Dr. Sherry Cummings was recently awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), Tennessee Chapter, during their virtual Social Work Day on the Hill.
The Lifetime Achievement Award is given to an NASW member in celebration of a lifetime of accomplishments. This award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated the best social work values and accomplishments throughout their lifetime.
As an active member of the faculty at the UT College of Social Work since 1998, Dr. Cummings has served as Associate Dean since 2006. Her diligence, integrity, and competence helped the College of Social Work attain its current standing as a highly ranked program at a public university. She successfully shepherded the BSSW and MSSW programs through two different reaccreditation cycles. She also is the founder and chair of the graduate certificate program in Gerontology for the university, helping almost 100 students obtain the knowledge and skills that they can now apply in their work with older adults in many different professions. She proposed and developed the plan for the university’s First-Generation Mentoring program, which continues to support so many students through their successful graduation. Her contributions to the university are meaningful and have a long-lasting impact.
In her career, Dr. Cummings has had more than 50 refereed articles in prestigious disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals, five books—including one with Oxford University Press, 15 book chapters, and $1.9M in research funding from extramural and intramural research funding. Much of this scholarship was produced even as she was serving in her administrative role. Her expertise and productivity have been recognized by several national and international organizations, who asked her to serve as grant reviewer and consultant, including the US Department of Education, the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development. She served as a leader with the Association for Gerontological Education in Social Work, serving as President and on the board. She also serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Gerontological Social work, the Journal of Gerontology and Geriatrics Education, and the Journal on Social Service Research, as well as serving as guest editor for a special issue on aging in the Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment.
Always an outstanding educator at UT College of Social Work, Dr. Cummings has contributed to the betterment of the university, the community, and the professional discipline. Her work has improved the lives of older adults throughout the state of Tennessee and across the country.