Stephen Monroe Tomczak holds an MSW degree from the University of Connecticut and a Ph.D. in social policy from Brandeis University. Dr. Tomczak has an extensive background in social work education and research, particularly in the areas of social welfare policy, poverty, and the history of social work & social welfare.
He has worked for the Connecticut Department of Social Services and helped design and staff a special project on foster parent recruitment housed at the Department of Children and Families. Dr. Tomczak has been teaching at the SCSU Department of Social Work since 2004, and serving as a full-time faculty member since 2010. He teaches courses in social welfare policy, community organization and child welfare policy.
In addition to his teaching duties, Dr. Tomczak has initiated several extra-curricular events which have promoted substantial student involvement and activism, including two Teach-ins on economic injustice and ways to combat it through community organizing; a United Way-sponsored "community conversation" that attempted to gather information from SCSU personnel to inform that organization's assessment of community needs; and an experiential learning activity called the "Poverty Simulation," which enables students to experience what it is like to live in poverty and have to attempt to meet the daily needs of life for a simulated month.
This last project also promises to produce some useful research on the impact of this experience on student attitudes towards poor people. Over the course of his career, Dr. Tomczak has written several grants that were successfully funded, including a recent faculty development grant to fund a symposium on social work and the law. Since joining the full-time faculty, Dr. Tomczak serves on several departmental committees, including being chairperson of the Election & Bylaws committee and the Social Welfare Policy sequence committee.