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Topic: Family Dynamics

Elisa Fadum-Montoya

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Elisa Fadum-Montoya, MSW, is an affiliate professor in the Department of Social Work at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She has been a licensed clinical social worker for over 20 years and her areas of expertise include working in mental health, crisis interventions, family therapy and child welfare.

Fadum-Montoya has been teaching at MSU Denver since 2014, where she has taught a field experience seminar for graduate students. She has also taught graduate social work courses related to family therapy and undergraduate courses such as Privilege, Oppression and Power. In addition, she also works as a mobile crisis clinical evaluator for Denver Health and Hospitals, where she conducts mobile evaluations of individuals in the community experiencing psychiatric crisis.

Fadum-Montoya was also the clinical director and owner of Bridges Family Services Inc., where she provided clinical supervision and training to a team of clinicians and case managers. She also oversaw service delivery including assessment and interventions, multi-family therapy education classes and parenting/visitation sessions.

Prior, she has worked as a bariatric social worker for Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center. She performed psychological evaluations for potential bariatric surgery candidates, provided follow up therapy support and facilitated support groups. Fadum-Montoya also worked as a LCSW for Centennial Peaks Hospital, where she performed assessments for people struggling with mental health instability and substance abuse.

Fadum-Montoya received her master of social work from the University of Denver in 1997, and a bachelor’s in human services from the University of Massachusetts in 1991. She also received a certificate in marriage and family therapy from the Denver Family Institute in 2000.

Larry Curry

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Larry Curry, Ph.D., LCSW, CAC III is a licensed Clinical Social Worker, and a former professor in the Department of Social Work at Metropolitan State University Denver. He is a national and international speaker trainer and presenter in the areas of child welfare, family preservation service and addictive behaviors. He also specializes in domestic and internal adoptions, and cross cultural adoptions.

He is also the Founder/CEO and Clinical Director for The Curry Center, LLC located in Aurora Colorado. This agency operates as a private outpatient mental health clinic, offering in home services to some of the most troubled families and children within the Denver/ Aurora communities.

Andrea Borrego

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Andrea Borrego, Ph.D., is the chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

She worked as a graduate research assistant and faculty associate at Arizona State University before coming to teach at MSU Denver in 2015. Borrego is involved in many MSU Denver committees and is a member of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences and the American Society of Criminology. She served as a panel chair on Media Reporting of Crime for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Annual Conference in 2016.

Borrego co-authored an article for The Criminologist: The Official Newsletter of the American Society of Criminology titled “The advantages and disadvantages of original data collection for doctoral students.” She also co-authored a chapter in Forensic Science and the Administration of Justice: Critical issues and directions, and has several other publications in the works. Her research focuses on fatal-police citizen encounters and LGBTQ victimization.

Borrego received her doctorate and masters in criminology and criminal justice from Arizona State University in 2015 and 2011 and a bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Notre Dame in 2009.

Kristen Atkinson

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Kristen Atkinson, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the Department of Social Work at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her areas of expertise include positive youth development, community youth development, youth civic engagement, youth leadership development and participatory research. She teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs, mostly overseeing clinical work.

Prior to teaching at MSU Denver, Atkinson taught a social research course to incoming graduate social work students at DePaul University. She was also a technical assistant in the College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago for a project called “Permanency Enhancement Project: A Community Initiative to Address Racial Disproportionality in Child Welfare.” Atkinson was also a graduate research assistant in the same department for nearly five years. She still works there as a visiting assistant professor teaching graduate courses mainly in Youth Development Theory, Participatory Action Research, and Program Development. In fall 2012, Atkinson coordinated the annual Youth Development Summit, a one-day conference for youth development professionals. She has served as a member of the Board of Directors at the Chicago Freedom School. Atkinson is currently a member of The Council on Social Work Education, The Association for Community Organization and Social Administration, and the Society for Research on Adolescence.

She has published her work titled “Trauma-Informed Care and Youth Development.” Her most recent research was a participatory research study at the Chicago Freedom School. It explores youth participation in a liberatory education program and the development of activism around social justice issues.

Atkinson received her doctorate in Social Work from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2012, a Master of Social Work from San Francisco State University in 2003 and a bachelor’s in Social Work from Eastern Michigan University in 2000.

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