Charity Watkins
BIO
Assistant Professor of Social Work in North Carolina and Mom-of-One.
Instagram: @drcswatkins
Twitter: @DrCSWatkins
Charity Watkins
“The duality of being a PhD student and a parent hit me hard and in ways I never thought were possible.”
Imagine this: within one year, you go from being a 3rd-year PhD student preparing from her comprehensive exams to a 4th-year PhD student who almost failed out of her doctoral program while fighting for racial equity in her school, supporting her mother-in-law until she succumbed to cancer, welcoming into the world a beautiful baby girl, and then BOOM: heart failure.
Within one year, my life was turned upside down. I thought the questions about ‘how far along I was’ were about my pregnancy, when they were actually about my dissertation proposal. I learned that I failed the second section of my exams right before taking my mother-in-law to the hospital for the last time. I was admitted into the hospital with 5% heart function just two months after my daughter’s birth and less than a week after returning from maternity leave.
The duality of being a PhD student and a parent hit me hard and in ways I never thought were possible. I faced challenges I was not sure I could overcome, but with time, support and reassurance from my family, and encouragement from my mentors, I went on.
I went on to continue my activism against anti-Black racism in my program, contributing to measurable changes in the school’s curriculum, faculty, and climate. I went on to land my first academic position as a tenure-track Assistant Professor while in “all-but-dissertation” status. I went on to successfully defend my dissertation, graduate, and become the first in my family to earn a doctoral degree.
Resilience is more than just a research focus for me—it is my life story.
It has defined my heart recovery, my approach to parenting, my engagement with students, my service to clients, and the theoretical perspective for my research. It defines me as a Mom in Science.