Dr. Shelley Cohen Konrad is Professor and Director of the University of New England School of Social Work and founding Director (2009) of the Center for Excellence in Collaborative Education (formerly IPEC), an initiative that promotes shared learning, research, collaborative practice and service. Shelley received a BA from Boston University in Developmental Psychology, and an MSW and PhD from Simmons University in Boston. In 2007 she was awarded the Simmons College School of Social Work Harriett Bartlett Award for Scholarship in Health Care; and in 2014 she was inducted as a Distinguished Scholar & and Fellow in the National Academies of Practice and the Social Work Academy. Shelley is a prolific scholar. Her most recent publications in peer-reviewed journals focus on interprofessional education and practice as well as on the integration of arts and experiential learning in the health professions. Recognition of the global impact of her interprofessional scholarship and curricular redesign is evidenced by invited keynote presentations at the national IPEC Institute, the Nexus Innovation Summit, All Together Health in Oxford England, Collaborating across Borders, the Arctic Circle Assembly in Iceland, and at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, Israel where she spoke on the integration of interprofessional learning and the humanities. She is currently working on an edited book for Oxford Press that brings together international scholars on this topic.
Shelley has 30 years of clinical social work experience. She co-founded two community programs, Kids First and Touchstone that offer low barrier services to children, adults, and their identified family systems. A second edition of her book, Practice with Children and Families: A Relational Perspective, first published in 2013 is now available.
Shelley has keen interest in developing transformative education and training methods that prepare the future workforce with collaboration-ready, compassionate, team-based skills to serve youth to aging populations. She is an avid reader, art collector, gardener, baker, and enjoys time with her family on the coast of Maine.