Excellence in Teaching Award

Dr. Mark J. Stern is the 2008 recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award, in the MSW Program, Standing Faculty, at the School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2). He is a professor of social welfare and history and co-director of the Urban Studies program. Before joining what was then known as  the School of Social Work’s faculty in 1980, he received his PhD in history from York University (Canada). At Penn he collaborated with professor emerita  Dr. June Axinn in developing the required history and philosophy course in the master’s of social work curriculum. Drs. Axinn and Stern co-authored Social Welfare: A History of the American Response To Need which is now in its seventh edition. Dr. Stern has authored or co-authored five books, most recently (with Dr. Michael Katz of Penn’s history department) One Nation Divisible: What America Was and What It Is Becoming (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2006). In addition to his work on American social history and the history of social welfare, Dr. Stern and his wife, Susan Seifert, direct the Social Impact of the Arts Project, which examines the role of community arts and cultural programs in revitalizing urban neighborhoods.

Excellence in Teaching Award in the MSW Program, Part-time Faculty

Andrew Fussner, a part-time faculty member at SP2, is the recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award in the MSW Program, Part-time Faculty. He teaches first year Foundations of Social Work Practice and Child and Adolescent Psychopathology. Mr. Fussner is employed by the School District of Philadelphia in the Pre-K Head Start program as a consultant on the mental health issues of early childhood. In addition, he is the Child and Family Therapy Consultant and Trainer at the Astor Home for Children in Rhinebeck, New York. He has 30 years of experience as a social worker and clinician in children’s mental health, including 20 years on the staff at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic.

He serves on the Board of Directors in the Youth Services Division of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and on the Committee for Early Childhood Mental Health in the State of Pennsylvania. He has given workshops and conducting seminars on family therapy in the USA, Europe, and Asia. He has been on the faculty of Institute fur Beratung in Berlin, Germany since 1993. Two book chapters bear his authorship; in Casebook in Family Therapy, edited by Lawson and Prevatt, Brooks/Cole Publishing, 1999 and Working with Aggressive Children, edited by Crenshaw, Jason Aronson Publishers, 2008.