Dr. Melissa Bell is an associate professor and social work program director at Chatham University. She holds a PhD in social work from the University of Pittsburgh and a PhD certificate in the study of women, gender, and sexuality from the University of Pittsburgh. She is a licensed social worker in Pennsylvania with 10 years of post-master’s experience in psychiatric social work. She has a passion for policy, women’s issues, and reproductive issues. Faculty profile
MSW Online
Please share how you got into social work and walk through your career so far.
Melissa Bell
I got into social work originally not knowing what it was. Initially I was a psychology undergrad and I was doing an internship with children at a guidance center. I was applying to PhD psychology programs. All of my supervisors and the clinicians who worked at the guidance center all had MSW or LSW or something similar after their names. As I was asking for recommendation letters, my direct supervisor said, “Oh, I’m sort of confused. I thought you wanted to work with people.” Well, I thought, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m doing.” She explained to me that PhD psych programs are largely research based. So I asked her about her academic background and she pointed out that everybody who works there was a social worker, but I knew virtually nothing about social work.
There wasn’t a social work program at the university where I attended. I researched the profession of social work and it actually fit really well because as a psych major, I was mostly interested in social psychology. When it came to the question of “nature versus nurture” I believed that nature was important to consider. I was really focused on the social environment. One of the basic premises of social work is “person in the environment” that the environment is an important contributor. The more I researched, the more I felt like I found a home. I was also a women’s studies minor undergrad and so, it actually was a nice bridge between the two. So that’s how I got interested in social work as a senior in college and not knowing about social work. I researched it and decided, “Oh, this seems like the right path” and that’s what I did. I went to get an MSW right after.
I got my master’s degree at the University of Pittsburgh school of social work. For those two years, I focused on the track that’s related to direct practice mental health. Most schools of social work have tracks within the program. Some tracks focus on, for example, child welfare, some focus on macro practice, like community organizing. I was focused on direct practice and within that focused on mental health. Often students can also focus on medical social work. I focused on direct practice mental health, which fit well with the psychiatric background that I had been interested in.
I finished my master’s degree at Pitt, and thought, “now what do I do?”. Do I want to get a job? Do I want to keep going on to school? I applied to two fellowship programs. I applied to one at Yale, and I applied to one at University of California at Berkeley. I got interviews at both, which was really kind of exciting. I ended up earning a post-master’s fellowship at Yale University that was in intensive clinical services, which was a great experience.
I know a lot of students decide they’re ready to just get a job and I understand that, but if there’s a fellowship opportunity, I would strongly recommend considering it. I moved from Pittsburgh to Connecticut and it was an incredible experience. I learned much more than I even anticipated and made great connections and friendships through that experience. After returning to Pittsburgh, I worked at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, where I had completed one of my internships as an undergrad. Oh, I should probably mention that students who have bachelor’s degrees in social work from an accredited program, such as earning a BSW, are eligible for advanced standing. So when they go onto a MSW program, they only have to do roughly an additional year, as opposed to the two years, if they are advanced standing in the MSW program. It depends on the school. Ten months to 12 months are typical. I actually had to do the full MSW program because I was a psychology major undergrad.
When I was in an MSW program, I had to do two field placements where if I had a BSW with advanced standing, I would have only had to do one. One of my field placements was at the outpatient eating disorders clinic of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, which is part of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. I ended up working happily there for several years, but something was missing. I missed the advocacy work I had been doing related to women’s studies. While I was in that professional role, I felt like I could not be fully opinionated or politically active, especially as an employee to a larger institution. I tried to remain more of a blank slate to not potentially alienate clients or worry about being viewed as a representative of a larger system. What if they saw me being active in a movement, even writing a letter to the editor? Would it harm our rapport? Then the George Bush election happened. I decided that I had to do something different and I became a volunteer lobbyist while gradually going into private practice.
MSW Online
Interesting.
