This document presents biographies of students who are currently enrolled in
the Doctoral Program at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve
University. It illustrates the breadth of experience that our students bring to their studies,
including experience in research, teaching, social work practice, and administration.
DAVID CHENOT (Cohort '02) is the CalSWEC (California Social Work Education Center:
Title IV-E) project coordinator and a lecturer in the Department of Social Work at California State
University/Bakersfield. He also maintains a private practice focusing on therapy with children and
families. David earned a Master in Divinity degree as well as an MSW and is a licensed clinical
social worker in the state of California. In addition to administering the CalSWEC program at CSUB,
David has taught introductory social work courses on the Baccalaureate level and Master's level in
Generalist Social Work Practice and HBSE. He also served as a field instructor for students from
three different universities. Prior to assuming his present position as a social work educator and
coordinator, David supervised a large team of clinicians and case managers at a county mental
health agency. Before supervising in the mental health field, David practiced social work in Child
Protective Services at a large agency in Kern County, California. David's interests include the use
of psychoanalytic theories and methodologies in social work, the effects of trauma on children and
families, and spirituality and religion in social work.
MARY ANN CLUTE (Cohort '02) is currently a faculty member at Eastern Washington
University School of Social Work, Cheney, WA. Her areas of interest include developmental
disabilities and death and dying. Mary Ann began the first Developmental Disabilities Field Unit at
the School of Social Work and developed a social services program in a children's orthopedic
hospital. She also developed and facilitated the Spokane County Birth to Three Interagency
Coordinating Council, while working as a program planner in the county developmental disabilities
office. Mary Ann has worked as a full-time case-managing hospice social worker and now continues
intermittent work as a hospice social worker along with teaching and managing an undergraduate
field unit and two graduate field units.
GLORIA HEGGE (Cohort '02) is an Assistant Professor in the MSW program at Newman
University in Wichita, KS. From 2000 to 2002, she taught practice classes and was the field work
director for all the MSW students. Prior to joining the faculty at Newman University, she worked as
a clinical social worker at COMCARE of Sedgwick County, a community mental health center, where she
worked with clients with a severe and persistent mental illness. She worked as part of an
interdisciplinary team with psychiatrists, case managers, psychologists, social workers, nurses and
many others to provide comprehensive community-based services to keep clients out of the hospital
and to enhance their quality of life in the community. Gloria provided individual and group
psychotherapy for a wide range of clients. She specialized in providing Dialectical Behavioral
Therapy for clients with mood disorders and Borderline Personality Disorder, an intervention that
proved to be surprisingly effective in improving the quality of life for the group members. Before
that, she worked as the psychotherapist on a two person Mobile Crisis Unit, which provided in-vivo
crisis interventions for clients who called the crisis phone line. The Mobile Crisis Unit also
responded to calls from police, the local jail, homeless shelters, and juvenile residential
programs. She received her MSW from the University of Kansas in 1995, with a concentration in
Mental Health. Gloria was born and raised in Japan. She speaks fluent Japanese and uses her
bi-cultural knowledge and skills in the Asian community in Wichita. She has been active as a
volunteer in the Vietnamese community, teaching English as a second language and helping Vietnamese
refugees locate needed resources. She also served on the advisory board of Healthy Options for
Planeview, a non-profit agency dedicated to improving the quality of life for the residents of
Planeview, a low-income area of Wichita, which is about one-third Asian. Gloria has given
professional workshops on the following topics: Culturally Competent Mental Health Services for
Asian Clients, Spirituality as a Tool for Social Work Practice, Buddhism and Psychotherapy,
Professional Ethics, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and about various interventions with SPMI
Clients.
JANET HOY (Cohort '02) was previously employed as an intake counselor at the
Center for Families and Children in Cleveland, OH. Janet has worked in the Cuyahoga County
community mental health system for nearly 10 years, working as an outreach case manager for West
Side Community Mental Health Center (WSCMHC). While employed with WSCMHC, she worked with
Synthesis, Inc. on a multi-year research team to develop and implement outcome-based mental health
service delivery models. Janet has also worked as a grants writer and special projects manager for
Cleveland Scholarship Programs, where she wrote a successfully funded proposal for the first
college access advisor curriculum and certification program in the country. She has done freelance
grant writing and program development for a wide range of non-profit organizations, including The
Cleveland Film Society and the Animals' Disaster Team in Ohio. Her academic interests include
innovating cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques for individuals with severe mental
illness; developing and evaluating community interventions that address violence
cross-categorically rather than through fragmented (i.e., child abuse, domestic violence, elder
abuse, and animal abuse) service delivery systems; and,pre examining relationships among democratic
processes, community development practices, corporations, and poverty. Janet holds a BSW from
Bowling Green State University and a MSSA from Case Western Reserve University.
PAMELA JOHNSON (Cohort '02) has worked in human service settings for the past 25
years, first as a registered nurse and then as a social worker. Past nursing practice
settings include burn intensive care, neonatal intensive care, adult psychiatric inpatient, and
pediatric respite care for children with pervasive developmental disabilities. She completed
an MSW at Syracuse University in 2001, subsequently worked as a clinician in an outpatient
substance abuse clinic, and is currently a clinician at the Ithaca College Counseling Center.
Areas of academic and research interest include: social science research theory and methods; the
biopsychology of aggression; issues of substance abuse and addiction; the biopsychology of trauma
and memory; developmental traumatology and the etiology of psychopathology; the history and
philosophy of science, particularly the sociology of psychiatric diagnosis; organizational culture
and sociopolitical issures in American medicine and the health professions. Co-author of
articles published in
The Journal of Aggression and Violent Behavior and
Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addiction, of a chapter on the intergenerational
transmission of family violence, and another on correlates of violence against women. Worked
as Project Coordinator for the NIDA-funded pilot study
Personal Social Networks of Women with Co-occurring Substance Abuse and Mental Disorders
(Dr. E. Tracy, PI), and
Families of Women with Co0occurring Substance Abuse and Mental Disorders (Dr. D. Biegel,
PI), June 2003-4. Recipient,
Brody Institute Dissertation Award 2004-5. Taught as an adjunct instructor at the
Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Ithaca College, and Syracuse University
ARAVINDHAN NATARAJAN (Cohort '02) received his MSW from Madras Christian College
(under the University of Madras). He studied alcohol consumption and related problems among
sanitary workers in the suburbs of Chennai (Madras), India, for his MA dissertation. After graduate
school, he earned an MPhil degree in psychiatric social work from the National Institute of Mental
Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, India. At NIMHANS, he underwent training in family
systems therapy, cognitive-behavior therapy, psychosocial rehabilitation, group therapy and
community mental health. The training involved work with patients suffering from alcohol
dependence, depression, bi-polar affective disorder, schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive
disorder. After the MPhil degree program he joined NIMHANS as a Research Fellow where he worked
with patients suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder. He passed the State Level Educational
Testing for lectureship (approved by the University Grants Commission) which makes him eligible for
lectureship in schools of social work throughout India.
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