE Gero-Ed Center
www.gero-edcenter.org/

Ashley Brooks-Danso is Co-Director of the John A. Hartford-funded Gero-Ed Center (National Center for Gerontological Social Work Education), which is housed at the Council on Social Work Education. She holds a Bachelor of Social Work degree from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and a Master of Social Work degree from George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. With a history of direct practice in various geriatric long-term care settings, including nursing homes, assisted livings and State regulation, Ashley’s primary area of interest is in gerontology and social work administration. Gerontology topic areas of interest include: long-term care, dementia, HIV, mental health, research and education. Prior to her position at CSWE, she was Project Coordinator for a geriatric mental health research study at Washington University, lead by Drs. Nancy Morrow-Howell and Enola Proctor. She also serves as adjunct faculty at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and as a PRN social worker at Inova Alexandria Hospital at Alexandria, Virginia.

Teri Knutson Kennedy
terikennedy@asu.edu

Arizona State University

Kyaien OQuinn
Student Representative

University of Pittsburgh

Debra Parker-Oliver
oliverdr@missouri.edu

University of Missouri-Columbia
http://www.fcm.missouri.edu/

Dr. Debra Parker-Oliver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia (MU), School of Medicine. Dr. Parker-Oliver has eight years of applied research experience, including research in hospice and long term care. In addition, she has been awarded or overseen over $500,000 in grant funding. She is a John A Hartford Faculty Scholar. She is currently PI on a project funded by the National Cancer Institute exploring the use of videophone technology to assist hospice caregivers. She was recently awarded the Social Work Leadership Award from the Social Work Hospice and Palliative Care Network.

Joe Pickard
pickardj@umsl.edu

University of Missouri-Saint Louis
http://www.umsl.edu/~socialwk/

Joe Pickard, PhD, LCSW is an Assistant Professor who completed his Ph.D. at Washington University in Saint Louis and received his MSW from SIU-Carbondale. Joe is an LCSW and has worked with older adults, as a school social worker, and with substance abusing adults. His research interests include aging and mental health, help seeking patterns of older adults, aging in place, religiosity/spirituality and aging, and counseling services that clergy provide to older adults. Joe was a Hartford Doctoral Fellow while at Washington University in Saint Louis, and he is the primary investigator (PI) on a research project titled An Examination of Older Adults' Help Seeking from Clergy in Saint Louis County. Joe teaches practice courses, human behavior, and a course on social work practice with aging clients. Joe is happy to be a member of the School of Social Work faculty, and he states that he really enjoys the UM-Saint Louis students.

Anissa Rogers
Past Vice President
rogers@up.edu

University of Portland
http://www.up.edu/

Anissa Rogers is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon, where she has been teaching since 1999. She also serves as the Director of the Practicum Program. She teaches courses across the social work curriculum as well as courses on the body, human sexuality, interviewing and counseling, and international social work in Morelia, Mexico. Before coming to the University of Portland, she taught at Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire for two years.

Recently, Dr. Rogers has been developing gerontology-related placements and programs for undergraduate social work students in addition to conducting cross-cultural research on health and mental health needs of Latino and Latino-American elders. Dr. Rogers also served on the board for Oregon’s chapter of NASW, for which she served as co-chair of the Elders’ Concerns Council. In addition to her work in gerontology, Dr. Rogers has been involved in various community-based clinical and research projects with the Hispanic community in Portland.

Philip Rozario
rozario@adelphi.edu

Adelphi University
http://socialwork.adelphi.edu/

Sara Sanders
Sara-sanders@uiowa.edu

University of Iowa
http://www.uiowa.edu/~socialwk/

Dr. Sara Sanders is an assistant professor at the University of Iowa, School of Social Work. She obtained her Bachelor of Social Work from St. Olaf College in 1994, Master of Social Work degree from the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in 1995, and her Ph.D from the University of Maryland in 2002. Her research interests pertain to grief and loss reactions in caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer's disease, male caregiver issues, and the impact of client suicide on social workers. Clinically, Dr. Sanders has worked as a hospice social worker and a chapter of the Alzheimer's Association.

Tracey Schroepfer
Awards Committee Chair
tschroepfer@wisc.edu

University of Wisconsin-Madison
http://socwork.wisc.edu/

Dr. Schroepfer is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Social Work and is affiliated with the University’s Institute on Aging, Comprehensive Cancer Center, Center on Patient Partnerships, and Department of Population Health Sciences. She is a recipient of the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholar Award, a national award that provides support for one of her current research projects: the development of an instrument to assess the psychosocial and spiritual needs of terminally ill elders.

Dr. Schroepfer is also the Principal Investigator on Partners Building Bridges: Reducing Cancer Health Disparities in Wisconsin, a research project that seeks to assess the access to, and the quality of, cancer care in nine medically underserved Wisconsin communities. Using a newly developed research model, community leaders and the research team use the assessment information to set priorities concerning cancer issues, and develop culturally specific interventions, which are then implemented and tested with the goal of reducing the higher burden of cancer deaths in these communities.

In addition being on the AGESW Board, Dr. Schroepfer is member of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, the American Geriatrics Society, the Association for Death Education and Counseling, the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education, the Gerontological Society of America, the National Association for Social Workers, and the Society for Social Work and Research. She has authored or co-authored 14 journal articles and 2 book chapters.

Karen Zurlo
Student Representative

University of Pennsylvania