Barbara Rich, MSW

BSW Coordinator & Associate Professor

306 Masterton Hall
(207) 780-4122
rich@usm.maine.edu

Barbara Rich, the BSW Program Coordinator, is an associate professor of social work with over thirty years of teaching experience. She holds a Master's degree in social work (MSW) from Columbia University in New York and attended the Boston College doctoral program in social work. She is currently Co-Chair of the Practice Sequence in the School of Social Work. Professor Rich has taught a wide variety of practice courses including Introduction to Social Work, Methods of Social Work Practice I and II, Field Work I and II, Social Work with Adolescents, Mind/Body/Spirit Connections in Social Work Practice, Substance Abuse, Sexual Abuse of Children and Adolescents, and Community Services in Belize.
She has a broad background in social work practice with individuals, families, and groups in Boston and Cambridge, New York, and Detroit as well as rural Maine and the Portland area. She has worked in many different settings: juvenile detention and corrections, adult corrections, shelters for adolescents, crisis intervention centers, mental health centers, family services, foster care, community action programs, street programs, adolescent pregnancy programs, Upward Bound, Head Start, and public schools.
Her research interests mirror her practice and teaching experience. A frequent presenter at national conferences, she has published articles and book chapters on service-learning and social work practice.  Her current research interests are risk management in international service-learning, and microenterprise and e-commerce as a path toward economic justice.
She has been honored with the Donald Harward Faculty Award for Service-Learning Excellence. In 2002, she was selected for the Northern New England Campus Compact Consulting Corps and offers training in service-learning for faculty from USM and other colleges and universities. Last year she was invited to become a consultant for the National Campus Compact organization.
She was awarded a grant from the Simmons Foundation for the creation of the Lifebook Project, a collaboration with the Department of Human Services' Children's Services program. In this project, social work students were matched with foster children to construct lifebooks. In addition, she received a grant from the Anne Shroth Dietz Foundation to fund the Photovoice Project which funded social work students who were working with refugee children and adolescents. This project resulted in three public exhibitions of the photographs that were taken by the children as they considered the questions—who am I and what do I value?—and answered in pictures.
For 4 years she has co-taught an international service-learning course that she developed, "Community Services in Belize," during the January WinterSession. In this course, students from social work and other majors study Belizean history and culture with particular reference to the many diverse cultural groups who live in Belize. They also work in an orphanage in Belize City while studying the child welfare system.  During this time, they provide services to the children and engage them in vocational training, such as jewelry making. Other service projects involve students in work at a home for elderly Belizeans and with a women’s craft group called the MAMAS  This course also takes students to Mayan ruins, snorkeling near an off-shore caye (island), cave tubing, and the national zoo.