Karen Rice is a doctoral student at the University of Maryland's Graduate School of Social Work and works as a graduate research assistant at the Ruth H. Young Center for Families and Children.  

Mr. Rice’s practice experience includes working as a child welfare caseworker and supervisor in a public child welfare agency in Pennsylvania for 14 years. Ms. Rice is also a trainer for the Pennsylvania Child Welfare Competency-Based Training Program where she collaborates on developing training curriculum and instructs casework staff on various child welfare related topics. In addition, Ms. Rice has co-facilitated sex offender groups for court-mandated male clients.

Ms. Rice’s research experience includes developing, implementing and evaluating programs aimed at ensuring the permanency of children involved with the child welfare system. The targeted population of the programs was parents who used/abused drugs and alcohol with the goal of facilitating timely access to treatment so permanency of children was not delayed while parents obtained these needed services. In addition, Ms. Rice has worked as an adjunct professor at Millersville University where she collaborated on the evaluation of the implementation of a strengths-based approach to teaching child welfare to undergraduate social work students with the intent of positively impacting preconceived perceptions regarding the caseworker/client relationship.

Ms. Rice is a licensed Social Worker in the state of Pennsylvania and received her master's degree from Temple University.