Assistant Professor
New York Institute of Technology, New York TechBullying, bullying at school or online, Bullying Awareness, bullying prevention, Career Development, cultural diversity, Mental Health, Mental Health and Classrooms, Mental Health Care, school bullying, School Counseling, School Counselors
Cameka Hazel specializes in the supervision and training of professional mental health and school counselors. As a counselor educator, she is an advocate for holistic training for future counselor educators to be effectively prepared to meet the social, emotional and educational needs of the diverse K–12 student population. Her research includes multicultural counseling competence training in counselor education, mental health care for children and families of refugee status and trauma in children. Hazel has presented at local and national conferences on subjects such as helping new school counselors thrive, reducing preventive and risk factors for school counselor burnout and Caribbean national migration experiences to the U.S., and acculturation stressors during the transition process. Her current research focuses on school counselors' perception of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' academic, social, and emotional development.
During her role as a practicing school counselor, Hazel has worked at various grade levels—from elementary to high school, in the Jamaican school system, and also specialized in trauma and crisis counseling in volatile school zones. Hazel also served in a Child and Adolescence Outpatient clinic providing mental health care for children and families. Hazel earned a bachelor's degree in Guidance and Counseling at the Mico University (Jamaica), a master's degree in the counseling and psychology program at Boston College, a master's degree in the educational leadership program at Boston College, and a Doctorate in Counselor Education at the University of Rochester. Hazel is currently the faculty advisor for the New York Tech Chi Sigma Iota counseling honor society chapter and is chairperson for the New York State chapter of the American Counseling Association (2022-2023).
Professor; McSilver Faculty Fellow; Affiliated Faculty, Department of Anthropology and College of Global Public Health
NewsCaregiving, homeless adults, Mental Health, Psychiatry, substance use disorders
Deborah Padgett is a Professor at NYU Silver. She is internationally known for her mentorship and advocacy of qualitative and mixed methods in research. She is the editor of The Handbook of Ethnicity, Aging, and Mental Health (1995) and The Qualitative Research Experience (2004), author of Qualitative Methods in Social Work Research (3rd ed., 2016) and Qualitative and Mixed Methods in Public Health (2012), and co-author of Program Evaluation (6th ed., 2015). This expertise led to her appointment to an Institute of Medicine panel examining veterans’ mental health (2012-2017).
Dr. Padgett’s book Housing First: Ending Homelessness, Changing Systems and Transforming Lives (2016, Oxford University Press) (with co-authors Benjamin Henwood and Sam Tsemberis) documents the rise of a ‘paradigm’ shifting approach to addressing homelessness in the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Padgett has lectured widely on the topic in Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Canada, and India.
Dr. Padgett has been co-principal investigator on several National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) funded grants and a National Cancer Institute funded mixed methods study of African-American women and breast cancer screening; she was also national co-director of the Screening Adherence Follow-up (SAFe) project funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She became principal investigator of two R01 qualitative methods studies funded by NIMH. The first, The New York Services Study (2004-2008), was a $1.4 million study of service engagement among dual diagnosed homeless adults in New York City. The second, the New York Recovery Study (2010-2015; $1.9 million) used ethnographic methods to examine the role of housing in mental health recovery among formerly homeless adults. Her ethnographic research on homeless ‘pavement dwellers’ in Delhi, India, is an extension of this interest in homelessness to cross-cultural contexts. Since 2015, she has worked closely with The Banyan, an organization in Chennai, India that assists homeless mentally ill women.
Dr. Padgett received the NYU Distinguished Teaching Award (2012) and was Director of the PhD program in Global Public Health (2014-2016). She was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW) in 2011 and a Fellow of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) in 2013. She has been active in SSWR since its inception and served as a board member (2002-2007) and President (2004-2006). In 2006, SSWR announced the Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Award in recognition of her contributions.
She holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and received post-doctoral training in public health and psychiatric epidemiology at Columbia University and Duke University, respectively. She earned her MA in anthropology at Florida State University and her BA at the University of Kentucky.