Students in Social Work 600 learn how to evaluate, develop and implement AI-driven solutions that enhance the delivery and effectiveness of human services. 51ÁÔĆć students planning to work in a health or social services role after graduation, such as social work, nursing, or healthcare administration, will gain basic knowledge about the implications of AI in these fields.

“AI is providing an amazing opportunity for enhanced outcomes and productivity across many disciplines including health and social services,” Matt Friedel said.

Friedel is the co-founder of the Disruptive Technologies Laboratory at 51ÁÔĆć, a Lubar Entrepreneurship Ideas Challenge Fellow and teaching faculty in the School of Information Studies. Friedel and Helen Bader Endowed Chair Colleen Galambos developed Social Work 600: Practical Applications of AI and Technology in Health and Social Services. Friedel will teach the class.

“AI is a new tool that is rapidly being integrated in health and social services,” Galambos said. “This course will equip students with the knowledge they need to use AI in the workplace and to advocate for the use of it from an ethics and social justice stance.” She added that the class gives students an advantage in a competitive job market.

Friedel and Galambos developed Social Work 600 with a grant from the , whose mission advances southeastern Wisconsin as a national hub for data science research, education, and talent development.

“The focus of the class is practical applications for emerging professionals – students who are interested in learning these new tools and highly marketable skills,” Freidel said.

The post New Class Blends AI with Health and Social Services appeared first on College of Community Engagement & Professions.

The post Fall 2025 CCEP Recognition Ceremony Celebrates New Graduates appeared first on College of Community Engagement & Professions.

Here are the CCEP researchers included in each list:

2024 list

School of Education

• Nadya Fouad
• Kelsey Autin

Helen Bader School of Social Welfare

• Thomas LeBel
• Joshua Mersky

School of Information Studies

• Hope Olson
• Wonchan Choi
• Dietmar Wolfram

Career-long top 2%

School of Education

• Nadya Fouad
• Barbara J. Daley

Helen Bader School of Social Welfare

• Colleen Galambos

School of Information Studies

• Dietmar Wolfram
• Hope Olson

Full story

The post Several CCEP Researchers Ranked Among Top 2% in the World appeared first on College of Community Engagement & Professions.

At a time of high social isolation among young people, finding opportunities to connect can be key. The College of Community Engagement and Professions offers a unique opportunity to combat social isolation – hosting community building workshops.

Each workshop is a two- or three-day group experience. According to Dimitri Topitzes, these workshops promote a vision of community, defined by a “spirit of unusual safety and intimacy” and act as an antidote to social isolation, personal alienation, and lack-luster group cohesiveness. Topitzes has been involved with community building workshops – or CBWs – for more than a decade and has promoted them at 51ÁÔĆć as chair of the Social Work Department.

Community building workshops have a long history, starting in the late 20th century as an idea of M. Scott Peck, a psychiatrist and best-selling author of self-help titles. These workshops began taking off in the 1990s, when Bob Roberts, an educator and scholar, began a workshop in a medium security Louisiana prison.

The results of that workshop were increased reading function of the participants and after Roberts published his findings, community building workshops became ubiquitous among criminal justice and social work organizations as well as the general public.

Enthusiastic reception for community building at 51ÁÔĆć

In the years since CCEP started hosting its own community building workshop, the student participants have been ecstatic. Lexy Lunger, a 2025 bachelor of social work (BSW) graduate and incoming master’s degree candidate, couldn’t praise these workshops enough. “In August 2025, I’ll be joining my third community building workshop, after finding the past two deeply valuable for both my professional and personal journeys,” she said.

As a social work graduate student and sexual assault advocate, Lunger mentioned that this workshop has been a space to practice presence and radical listening.

“These skills are essential to supporting the clients I work with, both now and in the future. And personally, the experience has been a beacon of hope in challenging times, reminding me that community is intentional, possible, and powerful.”

