Thomas Starkey (PhD, LCSW) is the Department of Social Work Chair and Associate Professor at Angelo State University, a Member of Texas Tech University System in San Angelo, Texas. He created a rare social work study abroad program. Starkey specialized in mental health and geriatric social work during his clinical career and he has research interests in robotics. Faculty profile
MSW Online
Please share how you got started in social work and why.
Thomas Starkey
Well, I started off with a lot of different majors (as many undergrads). I knew what I wanted to do, I knew I wanted to work with people, but I wasn’t really sure how to do it. Someone told me I should learn about social work. And probably like a lot of people I thought, “Well, I don’t want to work with kids or food stamps” but after I went and talked to one of the faculty members, they explained everything you could actually do with social work.
I wanted to work with mental health and healthcare. They told me I could do that by getting my undergrad in social work and then going on and getting my masters and then getting my clinical license. Especially once they told me that with my BSW I could get my master’s in one year, if I went full time with advanced standing, I took an intro to social work course and that pretty much sealed the deal.
MSW Online
Tell me a little bit about how you knew you wanted to work in mental health.
Thomas Starkey
I just always had an interest in mental health. It was just something I really enjoyed and always, even in high school, I liked watching TV shows. I always liked watching TV shows and reading books that had some kind of plot or theme associated with mental health. Again, I took the intro to social work course and when we got to the chapter about mental health and what you can do, again, that’s what sealed it. I just always had an interest in mental health. I’m a people person and it just kind of fit naturally.
MSW Online
Walk me through your career path kind of as you got your degrees and then went out into the workforce.
Thomas Starkey
Sure. My very first job, I got as a result of doing my field education and it was on an inpatient geriatric psych unit. I’ll be honest, I had no desire to work with the elderly. I wanted to work with adults and I ended up doing my field placement at the inpatient geriatric facility because, well, I was still a student and I procrastinated to go to my interview for my field placement. I selected a hospital in Muskie, Texas, and all it said was “inpatient psychiatric unit”. I finally went and when I walked in, well, it was a unit full of old people, so to speak and I’m like, “I am not doing it here.” I went back and told my field director, I said, “I’m not doing it there.” She told me, “Yeah. You are. You waited too long. You don’t have a choice.” I ended up doing it there. Lo and behold, I actually just really kind of fell in love working with older adults.
That’s pretty much where I spent most of my time. I worked there for five years then went to work in outpatient, senior adults, mental health for the company. I worked there for three or four years. Then I ended up going to work for a different inpatient psychiatric unit, which didn’t have an outpatient unit. I helped them create an outpatient unit. Really most of my career I worked in mental health and it was either inpatient or outpatient.
I was director of clinical services. I was director of utilization review. I was director of outpatient services. I piddled around and did that for 20 plus years. At one point I just decided that I wanted to do something different. I need a different challenge. My old field director, where I got my undergraduate from, was the chair of the social work department at the time. She called me out of the blue and asked me if I wanted to be an adjunct for the course. I said, “Sure.” I really liked the teaching component. I talked to her and I said, “How do I do this?”
She told me, well, you really need to go get your doctorate. I ended up going back to the university of North Texas where they had an applied gerontology PhD program.
Since I had worked with the elderly and I really enjoyed that population, I decided to apply there. I got in and I think it took me about four years because I went part-time while I was still working.
In 2012, I became the program director. Part of my job when I was working in the hospitals, in mental health, whether it was inpatient or outpatient, was marketing and recruitment, trying to get clients to come see us for their mental health services. I utilized past skills trying to market and develop an increase in student enrollment for the social work program. Once we finished up with the council on a social work education, accreditation process, the Dean and I were in agreement that we would move forward towards developing a master’s program.
Once we started the process we became our own department. I became the chair of social work as well as the BSW director, which I am to this day. We were able to start our MSW program the fall of ’19.
MSW Online
Thank you for sharing because I think it’s helpful for the readers to see that you have the ability to progress your career as a social worker, into serving different populations or one population that you really love. Then also progressing within administration and different roles and learning new skills like you were talking about, utilization review and marketing and communication. I think that’s helpful for people to know that there’s growth opportunities, even after they would get their social work degree.
Thomas Starkey
Yes. Also, when I moved here, I worked for a hospital company, a freestanding psych hospital and continued for a long time to do some PRN work there. As a consultant, I helped them develop their military service program that they now offer. I do some consulting still on the side.
MSW Online
What do you currently teach or are you doing any research or teaching any courses right now outside of your administrative responsibilities?
Thomas Starkey
Oh, yes. I teach predominantly the undergraduate level and we’re hoping once we get a new BSW director, then I’m going to probably teach more at the master’s level. I teach a social work and aging course. I teach the research course. I teach intro to social work. I teach the research courses. I teach a mental health course. I teach policy.
Most interestingly, I developed a study abroad program for our undergraduate. I lead that in the summer. We go for four weeks. Obviously we didn’t go this past summer because of COVID. I’m not sure if we’re going to be able to go this coming summer or not yet. We go to Romania, Czech Republic, Prague. We go to Amsterdam. We go to Vienna. We go to Frankfurt, Germany.
