Cassie DeSena-Jacobs presenting at national conference about course development
Cassie DeSena-Jacobs, D.S.W., LCSW, assistant professor in teaching at the VCU School of Social Work, will be presenting in April at the Social Work Distance Education 2024 Virtual Conference.
Developing an Advanced Clinical Class through an Anti-Racist Lens
5-5:45 p.m. ET Wednesday, April 10, 2024
What does it really mean to include anti-racist strategies in a class for advanced clinical social work students in an online setting? Join to learn about ways to include anti-racist strategies when building clinical-focused courses, including ways to center this within course structure. This will include a Q&A about the successes and lessons learned about building the course, and the first semester that the course launched with the instructor who both built and taught the course.
The presentation is the result of a course Dr. DeSena-Jacobs developed and that launched in Fall 2023, Treatment of SMI (Serious Mental Illness) Through a Trauma-Informed and Evidence-Based Perspective, which has a particular anti-racist focus. “The hope is that the material in the class will shift students’ perspectives on how to implement anti-racist material into their work with clients,” she says.
Her work has focused on trauma-informed and culturally competent care in various communities, including acute hospital work, community social work and direct practice in New York and Virginia. She has a history of working with nonprofits on micro and macro levels, including building programming and facilitating therapeutic training.
Dr. DeSena-Jacobs has been teaching at VCU since 2019 in the M.S.W. Program and joined as a full-time faculty member in April 2022. A first-generation college student, she is passionate about her position at VCU. Her teaching interests include therapy models, trauma-informed care, evidence-based practices when working with adolescents, and clinical theory work. Her research focuses on the school to prison pipeline and creating training for school staff focused on inherent bias, cultural humility, trauma and relationship building.
She maintains a small private practice, which focuses on adolescents and adults who have experienced sexual trauma, trauma within family of origin and PTSD. She also has extensive experience providing inclusive care for the LGBTQIA + population and those who have worked in sex work. In her practice, her goal is to be non-judgmental and highlight the strength of a person as a way to process trauma and life events.
Categories Community, Education, Faculty and staff, Research