SSW welcomes new MSW Program Director
Suzanne Shatila, MSSW, LGSW, will become the next Director of the MSW Program at the School of Social Work. Her appointment will begin on September 7, 2021.
“I am both honored and excited to be joining the UMN School of Social Work, which has a long-standing history of developing social work practitioners and leaders committed to fighting injustice. I am looking forward to joining a team of faculty and staff dedicated to our professional values and ethics, fighting oppression, and connecting social work research with social work practice.“
Ms. Shatila is currently an Assistant Professor and Program Director for the online Master of Social Work Program at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. For the last three years, her work at Saint Mary’s has involved managing the day-to-day operations of the MSW program, supervising and coaching faculty and staff, advising students, teaching the social work capstone course, providing program-level financial oversight, and leading the MSW program through its initial Council on Social Work Education accreditation process.
Since 2002, Ms. Shatila has established a strong portfolio of leadership positions in nonprofit organizations, state government, and higher education. Her extensive experience in mezzo- and macro-level social work practice will be a welcome addition to our graduate curriculum and the School of Social Work’s Administrative Leadership Team. Ms. Shatila has also held direct service positions at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, The Arab American Community Center for Economic and Social Services in Cleveland, Ohio, the Carol Robertson Center for Learning in Chicago, and other nonprofit agencies in Ohio, Illinois, and Tennessee. She has published her scholarship in the Journal of African American Studies, Social Perspectives/Perspectivas Sociales, and Professional Development: The International Journal of Continuing Social Work Education. In addition, she and her colleagues co-authored The Macro Practitioner’s Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Effectiveness with Organizations and Communities (Brooks Cole/Wadsworth, 2005).
Ms. Shatila earned a Master of Science in Social Work from the University of Tennessee and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology from Antioch College. She is currently pursuing her Doctorate of Social Work at the University of St. Thomas. Her research examines the influence of nontraditional students’ social location and role identity on social connectedness in online education, as well as the incorporation of culturally responsive teaching into social work education.