Meet Our Associates • • •
Frances Coyle Brennan, LCSW, is the Director of Social Services at the
Mary Manning Walsh Home in New York City. She was formerly an adjunct lecturer at Columbia University School of Social Work and is currently associated with Fordham University. She has over three decades of experience with the elderly in community and institutional settings including supervisory and administrative positions at the Jewish Home and Hospital and has written and presented extensively on issues in aging. She is the co-author, with Ann Burack-Weiss, of First Encounters Between Elders and Agencies: A Practice Guide and Gerontological Social Work Supervision: A Social work Perspective in Case Management and Direct Care (2nd Edition, 2008).
Nelson Burros, LMSW has spent his 35 years as a social worker and 
administrator in the field of aging in a diversity of settings, including nearly 25 years with the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale, primarily as the Director of Social Services at its main campus. In that capacity he oversaw the operations of the Admissions Department, and later became administratively responsible for the Religious Affairs and Volunteer Departments. Prior to that, he directed Project SCOPE, a large Title III Program at Lenox Hill Neighborhood Association, serving homebound and isolated older adults. Nelson was also a community organization social worker for Montefiore Hospital, helping local community groups and agencies develop and coordinate services and activities for older adults. Nelson has co-authored several articles for professional journals, participated in numerous conference presentations, and created organizational newsletters. He was also the host and producer of the Hebrew Home’s award-winning public access television program, “You Should Live So Long,” Nelson earned his MSW at the Hunter College School of Social Work.
Suzannah Chandler, LMSW was Co-founder and, from 1972 through June
2006, Executive Director of Search and Care, a privately funded not-for-profit community based agency that provides care management and preventive protective services to socially isolated chronically ill and mentally impaired older people-most of them homebound, and living on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Prior to establishing Search and Care, she provided program support for the National Council on the Aging, including coordination of the first Regional White House Conference on Aging (Kansas City, August 1970). She was also Co- founder and past President of the East Side Council on the Aging and member of the Advisory Board of the New York State Office of Children & Family Services. A member of the Hunter College Hall of Fame, Suzannah Chandler also was a recipient of the Samuel Sadin Law Institute Distinguished Service Award.
Roslyn H. Chernesky, DSW, ACSW, has been Professor at the Fordham
University Graduate School of Social Service since 1981 where she designed the administration curriculum and teaches courses in management, supervision, community organization, program and proposal development, program evaluation, and organizational theory. She was a Gerontological Society of America Post-Doctoral Fellow in 1989, received the Career Achievement Award of the Association of Community Organization and Social Administration in 2002, and currently is Faculty Research Scholar at Fordham’s Ravazzin Center on Aging. Articles from Ravazzin Center projects appear in the Journal of Gerontological Social Work, Journal of Applied Gerontology, Educational Gerontology, Families in Society, and International Social Work on topics including students’ interest in working with older adults, assessing the service needs of seniors, family elder caregiving as a service niche, grantmaker support for aging and to caregivers of families with Alzheimer’s disease.” Roslyn provides consultation as an evaluator and trainer in the public and private sectors. Her work spans the fields of aging, HIV/AIDS, child welfare, and substance abuse and she has publications on women and management, case management, staff retention, and managing multicultural agencies. Dr. Chernesky received her master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh and her doctorate from CUNY.
Daniel B. Kaplan, LICSW, LMSW, CSW-G, QDCS is a gerontological social
worker with extensive expertise in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, as well as clinical practice in geriatric mental health. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. from Columbia University School of Social Work while working closely with the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholars Program and the Geriatric Mental Health Alliance of New York. Daniel is the former Director of Social Services for the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, where he oversaw a vibrant array of social service programs, implemented a nationwide counseling helpline for caregivers of individuals with dementia, and helped to establish a premier professional training and membership association, Dementia Care Professionals of America. Prior to this, he worked as an elder protective services investigator and provided memory disorder assessments for an area agency on aging in Massachusetts. He has led numerous training sessions and presentations on dementia care strategies for professionals and paraprofessionals, and plans to conduct research on clinical interventions and training programs for patients, family members and professionals who confront dementia. Daniel is a recent recipient of the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Doctoral Fellows Pre-Dissertation Award. He received his MSW from Simmons College Graduate School of Social Work and his bachelor’s degree from SUNY Binghamton.
