Susan Ann Cole
Associate Professor
Office location:325 SSW
Phone number: 217-244-5231
Email: sacole@uiuc.edu
Educational Background
Dr. Susan Cole received her bachelor’s degree from Marygrove College, Detroit, in 1968, her MSW from the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1983, and her PhD in social welfare from the Mandel School of Applied Social Science, Case Western Reserve University, in 2001. After a 25-year professional career in education and social work that included clinical social work practice, program development, evaluation, and research, Dr. Cole joined the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an assistant professor in 2001. Her career has included development and evaluation of such programs as the Adolescent PKU Program, PKU-Clinic, the University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor; the behavioral health program in the Human Services Department, Ministry of Health, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Majuro, Marshall Islands; the Peer Education Program, Hawai’i State Department of Health and Department of Education; and development, implementation, and evaluation of a social work and behavioral health program for behavioral heath services for recent immigrants and homeless, severe, and persistently mentally ill served by the Kalihi-Palama Health Center, Honolulu, Hawai’i.
Dr. Cole is recognized for her research into factors affecting attachment relationships between infants and foster caregivers and psychosocial factors affecting foster caregivers. More recently she is recognized for her work evaluating crisis nursery interventions for the six nurseries throughout the state of Illinois.
Research and Practice Interests
Research interests include factors affecting attachment relationships of infants in foster care, psychological attributes of foster caregivers, and empirical evaluation of crisis nursery services. Dr. Cole’s clinical practice focus is with infants, children and adolescents, clinical practice with groups, and diversity issues in clinical practice.
Current research
Dr. Cole is currently working with the six crisis nurseries in Illinois to identify appropriate empirical methods for use in evaluating child and parent outcomes in crisis nursery prevention programs (i.e., propensity score matching).
Recent Publications
Cole, S. A. & Eamon, M. K. (in press). Predictors of Depressive Symptoms Among Foster Caregivers. Child Abuse and Neglect.
Cole, S. A. (in press). Building secure relationships: Attachment in kin and unrelated foster caregiver-infant relationships. Families in Society.
Cole, S. A., Haight, W., & Taylor, E. (2006). Social work with adolescents: Mentoring in the schools. In Wendy Haight and Edward Taylor, (Ed.) Human Behavior for Social Work Practice: A Developmental-Ecological Perspective.
Cole, S. A. (2005). Foster Caregiver Motivation and Infant Attachment: How Do Reasons for Fostering Affect Relationships?. Child & Adolescent Social Work Journal. 22, 441-457.
Cole, S. A., Wehrman, K. C., Dewar, G., & Swinford, L. (2005). Crisis nurseries: Important services in a system of care for families and children. Children and Youth Services Review. 27, 995-1010.