Lee’s area of scholarly research is in long-term care policy, chronic illness, and older adult care. She was selected to be one of the first researchers as the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholar Program, a position she held in 1999-2000.

She holds master’s degrees in social work and public administration and a doctorate in social work from Columbia University.

Fordham Westchester’s GSS is home to approximately 350 students. It offers full-time and part-time plans of study to earn a master’s in social work, with concentrations in clinical, human service leadership, community based practice, and leadership and research.

The Westchester location, said Lee, offers students to attend a premier social work program and develop a community of students who are connected to and serve the needs of the larger population of the region.

“We hope that our faculty, students, and our neighbors in the region can become strong partners in building healthy and equitable communities,” she said.

Located in a three-story, state-of-the-art building on 32 acres in West Harrison, New York, Fordham Westchester also offers classes in the University’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies, Gabelli School of Business, Graduate School of Education, and Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education.

— Janet Sassi

In a keynote speech at the Graduate School of Social Service’s (GSS) annual Entitlements and Benefits Fair, Wackstein, a longtime activist and advocate for the homeless, said that under President Ronald Reagan the nation shifted from the 1960s model of the Great Society to a systematic disinvestment in the nation’s needy.

“It has been a long time since ‘social services’ has not been a dirty word in this country,” she told the gathering in Pope Auditorium on the Lincoln Center campus. “Every one of us has a critical job to do to change this pervasive cultural message. Don’t believe that somebody else will take care of it—they won’t.”

During her tenure as executive director of the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House in New York City, Wackstein initiated a letter-writing campaign among social work staffers against proposed cutbacks in senior and Head Start services by the Giuliani administration. The grassroots outcry among the city’s social services personnel helped force the administration’s hand against the cutbacks, she said.

“You entered this profession because you put value on this kind of work,” Wackstein said. “Change happens case by case, one by one. When you add up a lot of ones, it becomes collective action.”

After the address, the fair broke into a series of workshops designed to help social workers navigate various agencies offering housing services to persons and families in need, including those living with domestic violence, AIDS or mental and development disabilities.

Ji Seon Lee, Ph.D., assistant professor of social work and one of the fair organizers, said that the GSS chose the topic of housing because it is a basic, concrete necessity in people’s lives, increasingly threatened by current economic trends.

“We thought it would offer a great example of how to do advocacy,” she said.