RCDC I: Enhancing the Public Impact of Scholarship

Social work is an applied profession committed to respond to changing societal context and needs and to fostering social justice and equity. Consequently, it is imperative that doctoral programs prepare students to conduct and disseminate research and scholarship in ways that make positive impacts on the lives of individuals, families, and communities. The conventional focus of doctoral education is on preparing students to disseminate their scholarship within the academic community via formal academic platforms such as peer-reviewed publications and professional conferences. While these are important forums for social work as a scientific discipline, they are often inaccessible to important stakeholders including policy makers, legislators, and the very people whose lives we seek to improve. The changing landscape of technology and information dissemination, and the pace and process of policymaking in the face of dynamic and urgent circumstances (such as the COVID-19 pandemic or systemic racism as exposed by the death of George Floyd) challenge us to revisit how we communicate research and scholarship, to which audience, and via what methods. Further, dissemination of research beyond academia raises multiple ethical issues, including how researchers assess and communicate the rigor and relevance of research for specific social or policy discussions, and the challenge of conveying clear and accurate messages as well as the nature of limitations or uncertainty. Social work scholars and doctoral students must therefore develop skills to wrestle deeply with multiple considerations as they translate their work to diverse audiences in order to achieve a meaningful a beneficial impact.

This roundtable aims to generate a dialogue about how to mentor our doctoral students to maximize the public impact of their scholarship, across the stages of their career, in an increasingly complex societal, policy and technological environment. This roundtable brings together featured panel participants and audience members to explore the following topics:

- Diverse tools, venues and platforms for disseminating research/scholarship - Matching dissemination venues with diverse audience - Ethical concerns related to public impact scholarship

Featured participants will share innovative tools and platforms for dissemination, present conceptual frameworks for public impact scholarship, and facilitate an active roundtable conversation with the audience. Please bring your own experiences and perspectives to add to this timely conversation!

Featured Participants - Mo Yee Lee, PhD, Professor and PhD Program Director, College of Social Work, Ohio State University - Michael C. LaSala, PhD, LCSW, Director of the DSW Program, School of Social Work, Rutgers University - Daniel A. Hackman, PhD, Assistant Professor, USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, University of Southern California - Courtney D. Cogburn, PhD, Associate professor, School of Social Work, Columbia University and faculty of the Columbia Population Research Center - David Patterson Silver Wolf, PhD, Associate Professor, Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St Louis - Emily Putnam-Hornstein, PhD, John A. Tate Distinguished Professor for Children in Need at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Social Work & Distinguished Scholar at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

Duration: 1.5 hour roundtable Abstract: Mo Yee Lee, Daniel Hackman, Michael LaSala