SP2 Teaching Awards	Print Issue
April 28, 2009, Volume 55, No. 31

Dr. Roberta Rehner Iversen is the 2009 recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award in the MSW Program, Standing Faculty, in the School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2). She is an associate professor of social work and is the interim faculty director of the Master of Science in Social Policy (MSSP) program. Dr. Iversen earned her bachelor of arts in English literature at the University of Michigan, and her master of social service and doctor of philosophy degrees at Bryn Mawr College. She is the author of Jobs Aren’t Enough: Toward a New Economic Mobility for Low-Income Families (co-author A.L. Armstrong), 2006, Temple University Press, an earlier monograph for the Annie E. Casey Foundation entitled Moving Up is a Steep Climb, and numerous publications on issues related to how low-income families interface with welfare and workforce development policies and the labor market. For the past few years, Dr. Iversen has been teaching the history and philosophy of social work and social welfare and a course on poverty, welfare and work that engages students in critical analysis of the seminal literature in these areas and incorporates real-life stories from her ethnographic research. She also teaches a social theory course in the doctoral program.

Dr. David B. Wohlsifer is the recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award in the MSW Program, Part-time Faculty, in the School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2). He teaches the cognitive behavioral Treatment course as well as heterosexism at SP2. He has also served as a field liaison and in the past supervised a number of SP2 students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Cognitive Therapy.  He also teaches family systems therapy in the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, department of psychiatry residency program. Dr. Wohlsifer received his MSW from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work in 1994, his master of healthcare administration from St. Joseph’s University in 2000, and his PhD in 2006 in human sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, San Francisco, CA. He also completed postgraduate fellowship in cognitive therapy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Cognitive Therapy.

In addition to teaching at SP2, Dr. Wohlsifer is a partner with Bala Psychological Resources in Bala Cynwyd, PA.  In his practice he specializes in the treatment of sexual trauma, sexual dysfunctions, couples issues, substance abuse, sex/internet addictions, LGBT issues, sleep, and anxiety disorders. He is the former co-director & founder of the Center for Sexual Abuse Survivors, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Cognitive Therapy. He has spoken nationally on issues of sexual health, sexuality, sexual trauma, relationships, LGBT issues, and sexual wellness. He serves on the board of directors of the Pennsylvania Society for Clinical Social Work (PSCSW), is a consulting editor of the family therapy journal Family Process, and is the chair of the Jewish Family Interest Group of the American Family Therapy Academy (AFTA). He has co-written a book chapter on “Sexuality and Culture” in Principles and Practice of Sex Therapy, edited by Sandra Leiblum/Guilford Press and has another book chapter on “Sexual Issues” in Multicultural Family Systems on its way to press.