Rate My Professor Becki Hornung

Becki Hornung is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Social Work Department at Carthage College, where she joined the faculty in fall 2015 after 13 years of social work practice and teaching since 2003. She earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction (concentration in Curriculum Studies of Social Justice Pedagogy in Higher Education) from Arizona State University in 2012, M.S.W. (Advanced Direct Practice in Community Based Mental Health) from Temple University, and B.A. (Social Justice and Human Rights of Women and Indigenous People) from Friends World College. Prior teaching positions include adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, faculty associate at Arizona State University, and professor and director of field education at Warren Wilson College. Her practice experience encompasses executive director roles at Project SOAR in Duluth, Minnesota, and The 2nd Street Family Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania; program coordinator at St. Elizabeth’s Recovery Residence in Philadelphia; director of special initiatives at Ceridian Performance Partners EAP in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania; and Child Protective Services Placement Prevention Coordinator at Wordsworth Human Services in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.

Her research specializations include social justice ally development, exploring authentic allyship from perspectives of marginalized groups and its application to social work and social change; the impacts of social policy on marginalized populations; and social justice curriculum development to promote critical consciousness and address white-centered pedagogy. Key publications are “Structural Whiteness in Mental Health: Reexamination of the Medical Model Through a Lens of Anti-Racism and Decolonization” co-authored with Debra Minsky-Kelly (International Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics, 2022), and “Animal-human relationships in public child welfare: Getting a baseline” (Child Welfare, 2010). At Carthage, she teaches Human Behavior & the Social Environment and Social Work Practice II, integrates service learning, leads NASW-WI Advocacy Day trips, co-leads comparative health systems study tours to Portugal and Spain, and collaborates on initiatives like the Green Zone for veterans and the play “Fighting For Home.”