A 64-year-old social work student at The University of Toledo has been named one of only two students nationwide to receive the 2026 Carl A. Scott Book Scholarship from the Council on Social Work Education, UToledo announced in its Oct. 28 release. Rochelle Ballard is completing UToledo’s Advanced Standing Master of Social Work program and expects to graduate in May, just after her 65th birthday.
The scholarship recognizes students who have shown a commitment to promoting equity and racial, economic and environmental justice in their social work careers, according to UToledo. For Ballard, UToledo said, becoming a social worker is about turning the challenges she has faced in her own life into an opportunity to help others.
Ballard grew up in a neighborhood where she saw poverty and families struggling, experienced addiction and entered recovery as a young woman, according to UToledo. Her work as a hairdresser and the relationships she built with women and families in her community eventually led her toward social work, and she began pursuing higher education later in life despite doubts others had placed in her mind as a child.
“I’m not going to let what they told me keep me from going,” Ballard said in UToledo’s release. Her studies were interrupted when her grandmother became ill, and after her grandmother’s death she continued her education and transferred to UToledo, working three jobs during her bachelor’s degree program to help pay for school, according to the university.
Her field experience is extensive. During her undergraduate program, Ballard completed 448 hours of field education at the Correctional Treatment Facility in North Toledo, working with people impacted by the justice system, and also gained experience at Unison Health and as a social work assistant in a nursing home, UToledo said. In the master’s program she is completing another 525 hours of graduate field education.
“Rochelle has demonstrated tremendous dedication and perseverance throughout her social work education,” Meredith Rinna, director of UToledo’s Bachelor of Social Work Program, said in the university’s release, adding that Ballard applied what she learned in the classroom directly to the needs of the people she served. Mamta Ojha, an associate professor of social work and MSW program director, said in the release that Ballard’s lived experience brings something to the classroom that cannot be taught.
Ballard plans to focus her career on mental health and substance use disorders, areas she told UToledo are meaningful because of her own experience in recovery. She credited UToledo’s TRIO Student Support Services with helping her stay on track and called her husband, Ivan, her greatest source of support. Her message to students wondering whether it is too late, in her words in UToledo’s release, is not to give up, because the reward will be on the other side.
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