School Updates
“What’s meaningful to me is their absolute dedication to the education of students and their willingness to share their experiences, their training, and their guidance with our students. There aren’t enough words to express our gratitude for our alumni and field instructors.” —Tonya Slawinski
Spanning 40 years, Tonya Slawinski has a deep connection to the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work as a student, teacher, and program director, with a substantial career in crisis management in between. Currently, she is the director of field education. We asked Slawinski to share more about her journey through Pitt, exciting happenings in field education, and her life outside work.
Q: Tell us about your journey to Pitt.
A: I started my master’s in Florida, at Barry University, but moved to Pittsburgh when I got engaged. I finished my MSW at Pitt and years later got my PhD here as well. I started as an adjunct faculty member in about 1999 and then became the MSW program coordinator for the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. I was there for several years, but then I went into a career in crisis management. I continued to teach throughout and functioned at times as a field instructor and field liaison. I continued doing that until 2019, when I became the lead adjunct. In May of 2021, I joined the faculty to teach and, shortly after, became the interim director of field education and now recently the director.
Q: What influenced you to start a career in crisis management?
A: I had to get continuing education hours for my license, and I noticed a flyer with a training about corporate crisis management. I had already been trained in the Mitchell Model [for Critical Incident Debriefing] but wasn’t satisfied with that model. After responding to 9/11, I was hired by a corporate crisis management company and worked there for several years, helping to develop a resiliency model for crisis response. In 2005, I decided to start my own crisis response company and ultimately became the largest private woman-owned crisis response firm in the country, with about 850 mental health professionals functioning as consultants for unexpected events. We responded to events like the Sandy Hook shooting, Hurricane Katrina, and violence in the workplace.
I still provide crisis management and response training because I developed an approach to crisis response based on a strengths-based perspective. I was able to move away from previous crisis response models that were relied upon in many industries and used my social work background to develop an approach that focused on resiliency rather
than pathology.
Q: How have you seen the social work landscape change in your time at Pitt and in the field?
A: I think one of the bigger changes—and it’s only been recently—is social work’s willingness to begin a historical review of how social work has participated in practices that aren’t supportive of diversity, equity, and inclusion. There’s been a shift from static learning to the perspective that cultural humility is a lifelong learning process. I’ve seen students become more interested and invested in advocacy.
Q: What are some of the exciting opportunities on the horizon for field education?
A: We’re exploring ways to offer more kinds of diversity, equity, and inclusion training, which can be incorporated into internships and field sites. We want to be a resource to help think ideas through and participate with our partner agencies on what they’re doing with students and how we can work together to enrich the student experience.
Another aspect I would like to see our office expand on is how we can think about field education globally. A few faculty took a trip to Uganda and Kenya two years ago to begin exploring this possibility, and we’re considering other sites that we can engage with to have students more immersed in the culture and education of other countries.
There also are opportunities to do more research on field education, collaborating with departments across the country to think about how we can bring together best research, best practices, changes, and expectations.
Q: A lot of our field instructors are alumni of our program. What has been meaningful to you in working with alumni in this capacity?
A: What’s meaningful to me is their absolute dedication to the education of students and their willingness to share their experiences, their training, and their guidance with our students. There aren’t enough words to express our gratitude for our alumni and
field instructors.
Q: Is there anything else about field education that you want to add?
A: Field education has a unique position with students because of the way we’re structured. We see students in academic advising; we help place them; we do the field liaison visits with them. So I think we have our fingers on the pulse of what the students are doing across all aspects of their educational career. Field is a very flexible office where we really work to make sure that the needs are met individually on a variety of levels.
Q: What does life outside the office look like for you?
A: I live a very active lifestyle. I like to kayak, paddle board, ride bikes, bungee jump, and go parachuting, horseback riding, and fishing. I like outdoor activities, but if I’m stuck inside, I like to read and cook.
If you’re interested in getting involved as a field instructor, contact Slawinski at tslawin@pitt.edu.