UTEP’s Millionaire’s Club Recognizes Social Work Professor

For a second consecutive year, UTEP’s Millionaire’s Club honored Social Work Professor Candyce Berger, Ph.D., for topping $1 million in research expenditures. She has been awarded $1,525,375 in state and federal funding sources during this past year.

Berger, Associate Dean of the College of Health Sciences and Interim Chair of the Department of Social Work, is the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on eight awards, including grants from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the Health Resources and Services Administration and the University of California, Berkeley.

She has collaborated with eight co-principal investigators on projects that include training programs for child welfare social workers and behavioral health care practitioners, interprofessional education opportunities, migration and aging, and scholarships for economically disadvantaged social work graduate students. Berger’s expenditures have funded all or part of 14 other faculty and staff.

Funds also have produced nearly $1.5 in scholarships and stipends for 88 Master of Social Work (MSW) students; 86 of these students graduated with MSW degrees by May 2019. Ninety percent of these graduates are providing social work services within the El Paso community.

“The joy comes from helping our students be successful by reducing the burdens for the cost of education,” said Berger, who has served as chair of the Department of Social Work since 2012.

Berger joined UTEP in 2009. She has 30 years of experience in social work education at five institutions. She also has 17 years of experience in health care administration.

Started in 2012, UTEP’s Millionaires’ Club Award recognizes those individuals whose combined research expenditures over the course of the year total more than $1 million.