Highlights

As a junior faculty, I prepared myself to serve at the department, college, and university level as much as I can. At the department level, during the process of CSWE accreditation for the Master of Social Work (MSW) Program at UTC from 2018 to 2019, and from 2022 to 2023,  I helped with the preparation of documents and met with the site visitors. As the MSW assessment committee member, I worked with the program director in the annual assessment data collection and analysis and prepared the data report for the CSWE review. The MSW program achieved full accreditation by the CSWE's Commission on Accreditation in 2019 and got reaffirmed in 2023. I also served on the MSW Program Application Review Committee and helped with the applicants' material review and admission. I completed the Search Committee Training in Fall 2018 and prepare to serve in the search committees for the social work program and other departments. The social work program has been searching for a new faculty member from 2019 to 2020, and I participated in assessing the faculty candidates during their onsite interviews and presentations as the search committee member. 

At the school level, I served on the School Bylaw Committee to review. I contacted other schools of social work and research heir bylaws and RTP guidelines and then revise, and rewrite the Social Work RTP guideline and bylaws for the School of Professional Studies. 

At the University level, I served on different committees such as the Course Learning Evaluation Committee and Faculty Grant Committee.  As a memeber of Course Learning Evaluations Committee and help to produce a report on how racial, ethnic, and gender bias presents itself in teaching evaluations. The findings can improve the course evaluation system to better reflect the teaching quality for the faculty of ethnic minorities and women. For the faculty grant committee, I reviewed three rounds of faculty grant applications (30 to 40 applications) through the year.  I also volunteered as the faculty marshal for the Undergraduate and graduate commencements several times as much as I can since I joined the UTC. 

One of the key values of the social work profession is service, which also aligns with the mission of the University. As a social work educator and practitioner, I strive to serve the community when there are needs from the communities and agencies. I participated in local events regularly (e.g., Alzheimer's Walk, Caregiver Conference) and provide voluntary direct services to people with poor access to medical resources through RAM clinics. I also collaborated with local agencies and provided consultancy services to their program development and needs assessment (e.g., Agape Asia), and mentored students in program evaluation projects for community agencies. With one grant project that I worked with UTC colleagues, I also built collaborations with the Chattanooga  City government agencies (e.g., Public Works, and Innovation Delivery and Performance) to improve the service equality of the City 311 system.  

As an emerging scholar, I contributed to the professional field of social work and gerontology by reviewing abstracts for the annual conferences of CSWE and GSA, reviewing manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals such as The Gerontologists, and reviewing books for the publishers like Springer Publishing or Oxford University Press. In the future, I hope to continue making my contributions at different levels, and to the social work profession and gerontology field.