Professor Glenda Dewberry Rooney has taught undergraduate and graduate micro and macro practice courses, ethics, supervision and practice evaluation. Her professional social work practice experience includes child welfare, mental health and work with families. Dr. Rooney’s professional experience also includes human services and higher education organizations as a manager, including an Assistant Dean of Students, University of Wisconsin Madison and as chair of the Augsburg Colleges Social Work Department. Throughout her career she has been involved with agencies concerned with children, youth and families as a trainer, clinical and organizational consultant and community based research and development projects in the Twin Cities Metropolitan area, Illinois, and Taiwan, Ghana, The Netherlands, and Korea. While on leave from Augsburg University (then Augsburg College), she was a Visiting Professor and the Interim Gamble-Skogmo Land Grant Chair in Child Welfare and Youth Policy, School of Social Work, University of Minnesota.
She is a contributing author in several books, and is a co-author of Direct Social Work Practice, Theory and Skills currently in its 9th edition. Looking Back, another of her publications, traced a period in time in the history of Pueblo High School in Tucson, Arizona. The school became known for innovations and significant firsts in its educational programs under the leadership of an activist principal and faculty; three of whom initiated the bilingual education legislation in the United States. Dr. Rooney attributes her understanding of social and justice and diversity to her student experience as Pueblo instilled in its student body that an individuals social identity simply defined who people were, rather than what they could become.
Active as a volunteer in the community she was past board member and chair of Our Children, Our Future, and a spokesperson for the Commission on Minnesota’s African American Children (COMAAC), both of which were committed to reducing the disparities in the out-of-home placement of children of color. As an invited participant, she was involved in state and county child welfare initiatives and the national Race Matters Consortium funded by the Casey Foundation. She continues to be an advocate for child welfare policies and practices that strengthen and support families.
A past board member of WATCH, a court monitoring organization, she was an advisor to the organization research on CHIPS cases. Other prior affiliations include serving as a Trustee of the Minnesota Women’s Fund an Associate Trustee of the University of Wisconsin Union Association. Currently, she is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and past-president of the Ivy Foundation.
Professionally, Dr. Rooney was a member and Vice- Chair of the Minnesota Board of Social Work, the chair of the American Association of Social Work Boards Exam Committee and she was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Research on Social Work Practice and a member of the National Association of Social Workers, and the Council on Social Work Education.
Dr. Rooney retired from Augsburg University at the end of the 2011-2012 academic- year. She took with her the memory of having had the wonderful opportunity to teach and interact with students who aspired to become competent, ethical social work professionals. She continues her academic writing and research, punctuated with long nature walks with her camera, and reading mysteries.
Education
- B.S. University of North Texas
- M.S.W. University of Illinois-Chicago
- Ph. D. University of Minnesota