BA, University of Washington
MSW, PhD, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Alicia Mendez (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at Bridgewater State University School of Social Work. She is a Mexicana-American, first-generation high school and college graduate. Her teaching and research interests are informed by her family’s experiences and strength. She is a proud social worker and actively strives to hold the profession to its ethical standards through advocacy, research, and teaching. Her research focuses on intergenerational trauma, posttraumatic growth, child sexual abuse, and the child welfare system. She utilizes reflexive methodologies and strengths-based frameworks to investigate how trauma impacts each member of the parent-child dyad, how trauma patterns are broken intergenerationally, and how intergenerational posttraumatic growth evolves among families. As a macro social worker, she partners with public and private agencies to examine how policies are implemented and experienced at the organizational and client level. She has a few ongoing projects that she would encourage any interested student to participate in as part of their learning.
In her free time, she enjoys yoga, making ice cream and sorbet, watching way too many movies, sewing, rock climbing, and spending quality time with her family and friends. She hopes to create an Art as Advocacy class where students identify a way that they like to create and use that to raise awareness about a social issue.