Honoring Professor Cogburn

January 05, 2024

Dear CSSW Colleagues,

It is a tremendous pleasure for me to share the wonderful news that Dr. Courtney Cogburn has been selected to give the Aaron Rosen Lecture at the 2024 Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) Annual Conference. SSWR and the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis established this lecture to honor the contributions and achievements of Dr. Rosen, highlighting the importance of integrating social work practice and research. Rosen Lecturers “are selected based upon an accumulated body of significant and innovative scholarship relevant to practice or effective utilization of research in practice.” This certainly describes Dr. Cogburn’s impact and influence.

As noted in her nomination letter, Dr. Cogburn is a unique and accomplished scholar, whose research is innovative and highly relevant to social work practice. Her work truly embodies, as per the call for nominations, “the profession’s value base of social justice” and seeks to “disrupt rather than replicate colonizing cycles and representations of oppression, disenfranchisement, marginalization, and its lived experience.” As a social worker, Dr. Cogburn is committed to enhancing human welfare and pursuing a more just society. Building on this core mission, she uses her exceptional intellect and scholarship to advance well-being and remove barriers to opportunity – most notably racism, which is a significant barrier to wellness. Without question, Dr. Cogburn is committed to rigorous research with practical social impact and has pursued multiple opportunities to apply her scholarship to broadly support racial equity in academic, private sector, and non-profit settings. True to the goals of social work practice, her work advances the well-being of individuals and communities and promotes meaningful and transformative change.

Dr. Cogburn is so deserving of this significant honor in our field. Please join me in congratulating her. If you are registered for the SSWR conference, you can attend the 2024 Aaron Rosen Lecture in-person or via livestream on Friday, January 12th, at 11:30am. I believe the lecture may also be recorded for later viewing and sharing.

In community,

Melissa