ABOUT US
Carla Bykowski
Carla Bykowski, has over 20 years of experience in programs serving children, families, and schools in diverse communities of Los Angeles County through work with the LA County Office of Education, the LA City Commission for Children, Youth and their Families, the LA County's First Five Commission, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Museum of Tolerance, and the LA County Children's Planning Council. For nearly 10 years, she has been a Lecturer, Field Education Liaison, and mentor for BSW and MSW students at California State University, Los Angeles in the School of Social Work. She was one of the founding board members of Social Work Abroad Program (SWAP), and has served as a board member for many organizations including Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and the Festival for Philippine Art and Culture (FPAC).
She has traveled internationally on social work, cross-cultural, and multidisciplinary professional delegations to China and Cuba. She has developed student internships in Costa Rica, Africa, and Thailand. Carla is committed to enriching the lives of students through providing programs that include distinctive educational travel, and micro-macro service learning/internships that lead to higher professional growth, opportunities for personal reflection in a cross cultural context and collaborative research that contributes to the study abroad/away field.
Carla received a Master’s degree in Social Work (MSW) from the University of Southern California in 1997 and an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Loyola Marymount University in 1988. Pride in her multicultural background of Polish and Filipino ancestry fuels her passion for international human relations and social justice. Besides working, Carla also enjoys traveling with her friends and family especially her very loving, funny and clever son.
Sofya Bagdasaryan
Sofya Bagdasaryan, PhD, MSW, is the Associate Director of the School of Social Work at California State University Los Angeles, where she is also an Associate Professor. For over 15 years, her research and practice has focused on social work policies, programs, and services for children and families involved in the public child welfare system. Understanding cultural factors is key in this work. For example, one of her current research projects involves understanding how cultural factors affect reporting of child abuse among private school teachers in ethnicity-based private schools.
Social justice is an especially important issue for Dr. Bagdasaryan both in her own work and her teaching of students. Using Critical Race Theory and other frameworks to understand oppressions is key in trying to increase access to opportunity among disadvantaged communities. Having served as advisor to hundreds of social work students over the years who completed theses or research projects, she is proud that the majority of these works served the interest of either understanding/promoting cultural humility, cultural understanding, and/or social justice. In addition, one of her current research projects involves understanding how policies such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and state-level policies have affected undocumented students.