Department: Social Welfare

Courtney Demko

Dr. Demko’s research focuses on older adult health and well-being. She is particularly interested in Alzheimer’s caregiver burden. Her research involves using national survey data and focuses on the multidimensional factors associated with caregiver burden among young adult caregivers.

Dr. Demko’s research experience includes both quantitative and qualitative methodologies and she has used her research skills on several grant-funded research projects at UCLA including grants from the Ford Foundation and Archstone Foundation. She was a member of the UCLA Latino Economic Security (LES) team, which researches the economic impact of a nation growing older and more diverse. Dr. Demko served as the Project Director for the team’s latest project which included conducting focus groups and surveying older white conservative adults to understand their attitudes and beliefs toward immigration and immigration policy. She has published her work in peer-reviewed journals such as The Journal of the American Society on Aging. She also gained administrative and managerial experience as the Assistant Director for the Center for Policy Research on Aging at UCLA’s Department of Social Welfare and Public Policy.

Dr. Demko also has several years of teaching experience. She is currently teaching 211A Human Behavior in the Social Environment and 260A Research Capstone at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs Department of Social Welfare. She has also taught at California State University Los Angeles School of Social Work teaching both graduate and undergraduate Social Work Research Methods and Statistics courses. Her teaching philosophy includes using a variety of teaching modalities to be inclusive of students’ varying learning styles.

She earned her B.A. in Political Science from Davidson College (2005), and an M.S.W (2013) and PhD (2021) from UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, Department of Social Welfare with a specialization in Gerontology.

Erin Nakamura

September 25, 2022/in Social Welfare Conceptualizations of Justice, Intersectionality, Sexual Violence Prevention All Faculty Faculty /by Oliver Ike

Education:

M.S.W., University of California, Los Angeles

B.A.. California State University, Long Beach

Publications:

Katz, L. S., Cojucar, G., Beheshti, S., Nakamura, E., & Murray, M. (2012). Military sexual trauma during deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan: Prevalence, readjustment, and gender differences. Violence and Victims, 27(4), 487–499. https://doi.org/10.1891/0886-6708.27.4.487

Merhawi Tesfai

August 3, 2022/in Social Welfare Child and Family Well-Being, Civic Engagement, Education, Mental and Behavioral Health, Racial Disparity PhD PhD Students /by Ervin Huang

Merhawi Tesfa is an incoming first year doctoral student in the Department of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He received his Bachelor of arts in African American Studies as well as his Masters of Social Work and a Masters of Public Policy from UCLA. He is a former McNair Research Scholar and has engaged in a variety of research around race and inequality through the Bunche Center, the Million Dollar Hoods policy team, and the Black Policy Project.

In his doctoral studies, Merhawi is interested in working with students from underrepresented groups to understand the barriers they face outside of the classroom that hinder their educational progress. He is also interested in how these barriers factor into their ability to progress from K-12 to higher education.

Merhawi is also currently serving as student regent-designate on the UC Board of Regents to represent the needs of students across the University of California system.

Keri Lintz

July 28, 2022/in Social Welfare Child and Family Well-Being, Child Maltreatment Prevention, Early Adversity, Resilience, Social Policy PhD PhD Students /by Ervin Huang

Keri Lintz is a first-year doctoral student committed to examining the effects of public policy on child development. She is particularly interested in the prevention of early childhood adversity and understanding the factors that contribute to the disproportionality — and accompanying consequences — of such experiences.

Keri draws on almost two decades of experience and expertise in research, public policy administration, and social service delivery. Her first professional experiences were as a child welfare consultant and crisis intervention specialist. Subsequently, she worked for state government administering five federal grant programs designed to foster child and family well-being. Before joining UCLA, she was the executive director of the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy and The Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab at The University of Chicago where she gained a deep appreciation for the capacity of rigorous research to inform sound policy, programs and practice. In this role, she provided leadership in the implementation of large-scale field experiments and evaluation of promising programs dedicated to reducing social and economic inequality.

