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# Graduate Research Symposium
Event will highlight the work of master’s and doctoral students from six Boston College schools
Phil Gloudemans | University Communications | March 2024
More than 40 master’s and doctoral students from six Boston College schools will showcase their work at the Graduate Research Symposium on March 20 in the Heights Room of Corcoran Commons.
Graduate students from the four host schools—Connell School of Nursing, Lynch School of Education and Human Development, the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, and the BC School of Social Work—along with those from the Carroll School of Management, and the Woods College of Advancing Studies, will offer a 10-minute oral synopsis of their respective empirical research, followed by five minutes of audience questions, or make a brief poster presentation.
BCSSW Dean Gautam Yadama will open the convening at 8:30 a.m., followed by the poster session; oral presentations begin at 9:40 a.m., and are expected to conclude at noon. Students, faculty, and friends are invited to attend.
Deborah Hogan
The symposium—a renewal of an on-campus seminar last staged more than 10 years ago—was resurrected by BCSSW Doctoral Program Assistant Director Deborah Hogan and colleagues at each of the four host schools, primarily to “infuse a sense of community among all BC graduate students who sometimes work in silos with few opportunities to celebrate each other’s work,” noted Hogan, the event coordinator.
“Our objective is to bring together the graduate student community, and to drive a sense of belonging while demonstrating support for, and the value of, each graduate student’s research,” said Hogan, who views the symposium as a crucial element in ways to enhance formation among the more than 4,000 full- and part-time graduate students enrolled in the participating schools.  “It’s intentionally a very diverse group of presenters, discussing a very wide variety of academic pursuits.”
Applicants were recruited through outreach to BC’s Graduate Student Association, and online alerts and flyers to each of the schools. Over 50 submissions were received, and presenters were selected through a blind review process by faculty from the four host schools. The oral presentations are organized by category, ranging from “Safety in Healthcare” to “Technology and its Role in Communications and Learning.”
“I am thrilled to see this event taking place on our campus,” said BCSSW Doctoral Program Assistant Dean Christopher Salas-Wright, who earned a doctorate at BC in 2012, and presented several times in the earlier version of this event. “This symposium provides a great opportunity for our graduate students to share their work with others, to foster interdisciplinary connections, and to build community across campus.”
“We hope that we’ve re-launched an event that will serve as an annual validation for BC graduate students, and a rallying point for them as a collective,” said Hogan, who is also a presenter and a doctoral candidate in the Lynch School.
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5. BCSSW to offer new certificate in design thinking
BCSSW News
# BCSSW to offer new certificate in design thinking
Organizers said the program will prepare students to work with communities to create scalable interventions for positive social change, with a particular focus on prototyping and testing new products and services.
April 5, 2024 |
Jason Kornwitz
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For one assignment in the program, students will create low-fidelity prototypes of products using paper and digital technologies. Graphic by iStock.
The  is expanding its suite of academic offerings to include a certificate program in design thinking, a collaborative process for generating innovative solutions to thorny problems.
Organizers said the program will prepare master’s students to work with communities to create scalable interventions for positive social change, with a particular focus on prototyping and testing new products and services in partnership with the people who need them most.
“Design thinking is a natural part of what social work practice should be when we’re talking about how to solve social problems within organizations and communities,” said , an assistant professor who created the certificate in collaboration with faculty members , , , , , and . “It’s a way to think about how to engage people who are experiencing issues to find solutions.”
The program,  will go into effect in June and require students to complete three courses: Basic Skills in Macro Practice, Theories of Design Thinking for Social Change, and Practicing Design Thinking for Social Change. It is part of a growing effort by the BC Office of the Vice Provost for Research, led by Associate Vice Provost of Design and Innovation Strategies , to spur initiatives in design education, experiences, and research at multiple levels of the University.
Rakhilin, who plans to teach the two design thinking courses, said students will come away from the program knowing how to amplify the voices of marginalized stakeholders at every step of the design process. Participants will master the use of several digital platforms to facilitate remote collaboration, according to Rakhilin, a part-time faculty member who  that fosters partnerships between designers and researchers, and learn how to test the impact of new products and services on the health and wellbeing of those in need.
Assistant Professor Cal Halvorsen.
“How do we engage communities, especially people who have been marginalized for decades? And how do we hold a space for them, whether it’s a virtual space or a physical space?” said Rakhilin, listing the big questions that the program will tackle. “How do we get to a place where those people can share their honest opinions, disagree, have conflict, and design something together?”
The assignments in the design thinking courses will build on each other. One of the first assignments in Theories of Design Thinking will require students to write a proposal to incorporate community voices into a research study or existing initiative. As part of the assignment, students will be asked to describe how they would explain the purpose of the project in layperson terms, where they would host stakeholder meetings, and how they would center the needs of marginalized community members. The final project for Practicing Design Thinking for Social Change, the capstone course, will require students to create a high-fidelity prototype of a product, program, or service that solves a problem within an organization of their choice.
Halvorsen said students who complete the certificate will have a leg up in the competition for social work jobs that require leadership skills, including positions for program managers and operations directors. The coursework, he said, will ensure that they have several well-developed projects in their portfolios to show hiring managers that they understand how to work with communities on the ground.
“Students will come away with very specific tools and skills that they can run with in whatever social work jobs they end up taking from the clinical to the macro levels,” he said.
Part-time faculty member Marina Rakhilin.
BCSSW Dean  said that the certificate program aligns with the School’s commitment to addressing complex challenges in collaboration with those in need.
As he put it, “Our approach to design thinking is at the core of what social work practitioners do: deeply engage those embedded in everyday social, environmental, and economic dilemmas to create and execute viable solutions.”
