Assistant Professor EdD, MSW
Cal State Long Beach School of Social Work
rashida.crutchfield@csulb.edu
Dr. Rashida Crutchfield is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at California State University, Long Beach. She earned a Master of Social Work at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis and her Doctorate in Educational Leadership from CSULB. She worked for the National Conference for Community and Justice in Long Beach and the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri before serving on the Covenant House California staff. Experience at this Los Angeles shelter for 18-to-24-year-olds experiencing homelessness gave her insight into practice, building rapport and intervention with this population’s strengths, needs and perspectives.
Dr. Crutchfield has been a faculty member in the CSULB School of Social Work since 2007 as field faculty and lecturer. She began as an assistant professor in 2014 with a focus on practice and research in youth homelessness, access to higher education, social and economic development, and social work community practice. She was the Principal Investigator for Phase I of the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s Study on Basic Needs, and Co-Principal Investigator for phases II and III. These studies are the largest of their kind.
Macro Social Work Practitioner, Homelessness, Youth Homelessness, Food Security, Higher Education Access, Race
Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis with an emphasis on recruiting and engaging people who have experienced trauma
California State University
Year: 2018
A higher education degree is viewed by many as the greatest opportunity for long-term economic stability, a pathway toward asset growth, and debt management (Ma, Pender, & Welch, 2016). However, many students experience barriers to meeting their basic needs as … Continue reading
ASHE Higher Education Report
Year: 2017
This monograph explores how homelessness intersects most social issues that marginalize individuals and negatively influence postsecondary completion, including poverty, foster care, and LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer/questioning, and others) discrimination. As becomes evident, students experiencing homelessness should be considered … Continue reading
Child & Youth Services
Year: 2018
Youth experiencing homelessness are part of the large, diverse student population served by community colleges in the United States. These students, who are often unsupported in college environments, turn to housing agencies to provide critical resources. This qualitative study included … Continue reading
Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition
Year: 2018
Accumulating evidence suggests that food insecurity in US colleges and universities is higher than in US households, making this a new public health priority. We conducted a systematic review of food insecurity among US students attending higher education institutions. A … Continue reading
Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services
Year: 2020
The starving student narrative is a well-known colloquial idiom to describe student struggle in higher education. This rhetoric masks the reality of basic need insecurity for students and normalizes food insecurity and homelessness. This qualitative study explores the experiences of … Continue reading