Why I Teach
Why I Teach: With Dr. Mary Mullins
Dr. Mary Mullins, chair of the Department of Social Work at East Tennessee State University, knows the value of ETSU’s commitment to interprofessional education.
Before she joined the faculty at ETSU, she practiced social work in medical environments, where she saw the benefits of social workers practicing alongside other health professionals to improve outcomes for patients.
Now as a faculty member at ETSU, she is a facilitator with the university’s interprofessional education program, which brings together faculty and students from across the health sciences disciplines to work in teams.
“To me, the wonderful thing about the interprofessional team is to have everyone present, working closely together to better serve the patient,” Mullins said. “For our students, they have an opportunity to really educate the other professions while they are learning about the other professions as well. Our students primarily are addressing social indicators of health – so looking at what resources that person may need. They are also able to address the mental health issues that oftentimes come up.”
In her classroom, Mullins shares her experiences from clinical practice, as well as her personal stories of advocacy to inspire the next generation of social workers.
“Thinking about the profession, integrity is so important,” Mullins said. “And I’ve always tried to model that for my students and encourage them to walk a path of integrity because that’s one of the most important things when we’re dealing with vulnerable populations.”
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Transcript
Dr. Mary Mullins
And I love working with students when they’re in their internships because it’s really fun to just watch them blossom. And for some students, they land in the right spot and they find their area. They sometimes find their home and get offered jobs there. For other students, they find, you know, where they're going to be challenged as social workers. And so either way, it’s a really powerful learning experience.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle
Hi, I'm Kimberly McCorkle, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academics at East Tennessee State University. From the moment I arrived on this campus, I have been inspired by our faculty, their passion for what they do, their belief in the power of higher education, and the way they are transforming the lives of our students. This podcast is dedicated to them: Our incredible faculty at ETSU. Hear their stories as they tell us Why I Teach. In this episode, we will talk with Dr. Mary Mullins, one of two recipients of the 2022 Notable Women of ETSU Award. Dr. Mullins serves as an Associate Professor and Chair of the ETSU Department of Social Work. In 2021, she received the College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award and was nominated for the ETSU Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award. Enjoy the show.
Dr. Mullins, welcome to our show. I start my podcast with the same question for every guest: Take me back to your first day of teaching at ETSU as a faculty member, and looking back on that day, what is one piece of advice you would have given yourself?
Dr. Mullins
Oh, that’s a really good question. When I think back to that first day coming on to a new campus, I really (wanted) to do a great job. I would say now: Just relax and enjoy the time with the students. I spent so much time feeling like I needed to be just overly prepared, and being prepared is important, but really just relaxing a little, allowing a little more flexibility in the flow of classes and learning from the students is where I am now.
Dr. McCorkle
I love that image of learning from your students. Why did you decide to become a social worker? And then from there, what led you to become a faculty member?
Dr. Mullins
Well, that was quite a journey. I think I always knew I wanted to work directly with people and throughout college I tried different majors and just kind of bopped around. I think it was really an intro to psychology class where I really started to connect with the human behavior element. And then that led me on to learn about social work. I worked as a social worker for several years in Southwest Virginia, and then later, many years later, went back to school and pursued a Ph.D. because I decided by that point, I wanted to teach. I had worked with students who were pursuing a degree in the agencies I worked in, and I was just fascinated by that experience of working with students. So after the Ph.D., ETSU... I'd actually worked at ETSU back in nine... It was in the 1900s. But I had worked as a research assistant shortly after my undergrad experience, and for me, when the opportunity came to be a faculty member, it felt like I was coming home to ETSU, as ETSU had been just a really good place in my career at that point.
Dr. McCorkle
As a faculty member, how do you draw on those professional experiences? Being a licensed professional in the field, how does that impact your teaching?
Dr. Mullins
I still have so many stories. I worried, you know, as the years passed, that I wouldn’t have relevant stories. But even yesterday I was able to share a story with students and it’s so vivid in my mind, those times in practice. And so I try to use those personal stories, whether it was a positive story or a negative story, to kind of help students understand the realities of being a social worker and what they might face.
Dr. McCorkle
So one of the important roles for social workers is in the work of advocacy; advocating on policy, social change. Can you talk to us a little bit about your experience in advocacy and the ways that these experiences help you prepare students?
