Hour glass

    G R E G   T U L L Y

After many years as an athlete, in my early twenties I began to coach young athletes. I decided that I wanted to affect the lives of individuals and communities in deeper and more impactful ways than sports coaching; I wanted a career that addressed values like fairness and justice, so I made the transition from athletics to social work and went on to attain my masters and doctoral social work degrees.

My professional practice covered counseling and advocacy work with individuals, families, groups, and communities. It included working with: child victims of sexual, physical and emotional violence; women victims of rape and family violence; families victimized by the deaths of family members through violence; and communities addressing violence occurring in their environments. As a tenured professional at a U.S. university, I currently teach and advise many graduate and undergraduate students studying at all levels (micro, mezzo, and macro) of social work.

I chose Hour glass because …

 … it is an object that measures time passing unstoppably until time runs out. Indeed, I am beginning to fear that time is running out for social workers and other helping professionals; time running out to deter the developing crisis of global mass victimizations through shootings, bombings, and other methods that are happening increasingly in the past decade in the global community. Throughout our history, social workers have contributed to the confrontation and defeat of hateful and destructive social and political forces, but in recent years we have seen violent attacks increasing in frequency and scope without any clear sign of a path to relief or resolution.

While social work is an absolutely necessary component of the arsenal with which we must confront violent global forces, my concern is growing that social workers and other helping professionals cannot slow the passage of time running unstoppably toward the triumph of these violent global forces. Do social work professionals have the necessary knowledge, skills, and resources to confront and conquer these violent global victimizations that seem, like the hour glass, unstoppable?