Alexandria Lewis is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Missouri- Columbia School of Social Work. She completed her Master of Social Work (MSW) degree at Mizzou and her Bachelor of Social Work degree at the University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, MO. She holds a clinical license in social work (LCSW) and is Certified in Thanatology (CT) through the Association for Death Education and Counseling.

As a veteran of the U.S. Army, she is dedicated to service in support of military service members and veterans. Alexandria served for six years on active duty in the U.S. Army, reaching the rank of Sergeant. Since October 2018, she has served on the University of Missouri- Columbia Chancellor’s Military and Veterans Standing Committee, and she is a member of the Executive Committee.

Alexandria designed and teaches a military social work course that examines military service through the lens of the life course perspective. In this course, she focuses on military culture, moral injury, military families, grief, loss, post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injuries, suicide, and military sexual trauma. Her other teaching interests include social work skills, policy, gerontology, and grief and loss.

Her interests in online education led her to earn an Educational Specialist degree (Ed.S.) in Information Science and Learning Technologies at Mizzou in 2016. She serves as an eMentor at the University of Missouri, and her role includes conducting faculty peer reviews of online courses using quality standards for online courses.

For six and a half years she worked for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, Division of Regulation and Licensure Central Office in Jefferson City, MO. In her role of Facility Surveyor III, attention to detail was paramount in her work providing regulatory oversight and quality improvement of long-term care facilities.

Alexandria views career as a journey, so when she was contacted by a Professor at the University of Missouri who was conducting a research study on hospice caregivers to see if she would be interested in a temporary Senior Research Specialist staff position, she accepted. Her role as a Senior Research Specialist involved conducting follow up telephone interviews with hospice caregivers after hospice services ended; administering screenings completed by hospice caregivers, to include depression, anxiety, personal health, social and quality of life measures; and attending hospice interdisciplinary team meetings.

After her grant position ended on this project, she transitioned to a different research position with the Sinclair School of Nursing. She collaborated with four nursing homes on a discharge planning quality improvement project; facilitated routine quality improvement meetings with nursing home staff; attended nursing home weekly Medicare A/Utilization review meetings; provided educational resources; conducted nursing home training; worked together with research nurse colleague and research faculty to help meet the goals of the nursing homes; provided support to nursing homes as they made changes with their discharge planning processes; developed process maps for all nursing homes using Visio software; and assisted with quality improvement analysis.