David C. Turner III

July 26, 2022/in Social Welfare Civic Engagement, Criminal Justice, Social Movements All Faculty, Senate/Field/Adjunct Faculty Faculty /by Oliver Ike

Dr. David C. Turner III is an Assistant Professor of Black Life and Racial Justice in the Department of Social Welfare at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA. He is also a faculty affiliate with the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies and the Million Dollar Hoods Project on campus. As an activist scholar from Inglewood, California, his research broadly focuses on youth-based social movements, political identity, and resistance to the prison regime. More specifically, Dr. Turner examines the ways that Black boys and young men work to resist the carceral landscape alongside their peers in community-based educational spaces. He has published numerous articles and book chapters, including manuscripts in the American Educational Research Journal, Theory Into Practice, Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics, The Journal of Research on Adolescence, and others. As a community organizer, Dr. Turner brings over a decade of movement-building experience to the classroom, having worked to negotiate and win demands for racial justice, secure funding, divest resources from carceral and harmful institutions, and coordinate actions across the state of California and the nation, all while teaching at both the K-12 and the postsecondary level.

Dr. Turner worked across LA County with boys and men of color as the manager of the Brothers, Sons, Selves Coalition, where he co-led campaigns to change school discipline practices, support investments in youth development, and end policies and practices that lead to criminalization in communities of color. For his commitment to both advocacy-based research and grassroots leadership, Dr. Turner was selected as an inaugural fellow in the John W. Mack Movement Building Fellows Program with the Weingart Foundation, and a Data Fellow with the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color through PolicyLink and the Tableau Foundation.

Dr. Turner has participated in the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) as a political education and research specialist, helping organizations with teach-ins, designing curricula, and community-based participatory action research surveys, most notably as a member of the research team with Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and the People’s Budget. Dr. Turner has been featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education, NBC BLK, the Los Angeles Times, Spectrum 1 News, and the New York Times for his activism and applied scholarship. To learn more about Dr. Turner and his work, please visit davidcturner.com for more information.

In the News

Tableau Conference 2022 Feature – Dr. David C. Turner III

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLMEEUQaJ0U

City Rising – Youth and Democracy. PBS Southern California. Aired 10/20/2020 https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/city-rising/city-rising-youth-democracy-xkjbp5/

Reflections on Race: A Closer Look at Racial and Social Equity. Aired 7/7/2020

https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/human-interest/2020/07/29/reflections-on-race–a-closer-look-at-racial-and-social-equity

Stephanie Patton

July 11, 2022/in Social Welfare Abuse and Neglect Prevention, and Material Hardship, Child Development, Child Welfare, Community Networks, Poverty PhD, Students PhD Students /by Ervin Huang

Stephanie Patton is an incoming first year doctoral student in the Department of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She brings with her more than 10 years of practical social work experience in nonprofit administration and social policy. Prior to starting the PHD program at UCLA, she held positions with U.S. Soccer Federation, the American Red Cross, Michigan state Senator Jeff Irwin, and U.S. Senator Gary Peters. Most recently she served as a Project Manager for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, helping them develop a learning health network for hospitals to share best care practices and conduct innovative research for individuals with single ventricle heart disease.

Stephanie holds a BA in Sociology and English from DePauw University. She received her MSW summa cum laude from the University of Michigan with a concentration on children and families and a focus on social policy. She is also a certified Project Management Professional through the Project Management Institute and has earned certificates in quality improvement and data visualization.

Her research interests center on child development, child welfare, abuse and neglect prevention, community networks, poverty, and material hardship.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniepatton1/

Irene Valdovinos

June 29, 2022/in Social Welfare Early Intervention, Risk Reduction, Substance Use, Youth and Emerging Adult Populations PhD, Students PhD Students /by Ervin Huang

Irene Valdovinos is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and an incoming first year doctoral student
in the Department of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She received
her Master of Social Welfare and Master of Public Health from UCLA in 2012. Irene has
experience working in the fields of mental health and substance use treatment as a clinician in
integrated care programs. In these settings, she offered individual, family, and group counseling
services. Prior to returning to UCLA to start the PhD program, Irene worked at Azusa Pacific
University as a grant specialist and evaluation coordinator. There she managed multiple
workforce development and evaluation projects funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Substance
Abuse Prevention and Control division, and other local-level sponsors.

