Phyllis W. Bell - Board Secretary
Assistant Professor,Governors State University
Department of Social Work, College of Health and Human Services
Phyllis W. Bell, PhD, MSW, MPH is a native of the Westside of Chicago's North Lawndale community and a product of the Chicago Public Schools. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Paine College in Augusta, Georgia. After college, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone and Liberia, West Africa for two years where she was a logistics coordinator for a mass immunization campaign for 17 villages. Due to a civil war in Sierra Leone, she was evacuated. Phyllis completed her commitment to the Peace Corps as a recruiter and sent volunteers all over the world. She earned the Master of Social Work and Master of Public Health degrees with an emphasis in Maternal and Child Health from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.
While working as a clinical therapist at the Community Mental Health Council, Inc., she also worked as a therapist at a boy's group home. As a professional social worker, Dr. Bell has worked in underserved communities in the areas of infant mortality, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, women's health, child welfare and school social work. In 1996, she was hired at the Cook County Department of Public Health as a health education coordinator and was promoted to an Assistant Health Officer where she conducted strategic health planning for 2.4 million people in suburban Cook County.
In April 2008, Phyllis earned a Ph.D. from the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation, Relational Patterns between African American Mothers under Correctional Supervision and Maternal Grandmothers as Caregivers, examined the relationship between mothers in the Sherriff Female Furlough Program at Cook County Jail and their mothers who are caring for their children. Relational Cultural Theory and Critical Ethnography are the underpinnings of her theoretical and methodological perspective. She was the 2004-2005 Dissertation Fellow at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago, a fellow for The Council on Social Work Education National Institute of Mental Health, and a recipient for the Wellesley College Stone Center-Irene Stiver Relational Cultural Theory Training Grant.
Currently, Dr. Bell is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Governors State University in University Park, Illinois. Her interests are social work practice, families affected by the criminal justice system, international social work and public health and maternal and child health. She is a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. She is married with two children.