Dr. Mullins
Unfortunately, I had a really negative experience in my life that was... that is when I really learned about advocacy and the importance of that. I was a social worker in practice. My brother passed away suddenly, and shortly after his death we found out that he had really been treated very poorly at the time of his death. He had a heart attack while he was driving. There was a police officer responded (sic). He was denied CPR on the scene because the police officer knew that he identified as gay, and as it came out, the police officer actually assumed that he was HIV positive, and apparently had little education around universal precautions and that sort of thing. So that was... that was horrific. I had lost my brother, but then to know that he had been treated that way at the time of his death, it really – just for my whole family, (it) wasn't just me – but I didn't know what to do. But I was a social worker, so I wrote a letter. One letter. (It) turned out to be a very, very powerful letter telling the story of what had happened to my brother and just asking for help, asking for help in addressing that. It turned into... I heard from lots of legislators, the governor, lots of different people. But most importantly, several advocacy agencies reached out to me and were prepared to offer to represent our family in a legal case related to this. And at the time I wrote the letter, I wasn't thinking about that. They knew what we needed. So, we ended up working with the ACLU, who filed a lawsuit around that. It was kind of a... definitely a transformation for me. Again, I was learning about advocacy and I was given a voice. And I used that voice. I participated in press conferences. I went to... presented at a reception in New York City and told this story. And there was just... Really, the challenge – and I think personally, that's how I was working through some of the anger and the grief around that – was to just really try to raise awareness around that, and that, that whole process, you know, took a while. At the end, the city involved was required to do a lot more training with their employees, because that’s what I wanted. I just wanted people to be educated. There was nothing to bring my brother back or to take away, you know, what he heard, the last... right before he passed away. But I’m just really educating and advocacy and that that whole experience led me into the research with LGBTQ. You know, I had to kind of funnel that someplace: What can I personally do? I’m spreading the word. We’re participating in this legal case. But there’s... I really learned there was more for me to do around that. So being able to do research and use that in teaching with students... And for a lot of years I didn’t share that story with my students. But these past few years I’ve been sharing that story, because... I really make the point: It was one letter. Take the time to write the letter because you really never know who's going to pick that up and listen and the impact that you can have from that one letter.
Dr. McCorkle
Thank you for sharing your story. We know that overall employment for social workers is projected to grow faster than the national average for all occupations over the next decade. How has this influenced the way that you teach and the ways that we offer the program here?
Dr. Mullins
Our faculty, our department, is very committed to our profession and to the public, to the community, addressing their needs. We have worked really hard within our department to make our programs accessible across the region and beyond. So most recently, we have been able to offer our master’s program online, which has really made a huge impact on students being able to complete their degrees, those with families and– or maybe live some distance from ETSU. And we’re in the process of approval for our BSW program to do the same thing because we really want the programs to be accessible. There’s such a demand, as you said, across the board for social workers, and we really want to do our part to prepare competent social workers.
Dr. McCorkle
I’ve been reflecting on that, and I know that we’re all aware of the mental health epidemic in our country. It’s well-documented and there’s a lot of unmet need for mental health services across the board. Talk to us a little bit about how the social work profession kind of fits in to meet that unmet need.
Dr. Mullins
The majority of social workers actually work in mental health, and that’s kind of not a well-known fact. Most people, when they think of social workers, they think of child welfare. But social workers are really on the forefront with mental health, particularly in our community mental health centers, both bachelors-level and masters-level clinicians in those settings. They provide direct services to individuals through case management by our BSWs, where they’re helping to make sure they're getting all the services that they need. And just being that extra support up to our master's level clinicians that are providing psychotherapy. A lot of that relates back to... often times there's substance abuse involved. We train our students to be able to address substance use along with a dual diagnosis with other conditions as well. So definitely we're very proud of our students out there. Our program has a very high success rate for licensure. It’s actually above the national average. So we are really trying to address those mental health needs.
Dr. McCorkle
So in your multiple roles as department chair, professor, mentor, you have the opportunity to help prepare the next generation of social workers. What characteristics and teaching style do you bring to the classroom to help inspire students?
Dr. Mullins
I try to bring, I think, curiosity. I never come in as the “all-knowing.” I tell students on the first day of class, I’m here to facilitate your learning experience, not to, you know, impart you with great wisdom. So it’s very much, I challenge students to think critically. And I try to present them, you know, with enough evidence that they’re challenged to think outside the box. Like you said, with the challenges that we’re facing, our students need to be able to be creative in finding solutions or finding resources. And so critical thinking is just, to me, one of the most important. And, to really... I try to inspire them to have passion, to challenge adversity and equity issues as well.
Dr. McCorkle
I think related to that, I know that your current research focuses on work quality and integrity in social workers who serve the LGBTQ+ community. So what are some of the challenges and opportunities that you have identified through this research?
Dr. Mullins
I think over time with that research, the biggest thing that I have identified was when I first started that research, I was like, “So what do I do with this information?” There were some obvious biases among practitioners that I found in the research, so, bringing that back down to the classroom of what I could do each day, and that’s really been about teaching the students about implicit bias, encouraging them to become more self-aware or to challenge themselves, but doing that in a safe environment where there's not, you know, a level of shame, and just really educating them about how, you know, we’re all socialized and receive different messages and now we have an opportunity to learn better and do better. And I think my biggest takeaway from that research and how I’ve been able to use that day-to-day with, with my students.
