Amy E. Stein

Amy E. Stein is a Ph.D. Candidate at Bryn Mawr College, has a Master’s Degree in Social Work (MSW) from Rutgers University, has a B.A. in psychology from The College of New Jersey and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. She is a full-time instructor of social work teaching BSW and MSW students at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. She has experience serving as field liaison, teaching a field course, Introduction to Social Welfare, Human Behavior and the Social Environment I and II, Race Relations, Family Systems, Communities and Organizations, Power, Privilege and Oppression, Social Work Practice with Individuals, Social Work Practice with Groups and Families and Introduction to Generalist Practice. Amy also taught in the BSW program at West Chester University as adjunct faculty for six years.

As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, she counseled and taught children, adolescents and adults in alternative schools, on nature preserves, farms, a wilderness therapy program in northern Maine, hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, an inner-city community health center and school-based health centers in Worcester, MA, including immigrants and refugees, as well as Latino and Native American populations for more than 20 years.

As a volunteer youth leader for five years, she assisted with program development for middle and high school students and helped refurbish houses with youth on mission trips to Maine and Mexico. During graduate school, she interned as an addictions therapist in an inner city hospital and counseled developmentally disabled adolescents in an alternative school where she implemented environmental and art programs as alternative therapeutic approaches.

During several years teaching at-risk adolescents in alternative schools, she developed and taught curriculum that integrated agriculture, art and ecology. The environmental education program included forest and stream ecology, camping trips, community gardening and maple sugaring. Her art curriculum included abstract and impressionistic painting and environmental sculpture. She has also worked in community gardens, taught on a nature preserve and volunteered for environmental organizations. She spent a year organically farming fulltime, selling produce through a farm stand, health food stores and restaurants and taught art and organic farming to community youth working on the farm. She worked as a therapist in a wilderness therapy program in northern Maine and developed groups for at-risk female adolescents based on the disciplines of ecology, Native American culture, psychology, and art to address anger management.

She is presently co-authoring academic publications for peer-reviewed journals on immigrant and refugee populations and environmental degradation on Native American reservations. Amy presents qualitative research related to immigrant and refugee populations at annual conferences, such as the American Public Health Association (APHA), Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and the Social Work Voices first annual retreat sponsored by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW).

As an artist (www.facebook.com/kitanitowitcreations), she has exhibited and sold oil paintings since 1998 and has studied oil painting through the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, the Samuel Fleisher Art Memorial School and the Woodstock School of Art in New York. She enjoys kayaking, yoga, hiking, biking, zumba, knitting, painting, writing, djembe drumming, organic gardening, paddle boarding, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.