Robert Leibson Hawkins to Hold First Endowed Professorship in Poverty Studies

By Roberta Salvador

Robert Leibson Hawkins, assistant professor of social work, has been appointed to the McSilver Professorship in the Study of Poverty, a newly endowed position for junior faculty at the school and the first named professorship for a full-time faculty member there. The endowment will enable Hawkins to expand his study of poverty and its causes and begin new initiatives in research and policy.

“I believe that the focus of a school of social work should be on those who are most oppressed and at risk in our society,” says Hawkins, who joined the faculty in 2004. “Having a professorship dedicated to understanding poverty is a statement that the school and the University care about people living on the economic margins.”

Hawkins, who teaches classes on policy and poverty and ethnocultural social work, has recently focused on low-income children and families displaced by Hurricane Katrina and the effects of chronic loss and accumulated trauma.

“In the interviews I conducted, many people said, ‘This isn’t the first time I’ve lost everything,’” says Hawkins, noting that many victims are taking advantage of social services for the first time. “It becomes obvious that these interventions should have occurred much earlier in their lives. It should not take a disaster for people to get the services they need.”

Hawkins is beginning a study on child and family well-being in Newark, NJ, in collaboration with Wynona’s House, a child advocacy center.