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Social work graduate featured in National Guard magazine

Janel Shoun-Smith | 

One of Lipscomb University’s most unique graduates participating in the 2014 spring commencement was honored a month early with a profile in GX, the official magazine for the Army National Guard, posted April 10.

In the article, social work major Doris Wood, 58, discusses her amazing life that started in an Alabama orphanage, continued through dual careers in graphic design and the military (with deployments to Iraq and Kuwait) and is now on a new path leading to becoming a hospice social worker for the Veterans Administration.

Here’s an excerpt from the article by Leslie Benson…

“Staff Sergeant Doris Wood of the Tennessee Army National Guard
has had two careers—in graphic arts and in the military—and at age
58, she’s pursuing her third, with aspirations to work for the U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs as a social worker for aging veterans.
Having begun her second bachelor’s degree at Lipscomb University
in Nashville, Tenn., two years ago, Wood says she has finally found
her calling, thanks to benefits and life lessons she’s gained by being
in the Guard.” Read more…

Wood was also selected this semester as the co-recipient of the Bachelor of Social Work Student of the Year Award for the middle region of the National Association of Social Workers' Tennessee Chapter and the Jeanne Bowman Social Work Award for the August 2014 class.

“Doris' efforts to share her life, her zeal and her academic commitment, to go the long way around and make sure she learned all she could prior to pursuing a master’s in social work, so she could be the best possible social worker, exhibit commitment parallel to that of social work's earliest advocates,” said Hazel Arthur, professor and chair of the social work program. “Doris' presence on the campus and in the community, speaking with pride and commitment of social work and its values, give meaning to survival and to living.”

Read the entire GX story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: During her deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2009, SSG Doris Wood provided school supplies and toys for this family living in a bombed-out building in Baghdad, Iraq. The children's father, an ex-policeman, was injured by an IED and could no longer work.