Dr. McCorkle
So as you’re aware, ETSU has had a long history in interprofessional education. And last year, to kind of advance that, we actually announced the formation of the ETSU Center for Interprofessional Collaboration, which we hope will strengthen our commitment to interprofessional education across the health sciences colleges; and your college – and your department, in particular – have been major contributors to our interprofessional education program. Can you talk a little bit about social workers’ roles in interprofessional teams, and how you work with that center with our students to help prepare students for working in this team environment?
Dr. Mullins
Actually I think I have an assignment today to do with... I’m actually one of the asynchronous facilitators this year. So this is very near and dear to my heart. When I was a social worker in practice, I was mostly in medical environments. So coming into this, I was just really excited to have an opportunity for students to participate because I think it completely strengthens the whole team for them to be educated in this manner. So for our students, they have an opportunity to really educate the other professions, so, while they’re learning about the other professionals as well. But our students primarily are – on that interprofessional team – are addressing the social indicators of health. So looking at, you know, what resources that person may need, but then also they’re able to address the mental health issues that oftentimes come up that the physician or the nurse may not know exactly how to respond to that. So to me, the wonderful thing about the interprofessional team is to have everyone present working closely together to better serve the patient. And I’ve really enjoyed participating in that. I’ve been a facilitator I think for five years now, and we are now moving toward all of our students participating. But I have always encouraged our students to take advantage of that because even if they're not going into health care, those skills are so translatable to the other settings where social workers may work in a interprofessional environment.
Dr. McCorkle
Yes, and that’s what I was thinking: You’ve actually infused it in the curriculum now, both the bachelor’s and master’s levels, right? So as you are aware – because you’ve participated in this initiative – that we’ve recently launched a major initiative in ETSU that we're calling Go Beyond the Classroom, and it’s focused on community-engaged learning broadly. Tell us about some of the ways that your social work students are going beyond the classroom to engage in experiential learning in the community and beyond.
Dr. Mullins
So our students are out there in the community all the time. I think the biggest way that they’re going beyond the classroom is through internships and practical terms. Our bachelor’s level students complete 480 hours of time in an agency. Our graduate students, up to 1,000 hours over a two-year period. So I feel like our students are really contributing in the region. They’re working directly with people supporting agencies. And of course, it’s a very mutual situation. Those agencies are hosting our students. They’re continuing to educate them beyond the classroom for us or in collaboration with us. But it’s a really powerful thing to see because a lot of the smaller nonprofit agencies really depend on our students to be there to provide services that maybe a paid employee would normally be paying, but under– with low resources, they’re not able to fully fund the staff. So our students really are able to provide a lot of really good service in the community while they're also learning. And we're very appreciative of all the agencies that we work with.
Dr. McCorkle
And I always think about the impact that – particularly for social work students – that this experiential learning, at such a high level as you’ve just said, hundreds of hours required for the degree conferral, the way that that impacts their future decisions, career path interests. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Mullins
Oh, absolutely. I love working with students when they’re in their internships because that’s really fun to just watch them blossom. And for some students, they land in the right spot and they find their area. They sometimes find their home and get offered jobs there. So for other students, they find, you know, where they're going to be challenged as social workers. And so either way, it's a really powerful learning experience. I had a student last year who came in that year telling me she was dead set on doing something else with her career, but there was an internship available, and through that internship, she realized that she loved working with teenagers and it was just such a fun thing. And she wouldn’t have learned that probably for a really long time had she not had that experience of the internship.
Dr. McCorkle
Finally, what impact do you hope you’ve made on your students?
Dr. Mullins
Well, that’s that’s a tough one. I think overall, just as a social worker, thinking about the profession, integrity is so important. And so I've always tried to model that for my students and encourage them to walk a path of integrity. So I would hope that they always remember that, because I think that's one of the most important things when we're dealing with vulnerable populations is that we're trustworthy and competent along the way. And also more recently, I guess, making sure that they are taking good care of themselves. That aspect, there's a lot of potential for burnout in the profession. So I really encourage them to continuously stay well, stay healthy, because they can't do good work if they're not. So that’s hopefully some of the things that my students will remember from, from being with me here.
Dr. McCorkle
Thank you, Mary. I am so impressed with the work that you’re doing. Congratulations on being named a Notable Woman at ETSU. And thank you for your commitment to our students and preparing them to serve in their communities.
Thanks for listening to Why I Teach. For more information about Dr. Mullins, ETSU’s of Social Work, or this podcast series, visit the ETSU Provost’s website at etsu.edu/provost. You can follow me on Twitter @ETSUProvost, and if you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to like and subscribe to Why I Teach wherever you listen to podcasts.