Celeste A. Jones

Professor
Director, School of Social Work
B.A., University of Arkansas, 1982
M.S.W., University of Oklahoma, School of Social Work, 1988
Ph.D., College of Social Work, University of South Carolina, 1999

Dr. Jones's area of scholarly interest is social work practice and social work policy, with a focus on domestic violence and trauma. She teaches courses covering introductory human behavior and the social environment, field seminar, and field liaison. Before joining the faculty at California State University, Chico in the Fall of 1999, Dr. Jones taught social policy, social work practice, and social work research at the University of South Carolina, College of Social Work, while obtaining her doctoral degree. In addition, she was employed by Family Service Center in Columbia, South Carolina where she co-facilitated groups for men who are violent.

Dr. Jones has clinical experience in dealing with individuals, families and children. Her clinical practice has been in the areas of physical and sexual abuse, anxiety disorders, attention deficit disorder, domestic violence, trauma debriefing, posttraumatic stress, borderline personality disorders, grief, adolescent sexual offenders, and depression. Her clinical training has been in psychotherapy, brief strategic family collaboration, crisis intervention, motivational interviewing and trauma debriefing individuals and families. Dr. Jones also conducts training workshops on Brief Strategic Family Collaboration and motivational interviewing. Her macro practice has been as Director of Social Services at Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Dr. Jones has done research on trauma debriefing with bank robbery victims; and she remains active with the American Red Cross as a trauma debriefing trainer and team member. Dr. Jones conducts trainings and workshops on stress management, trauma debriefing, and aviation disasters. She has experience debriefing individuals and communities that have experienced trauma through natural disasters (floods, tornadoes, hurricanes), technological disasters (Oklahoma City bombing, school bus crashes), workplace trauma (bank robberies, school shootings, workplace violence), and interpersonal trauma (domestic violence, physical and sexual abuse). Dr. Jones is active with youth violence prevention groups and consults with agencies on domestic violence issues in the community and K12 school counseling. 

Dr. Jones' research interests are trauma and recovery, domestic violence, youth violence, motivational interviewing, international social work issues, and social work education.