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Mary Gress Senior Clinical Fellow in Field Education Ph.D. University of Southern California, 1982 M.S.W. University of Michigan, 1971 B.A. Michigan State University, 1969 gress@usc.edu |
| MARY GRESS joined the USC field education faculty in 1983. Her social work practice experience prior to joining the faculty included work with children in residential treatment, work with severely and persistently mentally ill adults, both in patient and out patient; work in community mental health with children and adults; work in family service agencies and private practice. Before becoming the assistant dean in field education, Dr. Gress taught first-year courses in practice and served as the Mental Health concentration field coordinator and then as the assistant director of the field education department. She is the co-director of the CalSWEC program at USC. She also has developed and coordinated classes for the Department of Mental Health through the school's continuing education department, focusing on the seriously and persistently mentally ill. Dr. Gress has developed many education collaborations in the community, including school social work, public child welfare, gerentological social work, mental health services and law in social work. Dr. Gress's research has focused on field education, particularly in the area of building educational partnerships with major public agencies. She is specifically interested in improving the quality of field education and deepening partnerships with community agencies to provide field placements to students that are innovative, challenging and supportive of the best practice models. Dr. Gress is part of the field consortium of California field directors and a founding member of the Los Angeles area field faculty consortium, which is committed to fostering collaboration among schools of social work in the improvement of field education curriculum. She has developed, with other field faculty, instruments now used across the state to build competency-based standards for field practice and to evaluate field students' performance. |
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