Terence Fitzgerald, PhD, EdM, MSW

Terence Fitzgerald, PhD, EdM, MSW, who specializes in trauma-informed, resilience-oriented, equity-focused systems (TIROES), was previously a clinical associate professor of social work at the University of Southern California’s Suzanne Peck-Dworak School of Social Work. Dr. Fitzgerald grew up in Champaign, Ill. He earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts, master’s degrees in school social work and educational leadership and a doctorate in education policy studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As both a social worker and a race and gender scholar, for 12 years, Dr. Fitzgerald worked through K-12th grade levels as a school social worker, and then later as a special education equity coordinator in racially and economically diverse settings in Central Illinois. He has worked with social justice grassroots organizations that focus on marginalized children and families, aligned for the purpose of meeting state and federal requirements, and helped organizations and corporations work toward meeting the needs of culturally and socially just organizations and environments. Professionally, he has utilized his program and curriculum evaluation talents to enable public schools in Illinois to make financial, efficient, ethical, racially just policy, program and curriculum changes. His expertise as a racial scholar is spotlighted in numerous international and national media outlets, peer-reviewed journals, and collaborative and independently published books, including “The Reality of Diversity, Gender and Skin Color: From Living Room to Classroom,” “White Prescriptions? The Dangerous Social Potential for Ritalin and other Psychotropic Drugs to Harm Black Males” and “Black Males and Racism: Improving the Schooling and Life Chances of African Americans.”