Jerrold Brandell, distinguished professor and associate dean for faculty affairs in the Wayne State University School of Social Work, will serve as the School of Social Work's interim dean.

Brandell is a practicing child, adolescent and adult psychotherapist and psychoanalyst who has twice held the role of interim associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Social Work (2011-12 and 2016).

Brandell succeeds Cheryl Waites, who announced she would be stepping down as dean. After serving as acting dean and then interim dean, Waites became the seventh dean of the School of Social Work in 2012. She will now return to the faculty to continue her research and leadership activities in the areas of healthy or successful aging, health equity, social justice, and social work education.

The university will launch a national search to identify the next School of Social Work dean.

While at Wayne State, Brandell spearheaded the development of the master of social work program's psychodynamic track and the doctoral program's concentration in clinical scholarship. Brandell has been a Wayne State faculty member since 1992, with teaching interests that include psychodynamic theory and practice; clinical interventions with children, adolescents, and adults; therapeutic storytelling with children; and the portrayal of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in the movies. Brandell has drawn on his extensive experience as a practicing social worker and academic in the publication of 13 books, as founding editor-in-chief of Psychoanalytic Social Work, and as an editorial board member of Clinical Social Work Journal and Bulletin of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council. He is a recipient of Wayne State's Distinguished Faculty Fellowship Award.

Brandell obtained his Ph.D. in social treatment at the University of Chicago and his master's from the University of Wisconsin "" Madison. Recognized as a distinguished practitioner by the National Academies of Practice, Brandell also earned a certificate in psychoanalysis from the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council.