Melissa Bell
In social work, you can do that. You can actually pivot because social work is pretty broad. So I went to Harrisburg, which is the capital of Pennsylvania and I completed lobbying training. I kept my job at WPIC. As I slowly moved out of WPIC, working fewer hours and then moving into private practice, I also was lobbying for one bill. This was while I was completing a Ph.D. I spent two years lobbying for one bill. It was a coalition between the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, Planned Parenthood and other groups that shared concerns about the care of survivors of rape, including first responders. The bill focused on making sure that women who were sexually assaulted, who came to the emergency room, would be given access to emergency contraception if they wanted it.
While I was an undergrad, I volunteered at a rape crisis center, so I had seen women who had come in for services, but only after they were pregnant because they would try to avoid thinking about the assault, try to ignore it and forget about it and then there was this reminder. We have emergency contraception, we’ve had it for a long time and it’s one of those things that just seems like a no brainer. If someone’s coming in emergency room, make it part of the rape kit, it makes perfect sense. Why would we not do this? There was an attempt at a federal bill that failed and so, there was a state effort, which had passed in other states. Almost 90% of Pennsylvanians supported access to emergency contraception in the ER. The bill that we were trying to pass was called Compassion Assistance for Rape Emergencies.
The bill would have required that hospitals make EC available. Not that they push it, but that it’s available to women in the ER. There was a project called the Clara Bell Duvall Reproductive Freedom Project. One thing the project did was survey hospitals about their status of providing access of EC to rape survivors. It turned out that a majority were not providing access to EC. For some hospitals that are affiliated with religions, like a lot of Catholic hospitals in Pennsylvania, it’s actually against their policy. I sort of naively thought, well, as long as I worked on this and enough of us work on this, we can make this pass. Pennsylvanians are not going to like their tax dollars going to hospitals that refuse care. Where is the separation of church and state?
Actually one of the first representatives I met with said, “I support this, but you’ll never get this passed.” I thought, “Well, why not? This makes sense.” Well, politically we just didn’t have the power to fight against the organized powers that be, to make it pass, so there were several suggestions, including one suggestion that said that the hospital would allow a rape survivor to use the phone, that they could call someone to bring them emergency contraception. That assumes they’re conscious, it assumes they know who to call, it assumes a whole lot of things. Long story short, I worked on the bill for two years, we got something passed, it’s not ideal in my opinion. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that rape survivors are offered EC. Pennsylvania allows hospitals to not provide EC due to religious or moral objection. They can also opt out of providing all sexual assault care outside of life-saving care. So, a hospital can state that they have a religious objection and they don’t have to provide access. They have to report their refusal of care to the Pennsylvania State Department of Health. But how would a rape survivor automatically know and be able to choose a hospital that will offer them comprehensive care, even if they live near other hospitals? Survivors in rural areas may only have one local option and that hospital may refuse care, including EC. Some people may say “just go to Planned Parenthood or a pharmacy” which assumes again the survivor is able to do so and can access a Planned Parenthood or a pharmacy that provides EC.
And there are whole counties with limited hospital services so it’s really a problem, especially in rural areas, but that’s what passed. It is egregious. In the meantime I was working in private practice. I thought I would like private practice, but I really missed my colleagues. One of the things I like about social work is we tend to have kind colleagues. I’ve heard people who work in other professions say that they routinely work with coworkers who are competitive and even hostile with them. That has not been my experience in social work. Social workers have wonderful colleagues generally. So I missed my colleagues. Also during this whole time I was working on my PhD. It took me two years to complete the coursework but then because I was doing so many other things, including being a mom to my two smaller children, it took me a few more years to finish the dissertation. I ended up finishing and very happily! I earned a PhD in Social Work and a PhD certificate in Gender, Sexaulity and Women’s Studies.
MSW Online
Wow. That must have been a very busy time! What was next?
