Hyunjoon Um

Hyunjoon Um, PhD, MSW

Dr. Um is Deputy Director of Continuous Quality Improvement at the NYC Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) Office of Training and Workforce Development. He teaches Social Work Research at the Columbia School of Social Work, where he has also taught Macroeconomics and Policy Analysis, and he has taught program development and evaluation as an adjunct professor at New York University. At ACS, he leads the evaluation of training and coaching programs for child welfare staff in New York City. These evaluations follow results from what participants think of a program and what they learn, through to whether their practice changes on the job. He builds the data and reporting systems behind this work. He has also led the development of an AI-assisted practice tool that lets staff keep practicing the skills taught in training after the classroom ends, and of tools for checking the reliability and fairness of AI-assisted practice coding. In the classroom, he uses real public-agency examples to show students how evidence shapes services for children and families.

Dr. Um’s quantitative research examines how social welfare policy and family circumstances shape the well-being of children and families. He focuses on fathers and child support, housing insecurity, childhood adversity, and racial disparities in contact with child protective services. He earned his master’s and PhD in social work from Columbia University, with a doctoral concentration in social policy and policy analysis. Ronald B. Mincy was his doctoral advisor.