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A Day in the Life- From Research to Mentorship: Social Work Education and Indigenous Advocacy
What does a day in the life of a social worker look like? Social work is one of the fastest growing professions in the U.S. and it allows for an enormous range of specialties and career paths. SSW alumni serve clients in a multitude of impactful ways throughout the United States and the world. Explore the dayto-day lives of just a handful of distinguished alumni, featuring the work of those in private practice, sex therapy, bibliotherapy, higher education, macro practice and more. Dive into their lives and learn how they balance client care, family life, hobbies and self-care.
Editor’s note: The following stories include composite scenarios of clients and do not represent any real clients. First names are used throughout to encourage connection with these snapshots of people’s intimate lives.
From Research to Mentorship: Social Work Education and Indigenous Advocacy
By Megan Rubiner Zinn, Photos by Sharon Rhiney
In her doctoral research, Pamela L. Begay, Ph.D. ’20, LCSW, a member of the Diné Nation of Shiprock, New Mexico, explored American Indian and Alaska Native social work faculty’s experiences of being mentored. Now, in her day-today life, Pamela herself is an academic, guiding the next generation of Native and non-Native social workers.
Pamela is an associate professor of practice at Washington University in St. Louis’s Brown School, the chair of their American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) concentration and the director of the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies, a center for academic advancement for AIAN master of social work students. Taking this position was a homecoming for Pamela—she earned her M.S.W. as a Buder Scholar. In addition to these positions, Pamela is the senior editor for the Journal of Indigenous Research and an editorial board member of the Clinical Social Work Journal In her research, she focuses on cultural identity and issues surrounding Native women.
Before Pamela was recruited by the Brown School in 2022, she’d had a wide array of experiences in social work, which positioned her well in her role as an educator. She worked for the Southern Ute Tribal Court in Colorado as a child custody evaluator, a mental health guardian ad litem and a tribal court therapist. When she became a parent, Pamela decided to move her work closer to her family home in New Mexico, opening a private practice and serving as an administrator for the Navajo Nation’s substance abuse program. She still maintains a private telehealth psychotherapy practice in New Mexico with a focus on treating trauma.
Working in academia, the activities in Pamela’s daily life vary widely. Like most parents, she starts her day making sure her teenaged children, Athena and Miles, are awake. “And from there,” she said, “the fun begins.”
As an administrator and faculty member, Pamela spends a great deal of time in meetings at the university and also in the community, addressing budgets, policies and programmatic needs. The Buder Center is student-focused, so in that position, much of her time is dedicated to making sure she is available for student engagement, while ensuring they get the support they need. As an advisor she is usually assigned students who are on the clinical track, given her deep experience. Pamela also teaches AIAN classes such as Indigenous Knowledge, Values and Cultures along with clinical courses like Contemporary Theories and Issues in Behavioral Health and Principles of Differential Diagnosis.
Pamela’s work with the Buder Center also involves planning and participating in community events that connect Native-serving organizations locally and nationally. These include an annual powwow in April, which “highlights and brings Native people and the community together to celebrate Native culture,” she explained, and Hunt, Fish, Gather, at which a Native chef is invited to prepare a meal, share recipes, do a cooking demonstration and educate the community about Native foods.
Along with engaging with her fellow faculty members, these kinds of events are the highlight of Pamela’s work: “When I can connect with my wonderful staff and community members it creates a place we can gather with our students and celebrate their accomplishments.”
Pamela’s time outside the university tends to be family focused: attending Miles’ football games (as well as NFL games), Athena’s theater performances, church activities, running with her husband, Manasseh (they recently ran the St. Louis half marathon) or watching Sonic Boom and Avatar: The Last Airbender with Athena. “I feel like my safest place is really at home with my family. And that’s both here in St. Louis and also our home in New Mexico.”
As she mentors social work students, Pamela focuses on the wide range of career options in the field, especially because over fifty percent of Brown School students plan to practice clinically. “I always love telling my students that I want them to consider what it might mean for them to be under an umbrella of such an amazing profession—that there’s so much room and there’s so much to do,” she said. Given her broad experience in the field and the variety of responsibilities she juggles on a day-to-day basis, this is something Pamela can truly demonstrate firsthand.