Melissa Bell
I thought I would stay in private practice while I figured out where I was going to move because normally when you’re looking for a faculty position, it usually doesn’t wind up in your backyard. My husband and I were considering the next move with our two children, who were toddler and preschool age. I met with my dissertation chair over lunch and she was saying, “You could do this, you could do that.” I said to her, “Well, really I would ideally want to work at Chatham.” I pointed out that Chatham is a good fit for me but not one single position turned over since the program began. There were three faculty who were there at the beginning of the program. It was several years later and they were all still there with no turnover. So I said, “I can’t really count on that.” so, she looked right at me and she said, “Melissa, they opened up a position this week.” I thought, are you kidding me? The rest of that lunch, I could barely pay attention because all I could think of was how I needed to get my materials together to submit.
MSW Online
Right. That seems like fate.
Melissa Bell
Yeah, and so many people I knew submitted for that job though. I still feel very lucky I got the position at Chatham. I closed up shop in my private practice and sublet my office until the lease ran out. I joined the faculty as an assistant professor at Chatham. My areas of interest are mostly in macro practice. I’m concerned with the impact of policy on people and the impact of people on policy, if I could sort of sum that up. More specifically I’m interested in women’s issues, especially reproductive rights. I teach courses within the social work program and one of my courses, a women and policy course, is also required for women and gender studies.
I teach social welfare and social justice courses and general education courses on resilience. I will hopefully be taking students to Costa Rica to focus on sustainability in May. I teach a social work class that’s focused on environmental social work as well. Chatham University is a leader in sustainability. I’m really concerned about environmental justice.I feel fortunate to be able to teach in areas that I care about. A few years ago, the program director who was instrumental in hiring me, Dr. Debbie Rubin, retired and I became program director. So, now I am the program director of the social work program and I’m still able to teach the classes that I like to teach. I publish in the areas that I’m most proficient in. I have published in several journals and presented at many conferences. Perhaps I am most proud of a book I wrote that was published by NASW Press. I am the primary author of a book, Reproductive Decision Making: Acting to Help Clients, that focuses on how to discuss reproductive decision making, and advocate for reproductive rights and access. Helping social workers and other social service professionals empower clients with their reproductive decision making has been something that I’m really, really concerned about.
If you look at the unintended pregnancy rates of social work clients, it’s very high. The populations that social workers tend to interact with have the highest rates of unintended pregnancy, so my dissertation was actually on identifying barriers to discussing reproductive decision making. Are social workers discussing reproductive decision making? Why are social workers not talking about contraception if they are not? Why are they not empowering their clients with such an important part of their lives? We should be doing this. We connect them with all these resources, but we rarely connect them with family planning resources, which is such an important part of one’s life. So my research shows that social workers are not comfortable discussing it because they don’t think they know the right information. They don’t know where to turn. They don’t want to bring it up because it’s like opening a can of worms, “if I bring this up and then what happens?” They think that people might be upset if they bring it up, they just don’t know how to do it and they don’t feel comfortable. Also, agency policy is a major barrier, either because it is against discussing issues such as contraception or there is just a lack of supportive policy. There is just not a policy so discussions about reproductive decision making are ignored.I had published in journals on this topic but I wanted to reach practicing social workers.
So I wrote an interdisciplinary book with a colleague in biology that was meant to be applied to practice. It was written specifically for practicing social workers and others who are working in direct practice who have little time for delving into the literature and need to have hands-on skills and techniques. We adapted the Theory of Planned Behavior to reproductive decision making. The book is meant to provide very concrete step by step interventions for asking questions to understand clients’ needs and wishes and empowering them to take the behavioral steps needed. It uses case studies that are based on the literature and applies the Theory of Planned Behavior that we adapted. It also discusses how to advocate and provides links to useful websites and apps. I have received a very positive response, especially from those who have attended my presentations. One of my frustrations in social work is the gap between research and professional practice. Often social workers do not have ready access to research or the research is not applied and thus not viewed as useful for day to day practice. I had published in journals but this book was entirely for practicing social workers. I am grateful to NASW press for the opportunity to reach my intended audience.
