Mia Kirby, Ph.D.

Dr. Mia Kirby, a joint professor of practice in the social work and center of African-American Studies, began her journey at UTA in August 2020. She was interested in being part of the program because she wanted to learn more about how she can implement service learning particularly in the center of African-American Studies coursework.

Dr. Kirby taught a civic engagement in the African-American community course while in the program and planned to make it a stronger class moving forward. Her prior knowledge of service learning comes from teaching social work because social work students have to do a form of service learning for their degree. She believes that service learning is important because it allows students the opportunity to see how what they learn in the class can be applied to the real world.

Participating in the faculty fellows program, she enjoyed engaging with the other faculty, learning their backgrounds and their form of implementing service learning. Dr. Kirby states she is a hands-on learner, so reading the book was great but hearing other people talk and explain their service learning projects for their students helped her create some ideas for her courses.

Faculty hesitant about incorporating a service learning component are encouraged to take their time and start small because it doesn’t have to be an extravagant project.