Virgen Luce
Clinical Assistant Professor of Social Work, Field Learning and Community Partnerships
Curriculum Vitae
BA, Lehman College (CUNY); MSW, Hunter College School of Social Work (CUNY)
vtp1@nyu.edu | (212) 992-9716
bio
Virgen Luce (LCSW-R, ACSW) joined NYU's Silver School of Social Work full time in 2006 as Clinical Instructor, Field Learning & Community Partnerships.
Her 28-year professional clinical career began in a community-based mental health agency and continued to hospital settings where she held various clinical, supervisory and director-level management positions in the service of a multi-racial/ethnic client population.
From 1992 to 2002 she served as Field Instructor for NYU.s SSSW and subsequently, as Faculty Advisor from 2002 to the present. In fall 2006, she was appointed Faculty Liaison to the new Immigrant Child Welfare Fellowship Project, a partnership between the New York City Social Work Education Consortium and the Administration for Children Services. In this position, she trained social work graduates to work with immigrant families in child welfare settings.
Professor Luce has been a leader in HIV/AIDS, resulting in the creation of new resources and services for patients in her previous senior management and administrative positions -- as Director of Behavioral Health at Betances Health Center, and earlier, as Manager, AIDS Center: Pediatric-Maternal Services & Women.s Project at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City (1986 -2004).
She has given numerous presentations on Mental Health and HIV Affected Adolescents and the Therapeutic Use of Art with HIV+ Children. In addition, she has presented on The Signs and Symptoms of Child Abuse to students in the NYU Occupational Therapy Program. As a lecturer New York City Social Work Education Consortium Immigrant Child Welfare Fellowship Project, her most recent presentation was Best Practices for the Development of Culturally/ Linguistically Competent Helping Interventions and Evaluation of Goal Achievement and Service Outcomes.
Professor Luce is a NYU-SSSW Seminar in Field Instruction Lecturer, utilizing teaching techniques that foster effective means for field instructors to conceptualize and evaluate their practice and offer mechanisms to track student progress towards educational goals. Her areas of interest include field education as an integral component of social work education, anchored in settings that promote the development of professional competence. She participates in the coordination and evaluation of student field placements ( more than 900 annually). This year, she is working with Professor Diane Mirabito to co-develop a research protocol to identify training needs for students, field instructors, and faculty advisors in order to improve school- based field placements.
Her ongoing interest in health care (i.e. Psychiatry, AIDS) has expanded to the care of patients with Parkinson.s disease and their families. She completed the Allied Team Training for Parkinson.s II, sponsored by the National Parkinson.s Foundation, in fall 2006. Professor Luce, who is bilingual in English and Spanish, maintains a private practice in clinical social work in NYC. Her off-campus activities include facilitating various clinical and commercial focus groups for Charney Research and, most recently, developing and facilitating Parkinson.s psychosocial caregivers support group at a Jewish Community Center in New York City.