MSW Online
You were talking about all of your policy and stuff and what a timely topic, right? It is great that we’re going to be able to share that part of your story with the people that’ll be researching going into this field because as they will see, you’re not going to be stuck doing the same thing unless it’s something you really love. They can always change it up and do something different.
Melissa Bell
Mm-hmm. You can shift. Part of the ethics of social work is you don’t stop learning, that you’re in a growth mindset where you should be thinking about what you can be learning as opposed to saying, “Oh, I can’t do that because I don’t have the education.” I think that’s an important part of social work. I think that’s an important part of probably a lot of jobs that you think “what’s the next part of this”, not just as a promotion, but what’s another area, what is something you’re actually really interested in? I mean, I’m lucky in that I’ve been able to be part of projects that I really care about.
There’s another group I really care about and that’s the impact of war on anybody, but particularly on women returning home from combat. I was interested in it and I taught a class on it, but I also was a consultant on a documentary called Journey to Normal: Women of War Come Home. Julie Hera DeStefano is the producer director. She’s one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. If you want to talk about anybody with a growth mindset, she was inspired by interviews with women combat veterans one day, decided to make a documentary and she did, and she doesn’t have a background in documentary making. She found a calling and she set out to learn and understand the entire process.
She got so involved and became so trusted that she obtained clearance. She was dropped off in the middle of the desert, literally, at a base and that’s where she spent months. Social workers are seeing people returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq that were needing services and we needed to understand what they need. The needs of women returning home is something that as a nation we haven’t really considered as much before and the needs of mothers, how that looks different than fathers. What is the impact on the family? That documentary is something that I’m really proud of being a part of, even though I was a very small part. I was a gender consultant, but really I’m just more of a champion of the project.
MSW Online
Is available on YouTube or Netflix, or how could we find it?
Melissa Bell
There have been screenings around the country and there continue to be. JulieHera DeStefano does TED talks, she’s appeared in Congress talking about this issue. She’s actually now in the process of earning her MSW, which I would like to think is part of my doing (chuckle). She thinks like a social worker and now she’s getting her social work degree, so good for her.
MSW Online
Good for you for inspiring her, too, and supporting this population of people, that’s very cool.
Melissa Bell
Women who come back from combat are a group that we should think about as a nation, but there’s so many things that we also have to pay attention to. I wish I could say more about the great people I get to meet through the profession of social work.
MSW Online
What a great benefit of being a social worker in areas that you are passionate about! Thinking about some of your favorite resources in the social work world. If you were to recommend readings or publications or podcasts, what would they be?
Melissa Bell
It can be so overwhelming at first to figure out which school is the best fit, what do they each do? What are the certificates? What are the dual programs? The Council on Social Work Education, CSWE, has an online directory of all the accredited programs in the United States. I show students the website and encourage them to look at the programs, they can search by state, they can search by what programs offer, they can search for dual degrees. Law and social work is an example. They can search by certificate specializations and it will show the schools that match their interests. Because I sit with students all the time who don’t know what they’re going to do next, the CSWE website is a great resource.
Also, the National Association of Social Workers is a great resource. It focuses on the practice side of social work. There are state chapters and the national chapter and they have their own press. So NASW press publishes books and journals. If students are interested in actual practice they should turn to the National Association of Social Work. I also encourage students to join as members. The Chatham social work program pays for the initial membership to NASW for all of our graduating BSW students who are interested in joining NASW. NASW is a great place to turn for ethics information… what does it mean to be a social, what are the ethics, what are the values? NASW provides a great deal of continuing education, webinars, and things of that nature too.
MSW Online
Very good. It sounds like you’re doing such a great service to your students and your community through your policy work. Thank you!
Melissa Bell
Well, as a country we have gone backwards quite a bit in the last few years, but I’m hoping we don’t go sliding back even further. This moment in history is not a good time for social work values but we can still turn toward compassion and empathy. I will just say that. Thank you!