VCU Social Work professor receives national award

By Mary Beth Alford

RICHMOND, Va. — Robert L. Schneider, Ph.D., professor of social work at Virginia Commonwealth University, will be honored this month for his role in creating an organization to teach social work faculty and students how to lobby state legislators on social work policy issues.

Schneider will be given the prestigious Distinguished Recent Contributions in Social Work Education Award on Feb. 24 at the annual meeting of the Council on Social Work Education in Nashville, Tenn. The award recognizes an educator’s outstanding intellectual achievements within the last 10 years and uses research, scholarship, curriculum development and organizational leadership to choose recipients.

Schneider, a professor at VCU since 1974 and author of the recently released "Social Work Advocacy: A New Framework for Action," is being honored for his role in starting Influencing State Policy. The organization is made up of more than 400 social work education programs across the country that assign students to identify and track bills in their state legislatures and visit senators and representatives to inform them of their concerns about the bill. Currently, 79 percent of bachelor social work programs and 95 percent of master programs are involved with ISP.

"ISP assists both students and faculty by developing resources such as the Web site, www.statepolicy.org, a video series, stipends and national contests. More importantly, it promotes confidence about influencing policy," Schneider said. "Most students do not believe that they can impact a legislative agenda, but ISP helps them directly learn how to work with legislators in shaping policies that will benefit citizens and clients."