Carolyn A. Romano was promoted to assistant professor of practice in July. Caitlin Cunningham, BC Photography
Carolyn A. Romano says a chance encounter nearly 30 years ago changed her professional trajectory, sending her down a road that’s led to a rewarding career as a clinical social worker who turns students into compassionate clinicians for children and families.
It was fall 1996 and Romano was studying Latin and Greek as a first-year college student at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. She was doing well in her classes, she recalls, but she wasn’t enjoying her academic experience.
So Romano, now a newly appointed assistant professor of practice in the Boston College School of Social Work, looked for something that would bring her joy. She found the Ronald McDonald Houses, lodgings near medical centers where families can stay while their children receive treatment, and started volunteering at one of the chapters in the nation’s capital.
Romano played with kids with cancer and HIV and bonded with her supervisor, a social worker who suggested she join the helping profession.
“My supervisor told me that I didn’t seem upset or worried about the kids and I asked her what she meant,” Romano recalls. “She said that I played with them like normal kids and I told her, ‘well, they are normal kids.’ She said, ‘not everybody thinks that, and so maybe you should consider social work.’”
Romano took her advice. She changed her major to social work in the second semester of her sophomore year, earned a bachelor’s degree in the field in 2000, and went on to get an M.S.W. from BC in 2002.
Romano joined the part-time faculty at BCSSW in 2008, teaching in the children, youth, and families field of practice. At the same time, she started providing psychotherapy to adolescents and families at Counseling Collaborative in Lexington and Sudbury, Massachusetts. She was promoted to the full-time faculty at BCSSW in July, in part, she says, for her contributions to the curriculum.
A couple years ago, Romano developed a new course called Group Therapy for Children and Adolescents. She says the purpose of the course is to teach students how to use theory in creative ways so they can teach children important life skills.
“My job is to make students the best clinical thinkers and providers they can be. To do that, I try to foster an environment where you can try things out and maybe fail and learn from it.”
“I think it’s been a really good addition for some of our students because a lot of them are teaching groups,” says Romano, an expert in cognitive behavioral therapy, solution focused therapy, and adventure therapy. “Historically, our field has been sort of like, ‘Oh, go run this group, have fun,’ and new social workers are like deer in headlights and don’t really know what to do.”
She recently updated a course she’ll be teaching this fall, Advanced Practice with Children, Youth, and Families, to include a new intervention developed at the Yale Child Study Center. The intervention, she says, will require students to learn how to coach parents to respond to their child’s anxiety through changes in their own behaviors.
“My job is to make students the best clinical thinkers and providers they can be,” she says. “To do that, I try to foster an environment where you can try things out and maybe fail and learn from it.”
Last year, Romano received an Illumination Award from the BC Career Center in honor of the positive impact that she’s had on her students’ career journeys. She says she stays in touch with many former students, who routinely share news of their professional success.
The piece of advice she gives to them the most? Strike a balance between working hard and caring for yourself. “You’ve got to take care of yourself because we deal with lots of stuff,” she tells them. “And it can be really hard on us if you don’t find that balance.”
Romano looks forward to discussing self-care at the annual Social Work Summit for incoming first-year students, a 24-hour program in Ocean Park, Maine. She’s attended the summit before, and says it’s the perfect venue to build relationships with her future students—students who will soon become her colleagues.
“It’s been really fun to talk about self care as a clinician and how you show up for your clients but also have a real life,” she says.
If she hadn’t volunteered at a Ronald McDonald House in D.C. 27 years ago—if she hadn’t met a social worker there—who knows what Romano’s life would look like today.
