Ph.D. alumna Angelique Day finds success in Detroit, DC and Seattle

Dr. Angelique Day

Angelique Day earned her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Health Sciences from WMU in 2011. Since then, she's found great success at Wayne State University, has been named a Congressional Fellow, and has now accepted a position at University of Washington-Seattle.

Day is an assistant professor and founder of the nationally recognized, Transition to Independence Program (TIP), in the School of Social Work at Wayne State University. She graduated from Western Michigan University with a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Health Sciences in August 2011. Her dissertation, “An Examination of Post-Secondary Educational Access, Retention, and Success of Foster Care Youth,” was awarded the prestigious dissertation award by the Division 37, Section on Child Maltreatment from the American Psychological Association, and the findings were recently published in the Children and Youth Services Review journal.  She has since earned additional honors for her groundbreaking research in the field of child welfare including the early career scholar award from the American Psychological Association and the National Blueprint Champion for Excellence Award from the Child Welfare League of America in 2015.

Before starting at WSU, Day founded Michigan State University’s Fostering Academics Mentoring Excellence (FAME) program in 2007, a college access and retention program for students who have aged out of foster care and want to pursue a college education. She was also employed as a policy and outreach advocate with Michigan’s Children, a statewide, private, non-profit children’s advocacy organization from 2006-11, where she helped develop the child welfare and secondary education policy agendas and led the Youth Policy Leadership Program for the agency, which represented the voice of youth in foster care in the public policy debate.

Angelique was named a Congressional Fellow in August 2016. She is one of only three congressional fellows sponsored by the Society for Research in Child Development and one of 35 sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement in Science and Technology in the 2016-17 academic year.  Her fellowship was made possible by a grant from the William T. Grant Foundation.

Dr. Day with 3 other social science congressional fellows

This highly selective, nonpartisan program is devoted to expanding knowledge and awareness of evidence-based practice in Congress. Her 12-month program began in August, with an intensive one-month orientation taught by national leaders in the fields of political science, economics, medicine and psychology. Day is placed with Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-IL, 7 District - Chicago), a ranking member of the Human Resources Subcommittee, House Ways and Means Committee, where she is providing leadership over his child welfare portfolio. She also provides leadership to the bipartisan Congressional and Senate Caucuses on Foster Youth.

In December 2016, Day’s TIP program was highlighted as a national best practice at a joint congressional caucus briefing.  The congressional fellowship program was designed to increase the intersections of research and public policy, and to maximize the implementation of public policy decisions that are grounded in solutions backed by rigorous scientific study.

In addition to the honor of serving as a congressional fellow, Day also recently accepted a position at the University of Washington-Seattle. Beginning fall 2017, she will bring her talent and passion to the School of Social Work at UW, one of the premier social work institutions in the nation. In addition to her academic appointment, she will also serve as a policy advisor for Partners for Our Children, a research and public policy think tank dedicated to improving the well-being of child-welfare involved children and families at the State and national levels.

Day’s professional experience in research, policy development, child welfare practice, and her personal experiences as a former ward of the court, make her uniquely qualified to continue to provide leadership in training, research, and consultation in the field of child welfare across the nation.