Distinguished Research Professor Bruce Thyer was recently awarded a 2020 Educational Leadership Award by the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work (GADE). The organization, comprised of social work doctoral program directors worldwide who represent member universities, promotes excellence in social work doctoral education.

When he received notice of his award, Thyer admits to being surprised but pleased. With more than thirty-five years in social work education, he has chaired to completion more than twenty social work doctoral graduates at both the FSU College of Social Work and the University of Georgia.

Thyer has been a professor at FSU for more than twenty years. Working with doctoral students is an essential and rewarding part of his role in social work academia. He sees the mentor role of social work professors as crucial to doctoral students' development into successful and effective scholars.

“We are not just here to promote our own individual scholarly interests, but to help others develop independent research skills so they can pursue their research interests,” explained Thyer. He noted that this even requires a bit of “disinterested mentoring” from faculty when students pursue topics that do not pertain to their research interests.

He sees it as part of his role as a faculty member and mentor to encourage doctoral student scholarship through reinforcement and accountability. He prefers to allow students he works with to set their deadlines that he holds them to through gentle prompting, nurturing a delicate balance between collaboration and independence as students pursue their scholarly interests.

He especially enjoys collaborating on research projects with doctoral students and publishing those studies in scholarly journals. Thyer is active in this area as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Research in Social Work Practice for the past thirty years and as co-editor of both the Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal (since 2014) and the Journal of Evidence-based Social Work.

Through his work with students, Thyer finds it immensely rewarding to see students graduate and pursue academic jobs and successful careers. He was nominated by a former doctoral student, Patrick Bordnick, who he worked with while a faculty member at the University of Georgia. Dr. Bordnick is now the Dean of the Tulane University School of Social Work.

Contact Dr. Thyer at bthyer@fsu.edu.