The School of Social Work is devoting substantial efforts to the development of a 'research platform' to promote scholarly output in external funding, research and publications, generating and disseminating both knowledge for social change and empirical decision-making tools in collaboration with our multidisciplinary and community partners.

The research platform in turn lends support to the school's goals of providing high-quality education for its students through the integration of research and evidence-based practice in the curriculum and field, building partnerships with community agencies and consumers and addressing issues of diversity, inclusion and globalization with empirical studies. A new faculty member, Associate Professor John Bricout, is heading up the research- platform development in his role as associate director for research.

A newly created School of Social Work Office of Research, staffed by Associate Professor Bricout and his assistant, Audrey Anspach, is the nexus and repository for research development resources, including tools, external linkages, knowledge and information. The mission of school's Office of Research is to provide leadership, tools, knowledge, strategies, information and resources for increasing the research capacity of the UCF School of Social Work and its partners. The Office of Research Web page and online resources are under construction.