Good teaching lies in our capacity for connectedness—to our students, to ourselves and to an ever-widening circle of community.

Teaching Headshot of Deborah

Teaching involves providing students with the tools to seek knowledge and truth and the opportunity to re-think their place in history, to imagine the future direction of the world, and perhaps to dream about how they would engage in tikkun olam, a Hebrew expression for repairing and healing the world.

My pedagogy, which reflects a fusion of intellectual and emotional rigor, is motivated by questions of where I can do the most good, how I can be of the most service, and how I can inspire students to think about the same.

I am a Professor of Sociology at the University of South Carolina Beaufort. Before that, I was an Assistant Professor at Regis College where I was nominated for a college-wide teaching award.

I served for three years at the University of Connecticut-Storrs as an Assistant Professor in Residence, was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Connecticut College, Suffolk University, Framingham State College, and the University of Massachusetts-Boston, and I was a Lecturer at Harvard University. In addition to teaching thousands of undergraduates, I have also successfully mentored graduate students at Harvard University, Northeastern University, University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Connecticut-Storrs.

I stand at the intersection of educating and healing, thinking and feeling, of the personal and the structural, the private and the public, celebrating, honoring and helping to best channel students’ enthusiasm for change in all the myriad ways they seek it. I keep my arms outstretched, to teach and mentor with devotion and an ethic of care as we reach toward truth and reason.

Teaching students

Adopt My Book for Your Class

Welcome to Wherever We Are: A Memoir of Family, Caregiving, and Redemption is aimed for a general audience and is fully interdisciplinary.

Written in accessible prose and appropriate for a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses, you might consider adopting this book.

If you choose to use my book in any of your classes, please know that I would be happy to visit with your students virtually or in person. Please contact me. I would love to hear from you!

Book picture

Here are some disciplines for which the book would be applicable:

  • Sociology

  • Psychology

  • Social Work

  • Gender Studies and Women’s Studies

  • Family Studies

  • English and Creative Writing

  • Human Services

  • Gerontology

  • Medical Humanities

  • Public Health

  • Nursing

  • Violence, Trauma, and Social Justice

  • Community Health

  • Communications/Advertising

  • Interdisciplinary Studies

Specifically, within my own discipline of sociology, the book would be especially compelling in classes such as:

  • Introduction to Sociology

  • Social Problems

  • Self and Society

  • Sociology of the Family

  • Sociology of Gender

  • Women in Society

  • Men and Masculinities

  • Sociology of Aging

  • Death and Dying

  • Sociology of the Body

  • Sociology of Health and Illness

  • Sociology of Food

  • Sociology of Emotions

  • Sociology of Literature

  • Family Violence

  • Senior Capstone