Meet the Faculty

Meet the Faculty

Maureen Rotondi, Instructor, Field Liaison:

Having grown up in a family of psychologists and social workers, Ms. Rotondi entered Siena College in the Fall of 1986. She graduated from Siena College in 1990 with a BSW and went to work as a social work assistant at Memorial Hospital in Albany, where her job duties included assisting patients and their families with end of life decisions, linking elderly patients to community resources, and providing counseling to dialysis patients and their families.

Rotondi continued working at Memorial while attending graduate school at SUNY Albany. While at SUNY she was placed with the Carver Foster Care Prevention Program on Hamilton Hill in Schenectady where she was responsible for providing intensive, home-based, family preservation services to poor families, who were often headed by single, African- American or Latino women, who were at risk of having their children removed. Beyond the clinical work, Carver opened her eyes and expanded her knowledge and understanding of the “isms”- - racism, classism, sexism.

When the field placement there ended, Rotondi was offered the Program Director’s position, which she held for six years in the Foster Care Prevention Program. Duties included grant writing, budget negotiating with New York State and Schenectady County DSS, supervising staff and students, managing a caseload of 10 families, and community organizing. In 1996 she organized a group of Schenectady County residents to join the “Stand For Children” march on Washington. In addition, she developed a training program on Intensive Family Preservation that was presented at the NASW National Conference in Cleveland and the Parson’s Sage Fall Conference in Albany.

Rotondi left Carver in 1997 to take a position as pediatric social worker with Seton Health system, where she continued to join community groups and grass roots movements to improve the quality of life and expand the services available to residents of Rensselaer County. She continued grant writing and professional writing, but also began to focus more on the clinical needs of the children. She continues to work at Seton, providing counseling, crisis intervention, and family support services to families.

Ms. Rotondi is a trained and certified forensic interviewer and a member of the Rensselaer County Multidisciplinary Team serving children who are victims of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. In addition, she helped develop an incentive based, childbirth education program for teen mothers called “The Mommy Project”. That team presented a paper on the Mommy Project at several national conferences and they have won awards for this project.

Finally, her dreams of becoming an educator were realized when Saint Rose offered her the opportunity to serve as Field Liaison for the Social Work Department after years of service to the program as a field instructor. Ms. Rotondi enjoys the highest reputation as a professor for course offerings such as Practice with Children and Diversity Workshop.

Email Maureen Rotondi Here

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