While we’re there we go and visit with the University of Amsterdam, the University of Vienna and the University of Bucharest social work faculty. We get to meet the faculty, the students. They’ll give us little lectures. We also go to agencies in Amsterdam and Bucharest like the Ronald McDonald house. Then we go to various other little agencies that are just specific to those countries and cities. We also have a lot of fun. We go to the Anne Frank museum. We go to the Van Gogh museum. We go to the Mozart museum. My favorite thing is we actually, in Romania, we get to visit Dracula’s castle.
MSW Online
Is that common for social programs to offer that kind of experience?
Thomas Starkey
I don’t think it’s very common that a lot of social work programs will do the study abroad, some go to Belize, but I talked to students and they said they were interested. It was a lot of work to organize because I had to go and actually meet and develop and cultivate the relationships with the faculty in each country. I paid for that out of my pocket, but it was fine. My wife went with me and we had a great time. Anyway, the students really love it and so hopefully we’ll be able to start that back up, hopefully this coming summer.
MSW Online
Besides potentially having to skip that experience, has COVID impacted your practice? I’m assuming you guys have some sort of virtual option or you’ve made a lot of accommodations at the university?
Thomas Starkey
Yeah. We actually went online in 2017. By 2018, We were able to deliver basically all of our courses online except for field. Then starting in 2019, which actually worked out very well, we did all of our courses including field online. We have students that are in Houston, Dallas, San, Antonio, Austin. We have one student who her fiance is in the military and he got transferred to Germany and we were able to secure a placement for her there, with a social worker. She’s actually finishing up her final year in Germany because she’s taking her field and doing all of her other classes online.
MSW Online
What about a favorite social work related book, podcast or resource that the reader should know about?
Thomas Starkey
I’m always reading journals, peer reviewed articles and stuff, but what sticks with me is a person. Mary Richmond, who really is the founder of social work. She wrote a textbook called Social Diagnosis, which was really the first attempt in creating social work, kind of a treatment intervention through casework, incorporating research into it and really focusing on the education part of social work. This was back in 1916 or 17.
MSW Online
Is this something students might be exposed to naturally in their coursework?
Thomas Starkey
I never have actually had that book as a course textbook. We discussed it a little bit and some of her history and her involvement, but I never really read the textbook as part of any coursework. I’ve read it just by myself.
MSW Online
Where do you see the role of social work into the future?
Thomas Starkey
Sure. I’ve done some research and actually just submitted a study to IRB, me and four other faculty members, we are looking at the perception of emotional wellbeing COVID had. My main focus that I actually am partnering with a colleague at another university is looking at incorporating robot technology into social work. These robots were really cool. They’re called little Timmy’s. You can actually look them up on the internet. It’s TMI and we’re working with the company that we bought them from, Connected Living, who’s based out in New York and they have their own kind of Cloud system where they’ve got programs and stuff.
We’re working with them to develop some different capabilities of Timmy. For example, we’re looking to incorporate it where Timmy is able to help us record a clinical assessment. God forbid we run into another issue like COVID where you can’t put seniors at risk. Instead you could send a Timmy in and they could actually do the assessment, or you have the capability where I can call Timmy and I can have my face on the monitor. I can talk to the patient and I can see them. Just with technology and the way things are going, I do believe that this is really going to be a part of social work in the future. My colleague and I have, I guess, delusions of grandeur.
We’re hoping that 50 years from now when people are using robots every day in social work, they’ll kind of look back at us like I look back at Mary Richmond. There’s a few that are doing it, but not many institutions or university faculty members doing this. We’re really excited about this. We call it social work and robot research. Most of the students nowadays will have no issue adapting to it, if it ever becomes part of the everyday use in their environment. They’ll have no issue adapting to that whatsoever.
MSW Online
Right, right. What do you anticipate in terms of the person near the patient or the client on the other side of the Timmy? Have you had experience actually using one live yet?
Thomas Starkey
I have not yet because of COVID. I haven’t been able to get in and talk to any of the nursing homes, assisted livings, retirement communities to see. I’ve talked to him on the phone about it and they’re interested in it and I completely understand. They say, “Well, let’s wait till we get into a better place with COVID and then we’d love to have you out to show us and see how the residents kind of respond to it.” It’s kind of on hold right now.
Connected Living is already using these in a bunch of assisted living and retirement communities up in New York. If I had a grandparent in one of their nursing homes, I could actually download an app and I would be able to look and see what their day is like. What are they having for lunch? I can stay connected and have Timmy go into my grandparent’s room for a conversation. It’s like Skype, and it gives them almost a sense they’re talking to a person.
MSW Online
What advice do you have for future social workers?
Thomas Starkey
As far as incoming professionals and kind of, I would say social work is more of a calling than anything. It’s more of a calling because it’s a little different than some of our related professions like psychology, sociology. It’s similar, but it’s also different. If you take a social work course and you know it’s for you, you know. Another thing I say is, don’t get over-involved. In other words, obviously we care about our patients, but you can’t take that home with you. You have to take care of yourself because you will get burned out.
MSW Online
Do you have any good strategies for how you’ve been able to take care of yourself over the years?
Thomas Starkey
Find a hobby, find an activity, make sure you keep a good social network and stay in touch with, and have a good support system. Again, you just have to take care of yourself, whether that’s exercising, some kind of hobby and making sure you take time away from work. You’re going to have PTO days. Make sure you use them. That’s what they’re there for.