The Social Work Integrative Research Lab (SWiRL), housed in the Department of Social Work, received a $47,500 grant from Mason’s Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, & Research (OSCAR). The Project Scholarship Development grants support “interdisciplinary and co-curricular projects that have a substantial undergraduate student scholarship component.”
SWiRL, which began in Spring 2015, provides undergraduate students with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience by participating in various research projects and to develop relationships with graduate social work students and faculty members.
“SWiRL is a critical element of the department’s competency-based approach to educating our social work students at the undergraduate and graduate levels,” said Laura Cordisco Tsai, assistant professor of social work and one of the faculty involved with the lab. “Faculty mentor graduate students, and graduate students, in turn, mentor undergraduate students.”
SWiRL projects include qualitative and quantitative research on aging, kinship care, end of life planning, sex trafficking, and child welfare fatherhood programs. The grant will allow the lab to establish the infrastructure necessary to become a self-sustaining research lab, in addition to expanding the program during the summer months.
Faculty involved in SWiRL are Laura Cordisco Tsai, JoAnn Lee, Megumi Inoue, Cathy Tompkins, and Emily Ihara.