Past: Southeast Missouri State University’s Second Annual Jane Addams Lecture

Social work pioneer Mildred “Mit” Joyner, emerita director and professor of social work at West Chester University, will present Southeast Missouri State University’s second annual Jane Addams Lecture Wednesday, March 20.

A reception will be held at 5:30 p.m. and the lecture will begin at 6 p.m. in the John and Betty Glenn Convocation Center on Southeast’s River Campus. The event is free and open to the public.

The lecture is sponsored by the Department of Criminal Justice, Social Work and Sociology in conjunction with Southeast’s Student Social Work Organization.

Joyner has been a pioneer in teaching, research, writing and community activism for more than 30 years, focusing on the areas of gerontology and multicultural issues. She established the first Master of Social Work program in the Pennsylvania state system of higher education. She has also served in multiple leadership positions in nearly every social work professional organization, including the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW). In 2010, Joyner was an invited presenter at a congressional briefing on the Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young, Jr. Social Work Reinvestment Act.

Additionally, she is the first woman and African American to serve on the board of directors of DNB First (previously known as Downingtown National Bank), to which she was appointed in 2004. She is a member of the board of Chester County Food Bank, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute’s SoulMates Advisory Board in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Book Committee of NASW. Joyner is currently the president and owner of MCJ Consultants in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Joyner has received numerous awards in the fields of social work, gerontology, education and leadership. The Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work (AGESW) and the Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Directors Inc. (BPD) created the Mit Joyner Gerontology Leadership Award in her honor in 2005 for her leadership in the field of gerontology. In March 2011, Joyner received the BPD Lifetime to Achievement Award. She was recognized for her leadership and stewardship in 2011 by Living Beyond Breast Cancer and received the Dr. Inabel Burns Lindsay Award in 2012. In 2013, Joyner was named a Social Work Pioneer by NASW. In October of 2014, Joyner was named the first William Culp Lecturer by Abilene Christian University, School of Social Work in Abilene, Texas.

Recently, Joyner accepted the nomination to run for NASW National President.

Joyner received her Master of Social Work from Howard University in 1974 and her Bachelor of Social Work from Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, in 1971.