Human Services and Rehabilitation Studies Faculty Engage in International Scholarship

This summer the Human Services & Rehabilitation Studies (HSRS) faculty were busy disseminating their cross-cultural and globally relevant/focused research.

For the second year in a row, Cinzia Pica-Smith, Ed.D., associate professor of Human Services & Rehabilitation Studies and director of the Women’s Studies Program, was invited to organize a symposium at the prestigious ISMU Institute in Milan, Italy. ISMU is an Institute on the Study of Multiethnicities focused on issues of migration, education and multiethnic societies. Prof. Pica-Smith presented her second book, Intercultural Education: Critical Perspectives, Pedagogical Challenges and Promising Practices, along with her colleagues and collaborators.

Prof. Pica-Smith joined her departmental colleague, Christian Scannell, Ph.D., professor of practice in Human Services & Rehabilitation Studies and coordinator of the Working with Children and Adolescents in Community Settings concentration, for a timely presentation on how higher education across the globe quickly adapted to meet the needs of its students during the global pandemic. They presented their research on how faculty and students have experienced the use of cameras in the remote and hybrid classroom at the International Conference on Research in Teaching and Learning, London. They also presented at the European Sociological Association’s Annual Conference in Barcelona in a session focused on the impact of Covid on educational systems and pedagogy in the Sociology of Education Strand of the association.

Prof. Scannell also presented her research at the Centre for Death and Society’s Death, Dying, Technology and Human Mortality Conference in Bath, United Kingdom. Her study explored online grief support groups particularly for individuals who have experienced a stigmatized loss as they are more at risk for isolation, and lack of social support. 

In addition, Gary Senecal, Ph.D., assistant professor of Human Services & Rehabilitation Studies, who recently published his first book, American and NATO Veteran Reintegration: The Trauma of Social Isolation and Cultural Chasms, based on a cross-cultural study comparing the experiences of U.S. and NATO nations’ veterans, presented his research at the Neuroscience and Psychiatry Conference in Vienna, Austria.