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 BEIMERS (Cohort '04) most recently worked for Ramsey County in St.
Paul, MN. David was a planner for Workforce Solutions, the Employment and Training division
of Ramsey County. Primarily, David served as project manager for a U.S. Dept. of Labor Youth
Offender Demonstration Project, which focused on assisting youth offenders in transitioning back
into the community, gaining employment and training skills, completing their education and avoiding
reincarceration. In addition to managing the two and a half year youth offender project,
David administered the county's Workforce Investment Act Youth programs, Minnesota Youth Programs,
and the City of St. Paul's summer youth employment programs. In 2002, David was selected to
participate in the inaugural class of the National Youth Employment Coalition's WIA Leaders
Academy. Prior to working for Ramsey County, David was a Community Specialist with the
Minnesota Center for Crime Victims Services, where he provided grant administration, training and
technical assistance to community-based battered women, sexual assault and general crime
programs. David's research interests include youth employment, juvenile delinquency, program
evaluation and social welfare policy. David received his Master of Social Work degree from
Augsburg College in Minneapolis in 2000 and received his Bachelor of Arts from Macalester College
in St. Paul in 1992. The title of his MSW thesis was "Policy analysis of employment services
of the Minnesota Family Investment Program."
 BOB HERMAN (Cohort '04) worked as a staff psychologist in North
Carolina's Division of Public Health for 12 years, before enrolling in the doctoral program at
MSASS. The majority of his professional experience is in early childhood intervention.
His varied professional experiences include direct developmental and behavioral intervention, child
and family assessment, program planning, clinical supervision, and program consultation to early
childhood educational and mental health programs. Since completing graduate work in
psychology at Duquesne University in 1987, Bob has worked as a researcher on projects examining the
relationship between long-term health outcomes and family stress and coping in pediatric organ
transplant recipients. He has also served as an instructor, designing and teaching courses in
typical and exceptional child development. He operated a private mental health consulting
firm for 4 years. His work in the public sector earned him the Ketner Award for innovations
in North Carolina state government. In 2003, Bob earned an MSW with an emphasis on Health and
Mental Health Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During the past 2
years, he has led a pilot project in personnel preparation for early childhood
interventionists. He has made numerous conference presentations related to health care social
work, most recently at the University of South Carolina Social Policy Conference and the North
Carolina Early Intervention Training and Technical Assistance System meeting. His interests
include early childhood intervention, health outcomes related to health care literacy, and health
care policy that is supportive of both traditional and nontraditional families.
 CHARLES HOWARD IV (Cohort ‘04) currently works as the Executive
Director of CURE Children's Hospital of Uganda (CHU) in Mbale, Uganda. The hospital is a
member of CURE International's growing network of not-for-profit, pediatric surgical, teaching
hospitals in the developing world. CHU is a forty-bed facility specializing in children with
neurosurgical needs. In this position he is responsible for the overall operations of the
hospital, and the organization in Uganda. He just completed his third year in this position
and with CURE International. Prior to this, he worked at a Foster Care and Adoption agency, The
Bair Foundation, in Harrisburg, PA. As the Director of Intake, he was responsible for the
recruitment, training, licensing and retention of foster parents. Selection and placement of
foster children were also significant responsibilities of this position. During this time, he
was exposed to Attachment Therapy in addition to attending training at the Theraplay Institute in
Chicago. He continues to maintain his social work license in PA. Charles received his M.S.W.
and M.A. in Public Policy and Management from The Ohio State University in 1997. His field
placements for the M.S.W. program were conducted at Richland County Children's Services Bureau in
the sexual abuse, intake, on-going and residential units. From 1990-1995, he gained
additional professional experience working for a Council on Substance Abuse as a prevention
educator in school systems. He has also done work with both adventure-based programs and
youth centers in addition to other administrative work in Africa.
 MATT MENDENHALL (Cohort ‘04) received his master's of social work degree
from St. Ambrose University School of Social Work, Davenport, Iowa in 2002. Prior to receiving his
master's degree, he worked as a hospital social worker for 11 years. He has two articles published
journals related to opportunities for in medical social work professionals to impact pain
management and end of life decision making. Upon graduation from the masters program he started a
private consultancy business working with human service agencies in developing outcome measurement
systems. Specifically, Matt has been developing organization-wide outcomes for the local mental
health center and a homelessness services organization. He provides training for the staff
associated with the community's housing council. Recently, Matt was asked to be a local evaluator
for the Scott County Safe Schools Healthy Students Initiative Federal grant. He currently teaches a
research course at St Ambrose University School of Social Work. Matt has strong interest in
identifying opportunities for collaboration among community organizations and facilitating
production of data that is relatable to a broad range of community stakeholders.
 FRIDA PERALES (Cohort ‘ 04) received her BA in psychology from Edgecliff
College, Xavier University and her M.Ed. in guidance and counseling from Xavier University. Most
recently Frida has been working at MSASS as the project coordinator for both the Case University
Early Intervention Training program and the Responsive Teaching National Outreach project.
