Faculty Profile

Michelle Garner, Ph.D.

• Ph.D., Social Welfare, University of Washington Seattle, 2007.
• M.S.W., University of Washington Seattle, 1998.

Social work is the nexus of concern for improving individual and collective well-being with physical and mental health and social justice implications. This core mission is what attracted me to the field and now unifies and guides my teaching, research, service, and clinical practice.

After earning my MSW, I worked for years as a clinician and researcher in varied venues and with multiple populations prior to and during my doctoral education. I am a licensed independent clinical social worker (LICSW) and a member of the NASW academy of certified social workers (ACSW). Having joined the UWT faculty in 2006, I now teach practice and theory classes at the bachelors and masters levels, a role I am thoroughly enjoying. I have continued my private practice which invigorates my teaching by keeping me grounded in my skills and current with practice issues.

My current research includes evaluation of a Housing First program for chronic public inebriates and barriers or facilitators for service entry for this population (funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, with Dr. Mary Larimer and I serving as PIs on these projects, respectively), and of a Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention intervention (funded by NIDA with Dr. Alan Marlatt as PI). Truly, my interests lie across populations in the variable interplay of mind, body, spirit and social contexts that impact physical and mental health and may promote well being across groups. At the moment this manifests as interests in cultural competency of care and in mindfulness, spirituality, and states of consciousness as they relate to wellness. In 2006-2007, I was a Faculty Integrative Health Scholars Program Fellow, an NIH sponsored UW Medicine and Nursing and Bastry University collaborative program that has enhanced my interests in alternative/ complimentary/ integral medicine theories and techniques of non-pharmacological interventions and outcomes evaluation of holistic interventions. More recently, I am also learning and thinking about teaching pedagogy as I integrate my teaching, research, service, and practice scholarship together in my faculty role. Participation in the University of Washington 2008 Institute for Teaching Excellence has helped me advance this goal. I bring enthusiasm for the profession and my work into the classroom and am contemplative about how to make this enthusiasm contagious!

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