The PhD Program is proud to announce the inaugural recipients of the Jeongseok Kong and Sunmi Jin Memorial PhD Fellowship and the Dr. Donna Harrington Memorial PhD Fellowship for the 2019-2020 Academic Year.
Yao Wang, (above left) is the first Jeongseok Kong and Sunmi Jin PhD Fellow. She is interested in expanding her knowledge of environment factors (especially family factors) that affect the mental health of children and adolescents. Since protective factors and resilience are the foundation of an effective intervention, she hopes to integrate these into her future intervention development and research.
As the first recipient of the Dr. Donna Harrington PhD Fellowship, Rachel Imboden (above right) is interested in studying moral reasoning and ethics education, as well as the relationship between social work practice and political and economic theory. Jeongseok Kong was a PhD student at UMSSW who passed away in a car accident with his wife, Sunmi Jin, in 2014, before he could finish the doctoral program. Dr. Donna Harrington was the Associate Dean for Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Education; she passed away in 2018. The Kong-Jin & Harrington fellowships were started by friends, family, peers, and UMB faculty to honor Jeongseok, Sunmi, and Donna’s legacies at UMB while continuing to promote advances in social work research and practice. Congratulations, Yao and Rachel!