Dean Allan Cole announced that several faculty colleagues will be recommended by Jim Davis, interim president of The University of Texas at Austin, to the Board of Regents for promotion and tenure in May.
The five faculty members, including their promotions, are below:
Elisa Borah, Ph.D., MSW, promotion to research professor
Yessenia Castro, Ph.D., promotion to professor
Fiona Conway, Ph.D., promotion to associate professor with tenure
Sarah Sloan, LCSW-S, promotion to clinical professor
Sandra Vanegas, Ph.D., promotion to research associate professor
Dr. Elisa Borah serves a research associate professor is the director of the Institute for Military and Veteran Family Wellness, and the director of the Moritz Center for Societal Impact. She conducts research to identify, implement, and evaluate programming and supports for military members, veterans, spouses and their families. Current research efforts include studying the impact of peer and social support for military and veteran spouses, self-care practices among military spouses, and how best to support military spouses’ transition needs after military life. She also studies how to improve engagement of concerned significant others in veteran suicide prevention practices and research. In 2015, Borah developed the Veteran Spouse Network to engage veteran spouses in defining programmatic and research needs to better support veteran families in Texas and throughout the country. Borah also chairs the annual Military Social Work conference at The University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Yessenia Castro is an associate professor and the associate dean for doctoral education at Texas Social Work. Her research studies the influence of cultural adaptation variables on cancer risk behavior among Latinos. She is particularly interested in understanding how cultural variables combine with known key determinants of smoking to affect cessation outcomes. Her work also incorporates understanding determinants of multiple cancer risk behaviors among Latinos, and she collaborates on research examining social determinants of smoking cessation among individuals of low socioeconomic status and other special populations of smokers.
Dr. Fiona Conway is the associate director of research at Addiction Research Institute, and serves as an assistant professor with Texas Social Work. Her research focuses on substance use behaviors emphasizing recovery support services, digital health solutions, and substance use among adolescents and young adults. She also collaborates with biomedical scientists to investigate the relationships between behavioral health and human biology. She is particularly interested in the relationships between psychological distress, neuro-cardiac self-regulation, and substance use. Her interdisciplinary research seeks to facilitate the transfer of new and innovative scientific strategies to substance use prevention specialists and treatment providers.
Sarah Sloan is the assistant dean for health affairs at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work and has worked as a clinical social worker in agency settings focused on mental health and mental health access since 2003. She also has a history with non-profits, working for Austin Habitat for Humanity and Habitat for Humanity International from 1996-2002. Sloan has a private practice, where she provides therapy, supervision and consultation.
Dr. Sandra B. Vanegas is a bilingual (English/Spanish) developmental psychologist and a research assistant professor. She also serves as the clinical training director for the Autism Consortium of Texas LEND and director of research for the Texas Center for Disability Studies. Her work focuses on identifying and addressing disparities that impact children and youth with neurodevelopmental disabilities from racial/ethnic minority and low-resource communities. She leads the Improving Developing Experiences for Autism and developmental disabilities (IDEA). She is the PI for the ASD Screening and Parent Engagement (ASPEN) Intervention Program Study, the TX-Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, and the Diverse Language Experiences Project. She also serves as a co-chair for the Cultural Diversity Committee as part of the International Society for Autism Research.