Sophia Fantus, Ph.D.

Dr. Sophia Fantus, an assistant professor at UTA, is dedicated to creating educational activities that engage and challenge her students without replicating their field placements. With her specialty in moral distress, healthcare, and bioethical issues, she has instructed students of different levels and formats in social work.

Dr. Fantus is drawn to service learning because she finds it as the next level of engagement for interprofessional education and interdisciplinary learning activities to her students in class. She adds that service learning is an innovative way to teach students in social work because it gives them a real-life experience in working on team similarly to social workers.

Before becoming involved with the Faculty Fellows program, Dr. Fantus understood the general concept of service learning from her affiliation with the medical Humanities program but was unaware of the in-depth process. Dr. Fantus was concerned about joining the program due to personal obligations and the pandemic situation, but she was able to stay in communication with the fellowship to incorporate it into her class the following semester.

With the tools, connections, and learning experience from the fellowship, Dr. Fantus integrated service learning into her seminar in qualitative research. As a part of the Faculty Fellows program Dr. Frantus enjoyed the meetings and the communications with other faculty. Fantus advises hesitant faculty to take the fellowship and to be well managed with the components that it takes to implement service learning. She emphasizes that implementing service learning maybe isn't less work, but it is a break away from the constant in-class norm and allows you to get to know your community and build connections with community organizations.