Meet the faculty and staff

« Return to faculty index
Shirley Bryant

Shirley Bryant

Associate Professor, NoVA Campus
Phone: (703) 823-4140
E-mail: sabryant@vcu.edu

Finding social work

“Social work sort of dropped in my lap. I went for a summer to New York City during my junior year in college and worked for a church there that was very involved with the community. I found that I liked that kind of work and when I went back to school I knew I wanted to pursue social work.

“I enjoyed the empowerment of people at the local level, helping people learn how to make good things happen for their communities, giving them skills to be able to do that, and helping them understand how laws were made and how to influence them.

“It’s seeing the pride that people take in themselves once they learn that they can master their environments, that they can have control over their lives. That’s what attracted me, and still does, about social work.”

Education

  • D.S.W. – Howard University School of Social Work, Washington, D.C.
  • M.S.W. – Fordham University School of Social Work, New York, N.Y.
  • B.S.W. – Hanover College, Hanover, Ind.

Research interests

  • African American women
  • Families and communities

Courses taught

  • Policy, Community and Organizational Practice I
  • Policy, Community and Organizational Practice II
  • Advanced Social Welfare Policy: Families and Poverty
  • Social Work Practice in Child Welfare

Selected publications

  • Bryant, S. (2008). Caring for My Mother: Four Phases of Caregiving. In Joyce O. Beckett, Lifting Our Voices: Professional Social Workers’ Journeys into Caregiving. Columbia University Press, pp. 194-222.

  • Berry-Edwards, J., Bryant, S., Clark, T. (2007). African American female social work educators in predominantly white schools of social work: Strategies for thriving. Journal of African American Studies.

  • Matto, H., Berry-Edwards, J., Hutchison, E., Bryant, S., Waldbillig, A. (2006). An exploratory study on multiple intelligences and social work education. Journal of Social Work Education, 42(2), 405-416.

  • Bryant, S. (February, 2003). Foreword. In Olukemi Adamolekun, Papers on counseling and social, College Press & Publishers Limited, Jericho, Ibadan, Nigeria, pp. 1x-x.

  • Bryant, S. (2003). Physical, psychological and social adaptation of African American nuns to their religious communities as they age: Implications for aging in place. Journal of Religious Gerontology, 14(4), pp. 35-54.

  • National Black Sisters’ Conference (2003). Final report of the first national conference for black Catholic women, Washington, D.C.

Professional affiliations

  • Council on Social Work Education
  • Commission on Diversity and Racial and Economic Justice
  • Council on Racial, Ethnic and Cultural Diversity
  • National Association of Social Workers