ACOSA Awards Honors Doctoral Students with UB Ties

Two members of the UBSSW family received Advancing Social Change Through Community Practice (ACOSA) doctoral student awards. Kudos to Josal Diebold, MSW ’18, a current PhD Candidate at UB, and Greer A. Hamilton, MSW ’16, currently a PhD student at Boston University, who were honored for their meritorious scholarship in the field of community practice. 

Diebold’s research is intimately tied to her volunteer work with Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a national organization committed to organizing and mobilizing white people into Black-led multi-racial movements for racial and economic justice. 

“I am deeply grateful to receive the ACOSA award and hope that it reflects on the space that SURJ has created for folks to come together and take responsibility for organizing our communities in accountability to Black-led movements,” said Diebold. “It's deeply important to me that my research mirror the organizing process so, I am using participatory action research to guide my dissertation project. Being a part of SURJ has been greatly transformative for me on many levels, shaping me into the organizer-researcher that I am and I hope my focus on mutual interest will be fruitful as I develop my research to inform social change.”

The Association for Community Organization and Social Action (ACOSA) is an interdisciplinary professional association grounded in the social work profession. Its mission is to promote social change by strengthening community practice in social work. ACOSA promotes social work education, research, and practice in all areas of community practice including community organizing, community planning and development, organizational leadership, policy practice, and social action. ACOSA fosters global perspectives on social work practice and social welfare policy, advances racial, environmental, and social justice, values interdisciplinary collaboration, improves the social and economic well-being of marginalized communities, and supports human rights for all.