Social Work lecture series addresses pressing social issues

Jan. 20, 2005 -- The George Warren Brown School of Social Work's spring lecture series addresses a broad spectrum of issues from elder care to the future of social policy.

The series will kick off Feb. 7 with a lecture by Melvin Oliver, Ph.D., titled "Can We Preserve the Progressive Soul of Asset-Based Social Policy?" Oliver is a professor of sociology and dean of social sciences in the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

All lectures will be held at noon in Brown Hall, Room 124. Other talks are listed below.

• Feb. 14: Steven Rathgeb Smith , Ph.D., director of the Nancy Bell Evans Center for Nonprofit Leadership and professor in the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington, will speak on "Nonprofit Organizations and the Future of Social Policy."

• March 24: Cynthia Massarsky , Ph.D., deputy director of The Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures at the Yale School of Management, will discuss "Research and Trends on Revenue Generation in the Nonprofit Sector."

• May 4: Kenneth Langa, M.D., assistant professor of internal medicine and faculty associate at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, will present "On Love and Money: The Health Economics of Aging Parents." This lecture is co-sponsored by the School of Social Work's gerontology concentration and the University's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and the Center for Aging.

The lectures are free and open to the public. For more information, call Barbara Levin at (314) 935-6661.