At the start of the summer semester, Design Thinking for Social Change will officially become BCSSW’s latest certificate program in a subject-specific area of social work. Students may complete up to two certificates, which include programs in trauma, child welfare, and Black leadership, among many others.
Rakhilin suggested students consider the design thinking program, saying it meshes well with the core values of the social work profession.
“You don’t have to be tech savvy to specialize in design. You can be clinically-oriented or take a systems approach,” said Rakhilin, who graduated from BCSSW’s  in 2023. “We’re trying to debunk who can be a designer—and it’s anyone who can communicate well, bring people together, and understand structural inequities. That’s asking a lot, but that’s what social workers do.”
Halvorsen said Rakhilin was the first person he asked to help him create the program, noting that he got to know Rakhilin in his Basic Skills in Macro Practice course.
“Marina is a kind and empathetic person, but also brilliant,” said Halvorsen. “I can’t think of anyone who is better suited to teach these courses.”
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5. Here’s why cultural competence is so important in social work
# Here’s why cultural competence is so important in social work
Social workers who learn how to support patients with diverse values, beliefs, and behaviors have a good chance of providing quality care, BCSSW Professor Karen Bullock said at the School’s annual Pinderhughes Diversity Lecture.
April 25, 2024 |
Karen Bullock. Photo by Caitlin Cunningham for BC Photography.
Ther are profound disparities in healthcare between Black and white people across the United States.
But , the Louise McMahon Ahearn Endowed Professor at the Boston College School of Social Work, is on a quest to help reduce these stark inequalities.
Bullock presented her strategy at BCSSW’s annual  last Friday, a day after a new  from a nonprofit research group focused on healthcare issues found that Black people are more likely than white people to die before age 75 from preventable illnesses.
In her talk, Bullock contended that racial disparities in healthcare often occur when healthcare professionals lack awareness of, or consideration for, cultural and historical factors.
To help reduce these disparities, she argued that social workers should be required to have a baseline understanding of how to support patients with diverse values, beliefs, and behaviors.
And she underscored the need for practitioners to factor patients’ lived experiences into their assessments, with the end goal of providing care that meets their social, cultural, and linguistic needs.
This skill is called , one of the ethical standards described in the National Association of Social Workers’ Code of Ethics.
“Cultural competence can be actionable, measurable, and achievable,” Bullock told students, faculty, staff, and alumni who attended the lecture, which took place on Zoom. “It enables practitioners to effectively apply awareness, specialized skills, and knowledge that can guide observable practice behaviors.”
Bullock said that culturally competent social workers are particularly needed to address structural and systemic racism in the care of older adults with incurable illness and disease—a topic that she’s  for more than 25 years.
Research published in *JAMA Network Open* in 2020  that older Black adults use hospice services at a far lower rate than their white counterparts, citing a general mistrust of the healthcare system as a primary barrier to hospice use.
A comprehensive literature review, conducted at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic,  that seriously ill Black patients are less likely than white patients to have their pain properly treated, diagnosed, or managed.
And one of Bullock’s most cited studies, which won the Best Article Award from Routledge Journals in 2012,  that structural racism prevented older Black adults in Hartford, Connecticut, from accessing end-of-life care at their local hospital.
Through focus groups, Bullock discovered that their resistance to seeking care from the hospital in their own neighborhood was rooted in their memories of the past, when that facility was segregated and they were not allowed to go there.
Legally sanctioned racial segregation in hospitals ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But many older Black people remember a time when they were barred from receiving treatment from hospitals in their own communities—a legacy of racism that continues to affect their attitudes toward the U.S. healthcare system today.
> “Cultural competence can be actionable, measurable, and achievable. It enables practitioners to effectively apply awareness, specialized skills, and knowledge that can guide observable practice behaviors.”
Karen Bullock,  Louise McMahon Ahearn Endowed Professor
“We know that racism in the U.S. was legal and it was lethal,” said Bullock, who recently won a major award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine for her commitment to improving care for diverse, vulnerable, and underrepresented patient populations. “Many people died while waiting to receive care or because care was not available in their communities. Many people witnessed loved ones being turned away from healthcare systems because of their race.”
Bullock advised social workers to resist the urge to dismiss older Black patients who reject hospice care, saying people in the helping profession should refrain from compelling patients to do things that are inconsistent with their cultural preferences.
Instead of making assumptions about older Black patients based on their choices, she said, social workers should learn the history behind their reluctance to use hospice services. Armed with this knowledge, she said, they will have a better chance of understanding their patients’ decisions and providing the best care.
“In our evidence-based practices, it is important for us to think about the cultural aspects and implications of our frameworks and our methods,” said Bullock. “As we work with older adults,” she added, “we really need to think about racism as a traumatic experience.”
She recommended social work curriculums include the topic of race, medicine, and healthcare in the U.S.
“For those of us teaching in the area of healthcare, are we teaching this content?” she asked rhetorically. “Are we competent in these areas to be able to teach about these atrocities and to teach our students or even our colleagues when we are facilitating workshops and trainings?”
Bullock credited the pioneering work of the lecture series’ namesake, Professor Emerita , with helping her find her professional calling. Her seminal research, published in the 1980s, revealed that race, ethnicity, and power strongly influence how social workers interact with clients.
“I can say that I feel that I stand on your shoulders,” Bullock told Pinderhughes, who attended the virtual lecture. “I have been reading your work and citing your work since I was a BSW student, and to be the Pinderhughes lecturer for 2024 feels like I’ve come full circle.”
Pinderhughes praised Bullock’s talk. “I am impressed with the extent of your knowledge, the dedication that you have for the material, and I want to wish you success in your future endeavors.”