Staff Information

WHO’S WHO AT THE RAVAZZIN CENTER

§ RAVAZZIN CENTER FACULTY RESEARCH SCHOLARS

§ RAVAZZIN CENTER HONORARY ADVISORY BOARD

RAVAZZIN CENTER STAFF

Irene A. Gutheil, D.S.W., is Director of the Ravazzin Center for Social Work Research in Aging and Henry C. Ravazzin Professor of Gerontology at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. Prior to coming to Fordham, Dr. Gutheil worked with older persons and their families in both institutional and community settings. Active in the field of aging for over 30 years, Dr Gutheil now focuses on research, teaching, and writing. She is the editor of Work With Older People: Challenges and Opportunities and author of articles on aging and social work. Her most recent research focuses on social work and end-of-life planning.

As Director of Fordham’s Ravazzin Center, Dr. Gutheil provides leadership to the School of Social Service's aging initiatives. The Ravizzin Center engages in a range of research activities and sponsors conferences on cutting-edge issues in the field of aging. Dr. Gutheil holds Master’s and Doctoral degrees from Columbia University, is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, and has served as a member of the Executive Board of the State Society on Aging of New York.
Dr. Gutheil’s interests include end-of-life planning, the physical environment and social work practice, and family caregiving.
gutheil@fordham.edu

Janna Heyman, Ph.D., is Assistant Director at the Ravazzin Center for Social Work Research in Aging and Assistant Professor at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. She teaches Social Work Research, Advanced Research Design and Advanced Research Analysis. She has been teaching at Fordham University since 1986. Dr. Heyman received both her Ph.D. and M.S.W. from Fordham University.

Dr. Heyman is currently working with the Ravazzin Center on end of life issues and is co-investigator of Strengthening the Role of the Healthcare Agent: A Protocol for Use with Hispanic Elders. She is also involved in the Westchester Millennium Aging Project, intergenerational programs, and spiritual studies.
heyman@fordham.edu

Nadia Cohen, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Scholar at the Ravazzin Center for Social Work Research in Aging. Dr. Cohen received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. She was Associate Professor of Sociology and Assistant Training Director of the Ph.D. Training Program in Demography at the University of Southern California. Since then, Dr. Cohen has focused her professional career around policy-oriented research and policy and program planning, first as Research Director of the International Center for Research on Women (Washington D.C.); Senior Policy Specialist at UNICEF’s Policy and Program Planning Division; and Senior Demographer at the Center for Immigration and Population Studies at CUNY. Prior to joining the Ravazzin Center, she worked as a Consultant for the World Bank’s Eastern Europeand Central Asia Region, conducting project-related social research (Washington, D.C.).

Dr. Cohen’s current interest centers around the diversity of populations in New York City, specifically issues bearing on the socio-economic condition of older immigrant communities and US-born ethnic groups, with a view to bringing forth significant findings for policy consideration.

Susan F. Cohn, CSW-R, MPH, CEAP, is Field Work Supervisor for the Andrus Scholars at the Ravazzin Center for Social Work Research in Aging. She has over 20 years of social work experience, holds a Master of Public Health and Master of Social Work from Columbia University and has an "R" which is a clinical credential in NY State. She is a Certified Employee Assistance Counselor. Ms. Cohn coordinated two grant-funded programs for the New York City Department for the Aging and was the founding Director of the Brookdale Respite Program. At the Nathan Miller Center, she directed the Foster HomeProgram for Older Adults, and she worked for many years as an Employee Assistance Counselor at Nynex and at Texaco. Ms. Cohn maintains a psychotherapy private practice in Hartsdale.
scohn@fordham.edu

Karen Dybing, M.A., is Administrator at the Ravazzin Centerfor Social Work Research in Aging. She has extensive experience in office administration, data analysis, budgeting and computerized modeling. She is responsible for day-to-day operations at the Center, liaison with University offices, maintaining and updating databases, and overseeing production of Center documents.
dybing@fordham.edu

Linda White-Ryan, M.S.W., R.N., C.A.S.A.C., is Research Associate at the Ravazzin Center for Social Work Research in Aging. She received her Masters of Social Work degree with a specialization in older adults and their families from Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. Ms. White-Ryan has 25 years of experience working in the psychiatric and substance abuse fields in both inpatient and outpatient clinical settings. She has developed alcohol and substance abuse prevention workshops and presented them in many school systems throughout Westchester County. Ms. White-Ryan’s research interests currently include older adults and alcoholism/substance abuse.
whiteryan@fordham.edu

RAVAZZIN CENTER FACULTY RESEARCH SCHOLARS

Faculty research scholars are faculty members working on projects under the aegis of the Ravazzin Center.

Cathy S. Berkman, Ph.D., ACSW, is Faculty Research Scholar at the Ravazzin Center for Social Work Research in Aging and Associate Professor at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. Her current research interests in aging include: health and mental health, minority populations, psychiatric epidemiology, end-of-life care (including advance directives, palliative care), physical restraint use in acute care settings, and the role of culture in each of these areas.
cathyberkman@nyc.rr.com

Patricia Brownell, Ph.D., C.S.W., is Faculty Research Scholar at the Ravazzin Center for Social Work Research in Aging and Assistant Professor at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. She has a Master's of Social Work degree and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) from Fordham University. She is a Hartford Foundation Geriatric Social Work Faculty Fellow, and is the United States Representative to the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse (INPEA). She currently represents INPEA on the NGO Committee on Ageing of the United Nations. Her areas of interest are gerontology, elder abuse and domestic violence. Dr. Brownell has been active in the fields of domestic violence, aging and public welfare for over 30 years.
brownell@fordham.edu

Roslyn Chernesky, D.S.W., is Faculty Research Scholar at the Ravazzin Center for Social Work Research in Aging and Professor at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. She received the University's award for twenty years of service to the University in March 2001 and was recipient of the Career Achievement Award of the Association of Community Organization and Social Administration in 2002. A Gerontological Society of America Post-Doctoral Fellow in 1989, Dr. Chernesky’s interests are in foundation funding, changing agency environments, case management, service delivery and agency administration.
chernesky@fordham.edu

Ji Seon Lee, Ph.D., is Faculty Research Scholar at the Ravazzin Center for Social Work Research in Aging and Assistant Professor at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. In 1999, Dr. Lee was named one of the first Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholars, a program funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation and administered by the Gerontological Society of America.
Dr. Lee's interests are conducting outcomes research on how chronically ill elders fare in various long-term care settings (i.e. home health care), specifically examining the role of social work and its impact on patient outcomes.
jilee@fordham.edu

Cynthia Cannon Poindexter, MSW, Ph.D., is Faculty Research Scholar at the Ravazzin Center for Social Work Research in Aging and Associate Professor at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service where she teaches HIV policy, HIV practice, and supervision. She has been a practitioner in the human services field for 26 years, 16 of those years in the HIV field. She was a Hartford Foundation Geriatric Social Work Faculty Fellow. She received her B.A. from Duke University, her MSW from the University of South Carolina, and her Ph.D. from the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research includes HIV education, older HIV-affected caregivers, and HIV service provision.
poindexter@fordham.edu