The Village at Marymount’s Social Work Intern Looks To Supervisor For Career Development

Jennifer Ostrowski has received quite an education in social work thanks to her internship this year at The Village at Marymount. Jennifer, who is supervised by Social Services Coordinator Andrea Fries, is enrolled in CSU’s Master of Social Work Program.

In addition to Jennifer’s educational requirements at CSU, she participates in the University/Medicaid Research Partnership for the Medicaid Technical Assistance and Policy Program (MedTapp) Healthcare Access Initiative. This initiative is a partnership between Ohio Medicaid, the Ohio Department of Mental Health, the Ohio Department of Health, Ohio Board of Regents, and Ohio’s colleges and universities. The initiative is designed to help the school to attract, train, and retain health care providers to better serve Ohio’s Medicaid population.

Jennifer, who will participate in this grant-funded partnership between the CSU School of Social Work and CSU School of Nursing, recently selected Andrea to be her mentor throughout the project.

Additionally, Jennifer is contributing information to a book being written by her supervisors that addresses diversity in families and family therapy models. All topics are brought back to the concept of families. The book is a revision to one they published about 20 years ago. Through Jennifer’s role as a graduate assistant, she was asked to conduct research, update information, and contribute to select sections of select chapters, as well as a few other tasks for the book.

“My supervisors informed me that they will be giving me credit in the book,” Jennifer said. “I know they hope to have the book serve as a textbook for a few classes, but it has not been decided yet.”

Andrea said she was surprised and honored that Jennifer asked her to serve as her mentor. “Jennifer is a great student, she has been an asset to the social work department,” Andrea said, “and I’m happy to help her with another aspect of her career.”

The objectives of the project with which Andrea will mentor Jennifer include:

● to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration on health issues relating to servicing the senior Medicaid population by engaging mentors across a variety of health disciplines.

● foster readiness and knowledge of entry-level health care practitioners to meet the needs of the Medicaid population.

“As my supervisor at The Village at Marymount, Andrea has taught me a lot about social work,” Jennifer said. “I thought she would be the perfect mentor for me since I’ve already learned so much from her during my internship.”

In addition to her role as The Village at Marymount’s Social Services Coordinator, Andrea serves as a field instructor for CSU’s Master of Social Work program interns for their field placement.

More than 200 social service agencies in Greater Cleveland provide internship opportunities to social work students. The School of Social Work is one of the largest undergraduate and graduate programs at CSU.