Laura Armstrong
Ms. Laura Armstrong is the B.S.W. program director, a clinical lecturer and an advisor to undergraduate students within the Department of Social Work at North Carolina Central University. She completed her Master of Social Work Degree at NYU in 2000 and has been a licensed clinical social worker in the state of North Carolina since 2005. She also holds an undergraduate degree in Psychology with a minor in Business from LeMoyne College in Syracuse, NY.
Ms. Armstrong’s clinical and research experience is largely with the juvenile justice population. She worked with teens and young adults in NYC in a one-stop non-profit that works with formerly incarcerated youth to obtain an education, gain employment and give back to their communities. In addition, she has worked with advocates for "raising the age" and alternatives to incarceration. In North Carolina, she worked with the Division of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (DJJDP) Information Technology (IT) team to analyze the data points from court counselor activities and translate them into time to ultimately request additional court counselor positions and worked with the development team in advocacy efforts for more mental health services in detention facilities.
In North Carolina, Ms. Armstrong was a program director for a number of mental health agencies. She used her license to conduct assessments and was available for crisis counseling. Her clinical experience is largely with the teen population; however, she also managed Community Support, Intensive-in-Home, Community Support Teams and Outpatient Therapy under the privatized mental health model for Medicaid and uninsured clients of North Carolina for 8 years before coming to NCCU.
Ms. Armstrong started as an adjunct with NCCU in 2014 as a clinical instructor and then worked with the field team. In 2018, she was offered a full-time clinical lecturer position and taught in both the undergraduate and graduate programs. In 2019, she became the program director for the Bachelor of Social Work program and added advising to her responsibilities.