Candidate Statement

Since joining UTC in 2018, I have had the opportunities to improve my teaching, build up my scholarship, and serve the university and communities as a faculty member of the social work program. I am very grateful for all the opportunities that helped with my professional growth, and I summarized my accomplishments over the past five years below in terms of teaching, scholarship and creative activities and services:

Teaching 

Teaching and interacting with students has been a very invaluable experience for me and is extremely rewarding for my professional growth. My teaching philosophy starts with the respect to the diversity of students. Effective teaching should address the difference in students' backgrounds, learning needs, and learning styles. I made efforts to know the students using ice-breakers, name tags, self-awareness activity/paper, and class sharing. The unique contributions of students from diverse backgrounds, students of minority groups are highly valued and respected in my class to create an inclusive and safe learning environment. Besides, I am always keen on learning new teaching strategies and be creative in using various teaching approaches to engage students of different learning styles. For instance, I incorporated Team-based Learning (TBL) activities, including readiness assurance tests and application exercises, into my graduate-level courses to build up students' teamwork and problem-solving skills. During the COVID-19, I also learned new technologies for online teaching, and continue using some of them in the face-to-face classes now. For instance, I used Google slides for getting instant feedback from students on  in-class group discussion and I used Canvas studio to send announcements, give instructions for assignments, and arrange video assignments/tests. In addition, I joined a faculty fellowship on teaching innovation to apply the "Transparency in Learning and Teaching Model (TILT)" to my course design and assignment instructions. 

I often reflect on my session plans right after the class based on class observations, and collect student's feedback on my instruction through a mid-term evaluation or reflection paper timely to better address their learning needs and preferences. I revamped a graduate-level course, SOCW 5223: Theory of Aging and Development, to increase students' understanding about not only theories of aging but also the issues people encountered while aging through the life course. This course was certified by QM on 2022. I also make efforts to improve the accessibility of my course materials to address the needs of students with disabilities, and I won the first-place award for "Accessibility in UTC Learn contest" in 2019. 

As a social work educator, I believe that critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills are essential for professional social workers to address the ever-changing needs of clients and communities. Therefore, I push students' critical thinking by linking course content to real-world problems and emphasized problem-solving activities in all my courses. In the theory class, I asked students to critically review the explanations to a social problem via the lens of different theories and think more creatively about the solutions. In the research methods and data analysis class, I help students learn how to critique the quality of the studies in the news, how to answer their inquiries with different research designs, and think creatively to solve the problems in data collection process. The effectiveness of my teaching pedagogy is reflected in the reviews from students. The average teaching evaluation for my five semesters at the UTC is 6.34/7, and 6.60/7 for course instruction. 

Scholarship and Creative Activities

My research interests lie in aging and health disparity. I am interested in the social determinants of health, particularly the disparities in access to health care, social services, and informal social support for older adults and their caregivers due to multiple factors such as age, race/ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, and disabilities. My research findings can help social work practitioners better serve the aging individuals, families, groups, and communities, which is in line with the emphasis of the MSW-UTC program's mission on serving older adults. 

When I started working at the UTC, I intend to link my research to teaching. The goal of the social work department emphasizes the importance of preparing "a diverse student population for advanced social work practice." Thus, it is critical to understand students' diversity and how it may influence their development, which is also in line with my teaching philosophy. Due to the pandemic, I extended my research interests to the impact of COVID on social work students, graduates, and practitioners. I collaborated with social work faculty and students at the UTC and had been working on several research projects including a quantitative research to look at the impact of COVID on accessibility of students with disabilities, a longitudinal qualitative research to navigating the experience and career development of the social work graduates  during COVID, and a mixed-method design research on experience and compassion fatigue among gerontological social work practitioners. I hope the findings of the students can enable me to better assist my students to become a competent social work practitioner in various socio-economic environments(e.g. pandemic, economic crisis). 

Since joining the UTC, I continued conducting research on my interested areas and disseminating the findings through publication and presentation at professional conferences. During the past five years, I presented six original research at the national conferences held by Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), Society for Social Work and Research(SSWR), and Gerontological Society of America (GSA). I presented four of studies as the first author and two as the second author. Two of the presentations related to the impacts of COVID were presented together with BSW and MSW students. I also published six articles and conference proceeding on the peer-reviewed journals related to social work, gerontology and public health (first author for four publications and two as the second author). In collaboration with my colleagues at social work program, I mentored over 50 research projects of students in developing their research questions, applying for IRB approval, making data collection tools, collecting and analyzing the data, and presenting their research findings at the Research Conference at the UTC, which could enhance social work students' interests and capabilities in doing research. 

Currently, as the Co-PI, I collaborated with Dr. Yuan Yukun from the Department of Computer Science and Dr. Guo Feng from the Department of Psychology on the a research grant entitled “Creating a Socially Aware Efficient, Transparent, and Equitable 311 System for Smart Cities” ($99,297 funded by Center of Excellence in Applied Computational Science & Engineering) . We are working with the Chattanooga City Department of Public Works and Department for Innovation Delivery and Performance to investigate and service quality and equity. We plan to apply for an NSF grant based on the findings of this project next year. 

Services

I believe that the success of a university like UTC requires the active involvement of the faculty. I strive to contribute to the program,  school, college, university, to the community around, and to the social work profession. At the program level, I helped with preparing the assessment documents for the accreditation process and the site visit from 2018 to 2019, and worked on assessment data each year since 2020. Being a member of the MSW Program Application Review Committee, I reviewed applicants' material during the addmission process since 2020. At the school level, I served in the Bylaw Review Committee to review and revise the program level and school RTP guidelines. At the university level, I served on several committees, including Undergraduate Academic Standards Committee, Course Learning Evaluation Committee, Faculty Grant Review Committee and etc.  At the community level, I tried to contribute by participating in local events such as Alzheimer's Walk to address the needs of caregivers and people with Alzheimer's Disease; and by providing direct services to vulnerable population, for instance, helping people with no/limited access to health insurance and services to navigating the resources around them  in  RAM clinics (in 2021 and in 2023). I also helped with evaluating community programs, such as the Fire Department Social Work Program; Parental engagement program from United Way, by mentoring the students in their research project. The grant project that I am current working on can also indirectly contributes to the service provision at Chattanooga communities. As a member of the CSWE and the GSA, I reviewed the abstracts for the annual conferences of the two professional organizations, reviewed manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals and book proposals for some publishers. 

In conclusion, my time with the UTC have been exciting and productive. I learned many new things related to teaching, research and service as a junior faculty. I really enjoy working with my colleagues in the social work program and appreciate the support from the program, School of Professional Studies, CEHPS, and the university. In the future, I will continue improving my teaching, striving for research excellence, and providing more professional services to the institution, local community and the social work profession.