American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare

Mark Courtney, PhD

Active | Inducted in 2012

Bio

Mark E. Courtney is Samuel Deutsch Professor emeritus in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago. His fields of interest include child welfare policy and services, the connection between child welfare services and other institutions serving marginalized populations, and the professionalization of social work. His most influential scholarship has involved a series of longitudinal studies of youth making the transition to adulthood from state care, and evaluations of policies and services intended to improve their well-being. Professor Courtney also served on the faculties of the University of Washington (2007-2010) and the University of Wisconsin (1992-2000). He was Director of Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago from 2001 to 2006, and was founding director in 2007 of Partners for Our Children (POC), a public-private partnership housed at the University of Washington devoted to improving child welfare services. POC received the 2008 American Public Human Services Association Award for Academic Excellence. He was also founding Director (2021) of the Transition-Age Youth Research and Evaluation Hub (TAY-Hub; https://tayhub.berkeley.edu/), part of the California Child Welfare Indicators Project at the School of Social Welfare, UC Berkeley. And he was a founding member of the International Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood from Care (INTRAC; https://globalintrac.com/).

Professor Courtney received the 2015 Distinguished Career Achievement Award from the Society for Social Work and Research and the 2010 Peter W. Forsythe Award for leadership in public child welfare from the National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators. He was also named Social Worker of the Year in 2000 by the Wisconsin Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, and was inducted into the California Social Work Hall of Distinction in 2024.