Frida has worked in the field of education for nearly 30 years. Most of her work experience
has been related to special education: she taught in self contained classrooms, worked with parents
and young children in home and center based programs, and trained graduate early intervention
students. Frida has also taught 1st, 2nd and 4th grade children in bilingual and regular
elementary schools. Frida has been integrally involved in the development of the Responsive
Teaching curriculum. RT is a relationship based early intervention curriculum that is
designed to foster children's development by promoting parent-child interaction. She
implemented RT while working as an early interventionist at CASE and at the Family Child Learning
Center in Akron, Ohio with adoptive families and families who have children with disabilities and
behavioral disorders. She has presented numerous workshops on the Responsive Teaching
curriculum to administrators and professionals in a variety of settings including state, national
and international professional conferences as well as at individual agencies. Frida is the
co-author of the Developmental Rainbow: Early Childhood Developmental Profile and four peer
reviewed journal articles. She has extensive experience providing inservice workshops to
professionals on observational procedures for assessing child development and parent-child
interaction.
 BARB PIERCE (Cohort ‘04) is Assistant Professor of Social Work at
Northwestern State University of Louisiana. She teaches Practice, Human Behavior and Child Welfare
courses in a rural BSW program. Most recently she was awarded a grant from the Louisiana
Board of Regents to put a child welfare certificate programs online and recruit state caseworkers
into the BSW program as a reprofessionalization effort in rural Louisiana. Barb has over 20
years of social work experience in agency and private practice. She has worked extensively with
women and children who have been the victims of sexual violence and has worked for the preservation
of those families whenever possible. Her first experiences in professional social work were in a
teen pregnancy and adoption program and she maintains a keen interest in child welfare and adoption
issues and continues to provide home studies for families who wish to adopt children. Within the
last 12 years she has become interested in issues related to families coping with developmental
disabilities, especially autism. Barb's first career was as an RN in maternal child nursing. She
holds the Master of Social Services and Master of Law and Social Policy degrees from the Graduate
School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College. She is an active member of
NASW, CSWE and BPD.
R. THOMAS SHERBA (Cohort ‘04) worked as a contractor for the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, GA before entering the MSASS Doctoral Program.
There, he was a health care analyst on the Prevention Research Synthesis (PRS) Project in the
Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention. Thomas' work primarily consisted of conducting systematic reviews
and meta-analyses of HIV/AIDS behavioral prevention interventions. Simultaneous to his work at CDC,
Thomas earned a Master of Science Degree in Counseling from Georgia State University (May 2004). He
recently completed two separate clinical internships in counseling. Thomas counseled children and
adolescents at a center for social skills training, and he worked with clients in therapeutic group
home settings. Prior to his work at CDC, Thomas earned a Master of Public Health Degree in
Behavioral Science and Health Education from Emory University (May 2001). While at Emory
University, Thomas was a research assistant on a study that looked at health risk behaviors of
incarcerated youth, e.g., alcohol/drug use and sex risk for STDs, including HIV. Thomas also
received practicum research experience at the Center for Child Well-being in Decatur, GA, where his
work focused on the identifying the indicators of child well-being. His master's thesis was an
analysis of alcohol use cessation among gay and lesbian youth. In addition to his training in
public health and psychotherapy, Thomas is also a certified educator. He holds a Bachelor of
Science Degree in Education from The Ohio State University (May 1996) and a Bachelor of Arts Degree
with a major in English Literature and a writing certification in Journalism form the University of
Cincinnati (September 1992). He has taught in culturally and ethnically diverse settings, spanning
the developmental continuum form kindergarten and elementary school in mainland China, to middle
school in Alpharetta, GA, to high school in central Ohio. Thomas has also taught English to
Atlanta's adult immigrant population, and he has served as a teaching assistant in the Behavioral
Science and Health Education Department of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory
University.
LESLIE STRNISHA
(Cohort '04)
has worked in the community development field for the past 9 years,
most recently as the Assistant Director of the Cleveland office of The Enterprise Foundation, a
national nonprofit organization dedicated to the mission of ensuring that all low- income
individuals have access to safe, decent and affordable housing and an opportunity to move up and
out of poverty and into the mainstream of American life. She has also worked at the Cleveland trade
association for community-based organizations and at a neighborhood development organization.
Through community development work, Leslie developed and implemented a program in Cleveland,
linking home-based child care providers with home ownership and low-cost home repair
programs. She also delivered training and technical assistant to nonprofit community-based
organizations in the areas of board development, strategic planning, comprehensive community
planning and physical development of housing and community facilities, particularly child care
centers. Leslie is interested in researching the effects on the individuals as well as the
collective group of low-income individuals served by various housing policies, particularly the
federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit, as well as other poverty-related social policies.Leslie has
a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from Indiana University and a Master of Science in Urban Studies
from Cleveland State University.
 LISA TOWNSEND (Cohort '04) received her B.A./M.A. in psychology
through the Integrated Graduate Studies Program at CWRU in 1992. She received an M.B.A. from
Weatherhead School of Management in 1997, and recently completed the M.S.S.A. program at the Mandel
School. Lisa has worked with a variety of diverse populations for the past several years,
including adults with dual chemical dependency and mental health diagnoses, women who have eating
disorders, and adolescents with depression. She has provided both crisis intervention and
group therapy services at Laurelwood Hospital for the past three years. In addition, she
spent the past year conducting depression awareness and suicide prevention groups in Cuyahoga
County high schools, a project funded by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Prior to attending MSASS, Lisa spent several years working with children and adolescents who had
bipolar disorder, depression, and disruptive behavior disorders at University Hospitals of
Cleveland. She has recently begun volunteer work with Magnolia Clubhouse, a local agency that
assists adults with mental illness in developing social networks and finding meaningful
employment. Her research interests include the developmental progression of severe mental
illness, as well as the impact of mental illness on family and social relationships. Her
current research aims are to clarify the individual, social, environmental, and cultural factors
that promote or impede optimal recovery for people who have severe mental illness.
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