School of Social Work

Congratulations to Dr. Kevin Lotz, on presenting "We Didn't Start the Fire" Field Education in the LGBTQIA+ Homeless Shelter at the 66th Annual Conference of the Council of Social Work Education (CSWE) conference.

As the founder and former executive director, the presentation focused on the fact that over the past 14 years, Trinity Place Shelter, one of the nation’s first and only shelters for homeless LGBTQ+ youth/young adults in the nation’s largest city, New York City, trained numerous BSW and MSW field placement students. The presentation focused on educational challenges encountered, lessons learned, future directions and solutions. For example, LGBTQ+ students often sought field placements within the agency because the client population was LGBTQ+.

This created opportunities and challenges, considering other vast cultural and demographic differences between students and shelter residents. The presentation helped equip attendees to engage such matters of diversity, equity and inclusion to transform challenges into assets. The presentation also discussed how the vast majority of BSW and MSW students that applied for field placements were European American (White) however 95% of all shelter residents were African American and/or Latinx. Attendees were provided with strategies to navigate matters of intersectionality and cultural sensitivity, which were generalizable to other settings. Lastly, the presentation also highlighted the myriad challenges encountered training social work students pertaining to the organizational context of a small, inner-city, independent, grassroots nonprofit agency, which served homeless LGBTQ+ youth of color yet had modest agency resources.

Dr. Katie Terhune, faculty member in the School of Social Work at NKU, is involved in an initiative with 31 other universities who have the Age-Friendly distinction. The survey being conducted will help us identify benchmarks for age-friendly programs and practices at NKU. In 2020, Northern Kentucky University became the first institution in Kentucky to join the global Age-Friendly University (AFU) initiative. The pioneering initiative highlights the role higher education can play in responding to the opportunities and challenges associated with our aging population. 

We ask you to participate in the online survey portion of the ICCS using this link:

Survey Link

This survey explores perceptions of faculty, students, and staff with respect to various age-friendly principles. All survey responses are anonymous and group summary data will be the focus of analysis.

The survey results will not only help Northern Kentucky University identify its age-friendly assets and gaps but will also help to refine what age-friendliness means in higher education and how we can broaden and deepen our efforts.

If you have questions or concerns about this study, please contact the researchers at: UMass.AFUStudy@umb.edu