For Topitzes, these statements are positive proof that community building workshops are fulfilling a needed feeling of closeness to community. “We’ve heard from students that they are feeling disconnected from each other and their programs, particularly post-pandemic,” Topitzes said. “CBWs typically help participants cultivate a greater sense of intimacy and belonging, something that can help students more easily reach their performance potential during the academic semester.”

Topitzes continued, “The CBWs can help students hone particular expressive and receptive community skills, a critical area of development for students in disciplines such as social work, education, and counseling psychology among others.” As these professions routinely work with the general public, being able to communicate and connect with others is an essential part of their careers.

Developing skills rooted in empathy and intention

Though community building workshops have been occurring on 51ÁÔĆć’s campus for years, and across the country for decades, there is still some trepidation for prospective students to participate.

One student, Heather Maggio, a May 2025 BSW graduate, offered her experience in attending 51ÁÔĆć’s workshop: “I was not entirely sure what I had gotten myself into when I signed up for the Community Building Workshop and Resource Exchange: a chance to meet new people, develop new connections, network. Well, what does that mean, exactly?” she said. Maggio anticipates obtaining a master’s in social work degree in December 2026 from 51ÁÔĆć.

But Maggio found an appreciation for the workshops immediately after attending. “The Community Building Workshop helped me to connect deeper with myself. I was able to reflect deeper on who I am so I can connect more meaningfully with others, creating relationships that are more complex and nuanced and not shallow.”

In a particularly powerful testimonial, shared anonymously by Topitzes, a student expressed their gratitude for the personal transformation afforded by the community building workshops:

“I was put in direct touch with my own capacities for engaged, empathic, and emotionally present listening. I discovered within myself the latent ability … to stand in silent solidarity with a wide variety of individuals. I was able to abandon superficial barriers … and to experience … acceptance. The workshop gave me an opportunity to learn how to manage unpleasant situations and frustrations, how to set and understand my own boundaries and how to regulate my emotions in the midst of deep expressions of human suffering and trauma.”

This student continued to illustrate how community building workshops are fantastic tools to supplement social work and criminal justice courses. “This has been the social work class I have been searching for my entire student career. I was able to have a true experience of the many principles, values, and strategies … that other classes have only alluded to.”

Topitzes himself incorporated community building workshops into coursework at 51ÁÔĆć and has been an active promoter of using community building workshops to increase student learning outcomes. As a researcher focused on early life adversity exposure, Topitzes understands how these CBWs can improve community connection and empathy.

For the foreseeable future, CCEP will continue to host community building workshops and resource exchanges twice a year. All CCEP students are welcome to join the workshops and are bound to come out of the experience better engaged and prepared for their future careers.

The post Community Offers an Antidote for Isolation appeared first on College of Community Engagement & Professions.

Desmond attended Kristina Pekulik’s and Matt Steigerwald’s social work classes before speaking to a sold-out crowd at the UW-Milwaukee Student Union. Desmond spoke with students in Social Work 260, Case Management and Social Work, and Social Work 310, Social Work Practice I: Individuals and Families. He answered questions that covered topics ranging from housing inequity to taking care of one’s mental health.

The event was sponsored by Dr. Philip Blank who established the Beatrice Martin Kershner Social Justice Fund in memory of his wife.

The post Matthew Desmond Visits Campus appeared first on College of Community Engagement & Professions.

CITEE is a leader in acquiring and implementing workforce development partnerships across Wisconsin. Funded projects have focused on disability, education, employment, technology, community inclusion, mental and behavioral health, and substance use. 

Now housed at 51ÁÔĆć, CITEE develops and implements high quality programs and best practices for businesses, educational institutions, communities and state partners. This comprehensive framework serves to increase talent acquisition and retention of individuals with disabilities in work and community involvement. 

Since 2017, CITEE funding has included more than $30 million in state and federal health and human services grants, including Governor Evers’ $9.1 million Treasury American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) award. That award supported the expansion of behavioral health services by focusing on providers and students committed to behavioral health careers. 