Elise Feuerstein Karras, LMSW, CSW-G, ACSW has been working in the
field of aging since 1978. She has held positions in community agencies as well as in the business community. Working in corporate eldercare for over 10 years, she has not only consulted with employees on aging issues, but has helped develop programs and conferences to support employees/caregivers. Her articles have appeared in industry publications such as Small Business Reports and the Federico Newsletter. She is a founding member of the Eldercare Taskforce of the New York Business Group on Health, past president of the Manhattan Borough-Wide InterAgency Council on Aging, and has presented papers on managing work and eldercare at various conferences, including the New York State Society on Aging and the Society for Human Resource Management, amongst others.
Patricia Kolb, PhD, is a gerontological social worker with extensive 
practice experience including direct practice in community programs and a nursing home, supervision, administration, and research. She is an Associate Professor in the Social Work Department at Lehman College, CUNY, and was the Principal Investigator and Project Director of the department’s GeroRich project, Geriatric Enrichment of the Lehman College Baccalaureate Social Work Program/City University of New York, funded by the Council on Social Work Education and the John A. Hartford Foundation. She has an extensive history of professional presentations in New York City and at state and national social work and gerontological conferences, many of which have addressed topics related to diversity and aging. Dr. Kolb has published articles in professional journals, book chapters, and two books, Caring for Our Elders: Multicultural Experiences with Nursing Home Placement (2003) and Social Work Practice with Ethnically and Racially Diverse Nursing Home Residents and Their Families (2007), both through Columbia University Press.
Marie L. McCormick, Ph.D., LCSW has practiced psychotherapy with 
women survivors of childhood sexual abuse, women in recovery from drug and alcohol abuse, and with midlife and older women struggling with disordered eating for twenty-five years. She is a Langenfeld Dissertation Award recipient, a Hartford Doctoral Fellow in Geriatric Social Work, current Co-Chair of the Practice with Older Adults Committee of the NYS Society for Clinical Social Work and Secretary of the Emerging Scholars Professional Organization of the Gerontological Society of America. Her research interests focus on body image and disordered eating in older women and on PTSD in older women survivors of intimate partner violence. Currently she maintains a private practice in psychotherapy in New York City, is an adjunct faculty member at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service, and is the founder of WomenAgingWell™, a psychotherapy, training and research organization dedicated to promoting the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual growth of women in the second half of life.
Harriet Rzetelny, LCSW received her MSW from Adelphi University in
1976. Since then, she has worked, taught and written extensively in the field of aging. She was associated with Brookdale Center on Aging for over twenty years where she developed and taught courses in a wide range of aging-related subjects including Work with the Frail Elderly in Residential Care Facilities and Senior Centers, Reminiscing and Life Review and People in Mid-Life Transitions. She was an Associate Professor at the NYU School of Social Work where she taught courses in aging and advanced clinical practice, and has written numerous training manuals and curricula for a variety of aging programs including A Multidisciplinary Training Curriculum for Family Caregivers of Dementia Patients Living at Home for Memory Care Home Solutions in St. Louis, MO and Home Again: Here to Stay – a Model for Culture Change for Isabella Geriatric Center in New York. Aging also figures in her fiction writing: her series of detective stories, published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, features a home care social worker. In addition, she maintains a private psychotherapy practice.
Renee Solomon, DSW, ACSW, was an Associate Professor at Columbia 
University School of Social Work from 1975 until 2002. She has received numerous honors for her teaching and work with the elderly including Outstanding Professor at CUSSW and the Lydia Rapaport Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Smith College School of Social Work. She has authored numerous articles and taught about clinical practice, social gerontology, social work with groups, practice with women and intergenerational practice. She currently serves as consultant to various social service organizations and has a private psychotherapy practice.
Leslie Chabon Wiesner, LCSW received her MS from Columbia 
University School of Social Work in 1974. Her postgraduate training certificate is from Downstate Medical School Department of Psychiatry in Sex and Couples Therapy and was awarded in 1980. Her extensive involvement in social work education spans almost thirty years and includes classroom and field education instructing and training. She has been on faculty at CUSSW since 1980 where she divides her time between teaching academic courses as an Adjunct Senior Lecturer and serving as an Assistant Director of Field Education. In addition, she has taught and consulted at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. As a private practitioner, she has worked for over thirty years as a clinician, presenter, trainer and consultant specializing mostly in the fields of sex and couples therapy, women's issues, depression, caregiving and clinical supervision.