Keeping the Door Open Posted on January 16, 2008 Having a positive impact involves making daily choices about commitments and activities, explains Darrell P. Wheeler (bio).

One of the big tensions, I think, for me in the career path as I’ve learned it over the years, is balancing my desire to connect with students and provide support to next generation scholars, and certainly social work practitioners, and the demands to produce in terms of the academy and certainly in research spheres.

Students look to you based on what they see, and they go, “Ahh, there’s a black man, and I need to reach out to him.” Or, they say, “There’s a black man. I need to stay away from him,” however that may be.

And I often feel I get calls because students really are reaching for more than just an academic instructor, but somebody that they can relate to as a person. I don’t want to say a father figure yet, because I’m way too young, even though I have a 23-year-old daughter, but I do feel that there are some folks who are reaching out for something else at this point.

And when they do that, it’s hard to turn them away. I mean that goes to like yesterday. I’m in the midst of preparing for this event, and a woman was knocking on my door, saying, “I’m having a crisis. I need to print a paper.” I’m trying to print stuff out for my program. I’m trying to get ready for a meeting with the dean. I’ve got 17 things.

So I have to undo everything I’m doing to help her get her paper ready. Just little things like that, as opposed to shutting my door and working on a manuscript or working on data. And for me, and maybe that’s part of being a social worker, I don’t think it’s an appropriate sphere, place for me to be, to be able to shut that door.

If we’re truly going to make an impact, that impact has to come across in our teaching. It has to come across in our writing, and it has to come across in our commitment and activities with communities that we research and that we think we’re impacting.

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