CITEE’s focus has grown to include supporting programs designed to increase access to mental health services at all levels of the state, including school-based mental health, school social work, school psychology, and school counseling programs.  

The post The Center for Inclusive Transition, Education, & Employment (CITEE) Joins UW-Milwaukee appeared first on College of Community Engagement & Professions.

The presentation covered the basics of ChatGPT, particularly GPT 4, preparing courses and teaching using AI, and the ethics involved in using these tools. 

Designing effective prompts to gather helpful information

An opened the workshop by introducing participants to the concepts behind AI. The basic definition of ChatGPT is that it is a large language model designed by Open AI that uses artificial intelligence to generate human-like responses to natural language inquiries.  
 
AI has become a tool to guide self-driving cars, facilitate speech recognition, generate written text for a chatbot, and assist researchers and students, among its many uses.  
 
ChatGPT has become widespread and generated an incredible amount of media attention. As of January 2023, the application had more than 100 million users, making it the fastest-growing consumer application of all time, according to An’s presentation. 
 
However, there is a large gap between those who can use AI effectively and those who can’t and don’t.  

According to An’s presentation, the key to using ChatGPT and other generative AI tools is designing effective prompts to gather helpful information. The process involves choosing and crafting specific words, phrases, or code snippets to achieve the user’s goal. 

Ten principles for creating effective prompts: 

• Be specific and transparent in your prompt 
• Break down complex questions into simpler parts 
• Experiment with different prompt formulations 
• Set context and provide instructions 
• Ask for step-by-step explanations or pros/cons 
• Request for sources and citations 
• Ask for alternative viewpoints (arguments and counterarguments) 
• Use constraints to control response length or format
• Provide examples (few-shot learning) to guide the model 
• Encourage critical thinking and exploration 

An offered numerous examples for each of these principles. Here’s an example he gave of different prompt formulations: 
 
“If you aren’t satisfied with the response to “How do genetic factors influence obesity?” try asking, “What are the specific genes and pathways involved in the development of obesity?” 

Or, instead of asking, “What are the risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease?” provide context: “Describe the modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors for the development of Alzheimer’s disease.” 
 
Chat GPT can be helpful for faculty in different stages of research, from identifying research topics and generating questions to data collection and management and preparing the final presentations. 

Implications for teaching

The workshop also offered faculty insights into the impact of ChatGPT on teaching, including how to assess student work and provide guidance to students on the ethical use of ChatGPT and other AI programs. 
 
As the use of AI becomes more prevalent, instructors must work closely with students to ensure academic integrity. Faculty can sometimes review work by looking at sentence length and structure, for example. According to An’s presentation, AI writing tends to have sentences of short, uniform size, monotonous text, predictable language, and hedging phrases like “some might say,” in a similar way. AI-generated artwork/photos often include some watermarks that computer programs can detect. 

An outline of several AI detection programs that use algorithms to perform similar functions was provided. These programs can help assess whether the student wrote the content based on writing patterns, syntax, and linguistic factors. An’s presentation offered links to many AI detection tools. The accuracy of these tools varies from 64% to 85%, so he said it’s essential not to use them as the sole indicator of artificial content generation. 
 
However, An concluded, as AI programs become more sophisticated and students and others use these tools in collaboration with their own writing and design work, decisions about academic approaches become more complex. 
 
The workshop also offered sessions on facilitating course preparation and teaching using ChatGPT and customizing ChatGPT for personal tutoring and self-learning.  

Ethics and AI

An also discussed the issue of ethics in the use of AI. 
 
The presentation offered examples of how AI could be misused in creating deceptive photos and videos to spread misinformation, showing, for example, an AI tool used to create a fake video of Barack Obama making phony speeches.  

