Maria Carpiac-Claver ’97, M.S.W. ’01

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Having graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Psychology and an M.S.W. from UCLA, Maria Carpiac-Claver is completing the Department of Social Welfare's doctoral program. The focus for her dissertation is ”Frequent ER Use Among Elderly Veterans,” an extremely relevant topic to the Veterans Affairs and managed health care in general. She examines challenging issues related to providing health care to older adults in particular. Her findings have important implications for the role of social workers within the health care system because, based on her preliminary observations, Carpiac-Claver expects their real needs to be more social than medical in nature.

Carpiac-Claver has presented various papers at professional conferences, such as "How Do Nursing Aides Talk to Residents during Mealtime in Long-Term Care Facilities?" shown at the Gerontological Society of America’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C. in 2004. Articles accepted for publication in professional journals include "Incidence and Prevalence of Elder Abuse and Neglect in the Greater Los Angeles Veteran Population" and "Addressing the Unique Psychosocial Needs of the Elderly."

For two years, she taught a class at UCLA entitled Frontiers in Human Aging: Biomedical, Social and Policy Perspectives, and continues to work with the teaching team on presenting components of the course at professional conferences.

After a year working with the inpatient Geriatric Evaluation and Management Unit and Outpatient Geriatric Clinic for the Department of Veterans Affairs, the clinical director described Carpiac-Claver as "the most outstanding social work trainee that I have worked with through my 20 years associated with the Geriatric Unit at West Los Angeles."

The associate director of the UCLA/Borun Center for Gerontological Research describes Carpiac-Claver as "the best student whom I have worked with to date."

As a mentor for the Fulfillment Fund, an organization serving students in the LAUSD to help economically disadvantaged yet promising students achieve high school graduation, Carpiac-Claver’s commitment is long-term; she supports a student from middle school through high school graduation, and her first student is now a freshman at CSU Northridge. She is currently mentoring a high school student for the second time.

Clinically competent, intelligent, creative and productive, Carpiac-Claver has shown an affinity and appreciation for older veterans as an enormous community resource.