Jeanette Andonian, PhD, LCSW

Jeanette Andonian, MSW, PhD, LCSW is an Associate Professor and the Associate Dean of the School of Social Work, where she has served on the faculty since 2001.  She came to social work academia with an extensive social work practice background in healthcare and mental health, and she has worked in major academic medical centers in Boston and New Orleans, doing inpatient, outpatient and community-based work, and training social work and medical students and residents.  She received a BS in Psychology at Northeastern University in 1984, the MSW degree in 1987 from Simmons College, and a PhD in Social Work at Tulane University in 2001, where she also taught in the MSW Program for a number of years. Her teaching expertise is the area of human behavior theories and social work practice and she teaches at both graduate and undergraduate levels. She has received Faculty Senate Awards for both teaching and service excellence at USM.  

Her current research focuses on the unique developmental transition facing college students as they move toward life after graduation. She is a member of an interdisciplinary team consisting of USM faculty working in this area. She is engaged in ongoing research on the college graduation experience and preparation process and fostering resilience during transitions. The early research findings served as the basis for creating a new interdisciplinary seminar at USM, Launching Into Life After College (LILAC).  She co-developed and co-taught this course over the past several years on a rotating basis with computer science, communication and new media colleagues. She has published in peer reviewed journals and presented her work at national peer-reviewed conferences.  Most recently, she co-authored a book chapter currently under review for Innovative Classroom Environments: International Perspectives on Higher Education, about the LILAC research findings and the development of the course. She is currently working with her team to build a Community of Practice to engage a broader range of USM stakeholders interested in the student college transition to innovate the LILAC initiative.

Dr. Andonian’s past research activities have focused on pedagogy for teaching the DSM-5 and fostering classroom safety.  She has also been engaged in substance abuse/mental health program evaluation in the community. She was the Principal Investigator for an MEIF funded project, Web-Based Systems to Support Economically Disadvantaged Youth in Maine. She and her research team also received a Provost’s Pillar Grant award for, Launching Into Life After College: Advancing USM Culture to best Meet Student Needs. She has been involved in several interdisciplinary Title III grant initiatives, for instance, one that convened a team of experts to develop and deliver a year-long colloquium series hosted at USM focused on Fostering Youth Resilience & Mental Health.  Dr. Andonian has also served on the Board of Directors for NAMI-Portland and the Susan Curtis Foundation.