Another example from a 2019 New York Times story focused on a couple who applied for Apple cards. Even though the wife’s credit score was better and the couple shared finances, assets, and tax returns, Apple gave the husband a credit limit 20X higher than hers. The husband, the entrepreneur, wrote in “Fast Company,” magazine: “Apple has handed the customer experience and their reputation as an inclusive organization over to a biased, sexist algorithm it does not understand, cannot reason with, and is unable to control.”  

According to the presentation, the use of facial recognition technologies is another ethical challenge.ĚýĚý
Ěý
In a 2019 study of facial recognition programs, researchers found that Blacks, Asians, and Native Americans were much more likely to be misidentified by these programs than white people.ĚýĚý

The post How Can AI Be Used in Research, Teaching and Learning? It’s Complicated.Ěý appeared first on College of Community Engagement & Professions.

Graduates enjoyed a dinner together and took hundreds of photos of themselves. Many took the opportunity to say a few words of thanks to parents, spouses, partners, children, pets, God, families, best friends, mentors and teachers who helped them reach their goals. One online student who came to the ceremony even had special thanks for the reliable Wi-Fi that helped her complete her program. Another graduate thanked her family who juggled busy schedules and late meals while she completed her course work.

Many of the students were the first ones in their family to earn a college degree and proudly shared that accomplishment while thanking those who supported them on their journey.  

Married couple Johnquell Tucker, a school social worker, and Diamond Tucker made the university journey together and graduated together, while raising their family. Johnquell earned a master’s degree in social work and Diamond earned her master’s degree in human resources and labor relations. 

For a number of the graduates, their children were the inspiration for coming to 51ÁÔĆć and completing a degree. “I wanted to do better for her,” said Dolores Brown of her daughter, Delilah, who was at the ceremony. “She’s the reason I tried to do things I didn’t think I could do.” Brown earned her degree in school library media.

The post CCEP Graduates Celebrate TogetherĚý appeared first on College of Community Engagement & Professions.

The College, which includes the Schools of Education and Information Studies and the Helen Bader School of Social Work, was formed in July 2023.    

Graduates, faculty, staff, mentors, family and friends enjoyed a dinner together, took hundreds of photos of themselves and their families. An arch decorated with black and gold balloons provided a backdrop.  

Dean Tina Freiburger congratulated the new alumni, noting that many of them were heading into helping professions as teachers, school psychologists, social workers, librarians, information sciences professionals and police officers. The recognition ceremony gave students and families a chance to celebrate in a smaller setting than the Sunday commencement. 

Many of the students took the opportunity to say a few words of thanks to parents, spouses, children, mentors and teachers who helped them reach their goals. One young man noted that he was available for work now that he’s finished. A number of students noted that they were the first-generation in their family to complete a college degree. 

“I am one of only eight percent of Latinas who has earned a master’s degree,” said Thelmy Maldonado, who earned her master’s degree in social work. She is a school social worker in the Milwaukee Public Schools, and appreciated the flexibility the Helen Bader School of Social Work gave her in completing her master’s degree, she said. Her parents, 8-year-old brother, and two friends joined her in the celebration.

The post CCEP Graduates Celebrate With Family appeared first on College of Community Engagement & Professions.

The following three projects have been funded:

Adolescent alcohol and substance use prevention in primary care
Dr. Ai Bo, Assistant Professor, Helen Bader School of Social Welfare  

Rethinking Digital Literacy in the Age of Generative AI: College Students’ Use of ChatGPT for Educational Purposes
Dr. Wonchan Choi, Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies  

Adolescents’ emotion regulation through social lens: What is the role of adolescents’ peer network in interpersonal emotion regulation, mental health, and academic function?
Dr.ĚýKyongboon Kwon, Associate Professor, School of Education, and Dr.ĚýTheodore Lentz, Assistant Professor, Helen Bader School of Social WelfareĚýĚý

The post CCEP Announces Research Seed Funding Awards appeared first on College of Community Engagement & Professions.