Dr. Lori Holleran Steiker has been selected for the 2015 CSWE Distinguished Recent Contributions to Social Work Education Award.
This award recognizes Holleran Steiker’s teaching excellence, scholarship, and research with adolescents, young adults, and their families in the areas of substance use disorders. According to CSWE’s award statement, “her groundbreaking work augmented the research on cultural adaptation of substance abuse prevention curricula by promoting a strengths-based approach rather than a deficit-based model for the framework of substance abuse recovery.”
The award statement also highlights that Holleran Steiker is one of the co-founders of University High School, Austin’s first recovery high school, which opened its doors in fall 2014. The school’s mission is to enable each student to fulfill his or her personal and academic potential within a supportive and sober recovery environment. The school receives support from various community agencies along with The University of Texas at Austin departments, programs, educators, and students.
“I get very moved by the fact that we can provide an educational setting in an incredibly rich environment to help these individuals hold their head high and say proudly, I am a person in recovery” Holleran Steiker said. “I love this project. It is a culmination of everything I have ever cared about and done.”