The University of Texas at Arlington

Dr. Emily Spence-Almaguer

Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the Community Services Center
Social Work
School of Social Work

UT Arlington Faculty

Emily Spence-Almaguer is experienced in community assessment, program evaluation, and community capacity building. She specializes in interpersonal violence, homelessness, poverty, and strengths-based community development. She has been principle investigator on numerous grants and contracts and is currently overseeing the evaluation of the City of Fort Worth’s Direction’s Home initiative to make homelessness rare, short-term and non-recurring. Prior to joining UTA in 2001, she administered a victim advocacy center in Miami, Florida and received federal funding to develop one of the nation’s first community-based stalking intervention programs.

Service Learning Class

SOCW 6386 Grant Proposal Development Seminar: Students choose a local non-profit organization and write a federal grant proposal for that organization. SOCW 5551 & SOCW 6851: Graduate Field Practicum: Students complete an internship at the Community Services Center where they provide capacity-building services to local non-profit organizations.

Academic Outcomes

• Develop technical writing skills to improve odds of obtaining federal funding
• Complete organizational assessments and make recommendations to improve organizational functioning
• Analyze organizational data to improve program activities and client outcomes

Service Learning Project

Directions Home Independent Evaluation

Students serve as liaisons to nine non-profit and governmental organizations that are working collaboratively to make homelessness rare, short-term and non-recurring. Students help to facilitate and maintain a consumer advisory board, complete client interviews, extract and analyze data from the Homelessness Management Information System in Tarrant County.

Teams and responsibilities and Partners: Tarrant County Homeless Coalition, Fort Worth Housing Authority, Recovery Resource Council, Day Resource Center for the Homeless, MHMR Tarrant County, Catholic Charities, Salvation Army, Presbyterian Night Shelter, Texas Re-Entry Services, and the City of Fort Worth. These organizations allow student interns to shadow case workers, collect data, and provide general support to the Directions Home projects.

Product/Result: All students produce weekly reflections that address meaningful lessons learned, skills developed, and products disseminated. Some of these products have included a Geographic Information Systems-based asset map of Fort Worth, a survey of all homelessness-oriented case managers in Tarrant County, and an assessment of services used by clients during their first 30 days of homelessness.