Hello from the beautiful state of Maine. My name is Dr. Shelley Cohen Konrad and I’m the founding Director of the Center to Advance Interprofessional Education and Practice at the University of New England (UNE). The Center is the IPE hub for UNE providing interprofessional programming across its campuses in Biddeford and Portland Maine. UNE also has a satellite campus in Tangier Morocco.
I’m a clinical social worker by training having come to academia and the world of research and scholarship as a second, midlife career. As a social worker my primary focus was on children and families (1) and as such, I worked closely with workers from many disciplines including medicine, education, rehabilitation, mental health, and juvenile corrections. In 1997 I co-founded a non-profit, Kids First, whose mission was and continues to be to help children and families during parental separation and divorce. My very first peer reviewed article, Interdisciplinary Collaboration Between Mental Health Practitioners and Lawyers with Divorcing Families: Building Pathways for Communication and Practice was published in 2001 in the Journal of Divorce and Remarriage. It was a prescient forecast of my later career focused on interprofessional research and scholarship.
Days after completing my doctorate at Simmons College in Boston I was approached by the University of New England to teach in their Master of Social Work program. At first reluctant to leave pediatric social work practice, I thought the opportunity to teach amongst multiple health professions was an enticing way to spend what I was then calling my ‘retirement’ job. Once situated at UNE I quickly discovered that rather than learning together, health professions programs were not only siloed, but didn’t seem to particularly like or respect one another. I learned that UNE had made past efforts to develop an interprofessional culture, but it had failed mostly because the initiative was top down rather than generated by faculty and student priorities. In 2006 along with a small cohort of colleagues, I began hosting lunches and developing co-designed interprofessional activities with colleagues similarly interested in disrupting the silo culture. In 2010 UNE’s Interprofessional Education Collaborative was launched. The Collaborative grew exponentially as faculty, students, community partners, and professional staff realized the utility of bringing students together to learn health professions skills and knowledge.
My original areas of research interest stemmed from my doctoral work with parents of children who acquired life affecting illnesses and disabilities. My work expanded to better understanding tenets of relational learning and practice, which naturally intersected with interprofessional education. I also became intrigued by the association between the arts and health professions pedagogy (2) being an avid art collector myself.
Currently I’m passionate about collaborative and cross-institutional research and scholarship projects, which is what drew me to IPR.Global. It’s been a pleasure being part of a group whose common interests so, align. Its also so much fun networking and making connections with colleagues from all over the world. Apart from my dorkish, academic side, I enjoy baking, reading mystery novels, hiking, and spending time on the beautiful coast of Maine with my family, friends, and constant companion, Hank, a Boston Terrier.
To learn more about the UNE Center to Advance Interprofessional Education and Practice: www.une.edu/caiep
Contact Dr. Cohen Konrad at: scohenkonrad@une.edu
REFERENCES
- Cohen Konrad, S. (2019) Child and Family Practice: A Relational Perspective, Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Cohen Konrad, S. & Sela-Amit, M. (Eds.) Social Work and the Arts: Expanding Horizons. (January 2024).
