Profiles in Social Work

Find What's Missing: The Social Work Piece of the Puzzle

Anissa Rogers, Ph.D
Professor of Social Work - University of Portland, Chair of Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences

What attracted you to the field of social work?

Like so many others in the field of social work, I have a desire to help people. I’ve always been driven to better understand personal and social issues that affect people and motivated to learn how to best solve these problems. I started out studying Psychology, receiving both undergraduate and graduate degrees in the discipline. I was ready to begin a Ph.D. program in Psychology and realized there was something missing. Though I was committed to clinical work, I just couldn’t justify working with individuals and then sending them back out into an environment that was too often contributing to their problems. Through social work, I found a better, more comprehensive approach to working with people than what I thought Psychology had to offer. It also didn’t hurt that the value base of social work better fit with my own personal philosophy and approach to life and problems.

What attracted you to the field of aging?

One of my favorite gerontology professors once said about aging, “we all do it, and it’s better than the alternative.” We are all affected by aging, yet as a society we tend to marginalize older people and abhor the aging process. All it took to get me hooked into gerontology was exposure to a few wonderful faculty members in my Ph.D. program who were passionate about this problematic side of aging, which tapped into my curiosity for understanding problems and how they affect people. This exposure, coupled with personal experiences surrounding aging, helped me realize how crucial it is that people study and work with issues of aging and the aging process. After I got involved in aging-related work, I felt that I could contribute more by focusing on gerontology than by engaging in any other aspect of social work.

How has the GSWI benefited your career and how has it allowed you to do what otherwise would not have been possible?

For starters, it made more accessible a whole new world of resources, colleagues, and inspiration that would’ve been more difficult to tap into otherwise. It has provided venues through which to conduct my work and to involve students. It has also offered some legitimacy to the work I do, allowing me to make headway in disseminating my work in ways that impact the community and individual lives. Most importantly, it has provided support and encouragement for my work, helping to motivate me to move forward. Sure, I would’ve pursued this work without the support of the GSWI, but I doubt my work would’ve reached the level it has without these resources. And I’m convinced it would’ve been much more difficult, lonely work and much less inspired.

What are your career goals?

My personal quest is to ensure that as a society, we revere older people and the aging process. Should I fall short on my goal, I’ll settle for expanding my research and other work in aging and helping ignite a passion for working in gerontology among undergraduate students. I have been fortunate in my career to be surrounded by so many supportive, wonderful mentors and friends who love aging-related work. I want to keep nurturing those networks and help students build their own experiences and connections as well.

What advice would you have for students who are interested in aging?

Get involved! Whether students want to admit it or not, they are aging. They and their friends, parents, siblings, children, grandparents, significant others, and communities will all be impacted by the aging process and the joys and problems it brings. I think that fear is one of the biggest barriers to students getting interested in aging-related work. Once you interact with an older person (for younger people that might mean interacting with a 30-year-old, so that’s not so intimidating) or make yourself aware of social and personal issues surrounding the aging process, you’ll be hooked too.

- contributed by Meredith Eisenhart, MSW

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Updated November 18, 2010