Alumni
COSA Alumni Receive Major Awards
David Coplan and Carl Redwood Jr. are Pitt Social Work alumni who recently won awards.
Two Community, Organization, and Social Action (COSA) alumni from the School of Social Work received major awards over the summer for their outstanding work. The School of Social Work congratulates them on their well-deserved honors.
David Coplan (BASW ’91, MSW ’93) received the Human Services Management Exemplar Award for “excellence in human service organization leadership and management” from the Network for Social Work Management. This international organization seeks to advance social work management competencies, and the Exemplar Award recognizes a human service leader whose work reflects and advances those competencies. Coplan was nominated by his friend, colleague, and mentor at the school, Tracy Soska. In addition to practicing excellence in social work management, Coplan also teaches an MSW course in social administration that he developed at the school that embodies the network’s human services management competen- cies. Coplan was recognized for his leadership and management of the Human Services Center Corporation, which also has received awards for excellence as a nonprofit organization, including the Forbes Funds’ Wishart Award for Nonprofit Excellence. Coplan received his Exemplar Award at the Network for Social Work Management’s Annual Management Conference on June 15, 2017, in New York, N.Y., at Fordham University. In July 2017, Coplan was featured on the Network of Social Work Management’s Monday Morning Manager weekly blog. You can learn more at socialworkmanager.org.
Carl Redwood Jr. (MSW ’87) was the recipient of the Thomas Merton Center’s NewPerson Award for 2017 for his outstanding community, labor, and progressive organizing in the region. The Thomas Merton Center is a leading catalyst for social and environmental justice in the region. Redwood was feted at a dinner celebration on June 26, 2017, at the jam-packed National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 84 hall on Pittsburgh’s North Side. For many years, Redwood taught community organizing at the School of Social Work. His award recognized his work as a community organizer codirecting the Hill District Consensus Group and leading the One Hill Coalition to secure a community benefits agreement with the Pittsburgh Penguins around their development in the lower Hill and for his tireless work for affordable housing, racial and economic justice, and labor/community coalition building, including adjunct and faculty organizing at Pitt and in the city. Redwood presented a stirring acceptance speech on the need for a new progressive political party in our city and the current effort to establish it. Redwood will be a featured speaker this fall in the School of Social Work Speaker Series.