Tomi Gomory (PhD, Berkeley, 1998, MSW, 1984) is an Associate Professor at the College of Social Work, Florida State University (FSU) and has worked at FSU since 1998. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Pecs. His primary research interests are homelessness, mental health, evaluation of practice, philosophy of science, and social work education. Before beginning his academic career, he spent ten years working as a social worker, including as a clinician, director of the first adult homeless shelter in Brooklyn and a stint as the San Francisco project director of the Robert Wood Johnson and HUD coordinated federal Homeless Families Model Project. 

He has published extensively on issues related to mental health treatment and evaluation, homelessness, social work education and evidence-based practice. He published along with two colleagues his award winning the book, Mad Science: Psychiatric Coercion, Diagnosis, and Drugs in America, published by Routledge in 2013/2015. Currently he has developed a non-coercive, psychosocial educational model of helping called Solving Problems in Everyday Living (SPIEL). And also, has developed a routine brief (5 item) student educational feedback scale (BSEFS) currently being piloted at FSU utilized to improve the quality of the classroom student experience and enhance teacher skills.

Poetry Therapy (Its Pedagogy and Treatment) : A Therapeutic Enterprise on the Boundaries of Culture, The Real World and Therapy.

The presentation defines poetry, therapy and its combination and offers one model of poetry therapy empirically validated as a possible option and further offers an argument for the relevance and benefit of poetry, an art form, being valuable in helping by its application through therapeutic engagement to engage and resolve troubling experiences and mood states that individuals may experience.  It is also argued that learning to use poetry may also prove to be a long-term coping tool as the person moves forward in their life.