Her broad research interests include understanding factors that impact substance use and
enhancing early intervention and treatment services for minority youth and young adults
impacted by substance use.

Juan J. Nunez

June 29, 2022/in Social Welfare Adult Protective Services, Child Protective Services, Health Disparities, Intervention Development, Quantitative Research Methods PhD, Students PhD Students /by Ervin Huang

Juan J. Nunez is a doctoral student in Social Welfare at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public
Affairs. He has previously worked as a Data Analyst and Research Associate at WRMA, Inc., a
research firm dedicated to providing support to health and human services agencies. While at
WRMA, the two main projects he worked on are the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data
System (NCANDS) and the National Adult Maltreatment Reporting System (NAMRS). His
current research focuses on understanding the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on child
maltreatment reporting, analyzing the applicability of machine learning techniques to predict
adult maltreatment, and identifying methods to strengthen community assistance to at-risk
communities (e.g., children, older adults, adults with disabilities, young adults experiencing
inadequate housing). His research informs policy makers and key stakeholders on the
development of prevention programs and on the use of innovative methodologies to identify
community and individual protective factors. He holds a MA in Sociology from Boston College,
where his research focused on analyzing the effects of religion on mental health among older
adults, and a BA in Sociology from the University of San Francisco.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jjnunez1

PUBLICATIONS:
Shusterman, G. R., Nunez, J. J., Fettig, N. B., & Kebede, B. K. (2021). Adolescent mother
maltreatment perpetrators’ past experiences with child protective services. International
Journal on Child Maltreatment: Research, Policy and Practice, 4(2),145–164.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42448-021-00074-w

Qianyun Wang

June 16, 2022/in Social Welfare Aging and Gerontology, Immigration, Racism, Social Exclusion PhD PhD Students /by Ervin Huang

Qianyun Wang is a PhD student in Social Welfare in her first year. She holds a bachelor’s degree in social work from Beijing Normal University and a master’s degree in social work from the University of Calgary. She did community development fieldwork and received social work education in a variety of contexts, including India, Korea, the Philippines, Canada, and China. These events sparked her interest in taking action and doing research to address social exclusion, ageism, racism, and migratory injustice, among other issues.

Qianyun has been an active community practitioner and advocate, working in solidarity alongside marginalized people, including those living with poverty, TFWs, immigrants, the elderly, and others.

Qianyun’s research experience involves both quantitative and qualitative approaches, with the latter being her particular focus. Her master thesis explored the lived experiences of spousal bereavement among older Chinese immigrants in Canada. Before coming to UCLA, she worked with multidisciplinary research teams from the University of Calgary, Tsinghua University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Project-China, where she led and/or coordinated various research projects, including antiracism and anticolonization teaching and learning, social and psychological well-being among older immigrants during the pandemic in Canada, sexual health and services among older adults in the UK and China, HIV self-testing experience among gay men via Photovoice in China, and so on.

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Qianyun-Wang-3

Madonna Cadiz

November 5, 2021/in Social Welfare Child & Adolescent Development, Ethnic-Racial Identity, Immigrant Families, Internalized Racism, Mental Health PhD PhD Students /by Ervin Huang

Madonna Cadiz, LCSW is a Doctoral Student in Social Welfare at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Previously, she held research positions at the Program for Torture Victims and the Suicide Prevention Center at Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services. In these roles, she contributed to quantitative and qualitative research projects aimed at evaluating client functioning and program efficacy. Her research seeks to expand knowledge on the etiology of mental illness and emotional distress among underserved populations by identifying connections among individual, meso-level, and macro-level factors that may contribute to or exacerbate such conditions. Furthermore, her work aims to center community members’ voices to better understand their own definitions and conceptualizations of mental health diagnoses and symptoms, as well as to identify potentially meaningful interventions that may promote positive mental health among individuals and communities served by social workers.

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