American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare

Mark F. Testa, PhD

Active | Inducted in 2017

Bio

Mark Testa is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) where previously he was the Sandra Reeves Spears and John B. Turner Distinguished Professor (2010-2020). He also held a professorship (1999-2009) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and the University of Chicago (1984-2009). Currently, he is a faculty affiliate of the UIUC Children and Family Research Center, an independent research organization created jointly by the University and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). Since 2015, he has been a member of an expert panel appointed by the U.S. District Court, North District of Illinois, Eastern Division to provide guidance on the implementation of the Illinois child welfare consent decree. He held a joint appointment at the University of Illinois (1999-2002) and the University of Chicago (1994-1999) as Research Director of the Illinois DCFS.

Dr. Testa was the architect of the Illinois Subsidized Guardianship Demonstration and led the evaluations of similar IV-E waiver demonstrations in the states of Wisconsin and Tennessee. He was the principal investigator for the evaluation of the federal Permanency Innovations Initiative. He was also principal investigator for the evaluation of the Illinois waiver demonstration for foster children aged birth to three years old and the evaluation of Safe Families for Children funded by the Arnold Foundation, He was a co-investigator with RTI, International for two federal projects: Understanding Postadoption and Guardianship Instability and the Third National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being.

Professor Testa has received awards for his scholarship and public engagement, including the 2017 Social Policy Award from the Society for Social Work and Research, 2006 Angel in Adoption from the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Adoption 2002 Excellence Award for Applied Scholarship and Research on kinship care and permanence.