Semester Sneak Peek - Dr. Gay Phillips - Associate Professor

The TCC Connection

Semester Sneak Peek is a new series that provides a preview of courses available at Tulsa Community College (TCC) this coming fall semester. As a series about upcoming classes, these episodes will feature interviews with many of the instructors tasked with teaching them. Today's episode features Dr. Gay Phillips, Associate Professor at TCC. Edited by Sam Levrault Music by The Odyssey, "75 to Ramona" Transcript: Bethany Solomon Bethany: Welcome to Semester Sneak peak, a new series that highlights instructors that are tasked with teaching fall courses. We thought it would be best to highlight these courses to educate students! I am your host, Bethany Solomon, associate editor of the Northeast campus and today we have a special guest, Gay Phillips, who is teaching several interesting courses this upcoming semester. It is a pleasure to have you Ms. Phillips! Tell us about yourself. You may start with your childhood or educational experiences. Gay Phillips: Thank you! I grew up in west Texas, in the oil fields with my father. We traveled a lot. And that peaked my interest, traveling through the nation and getting to know different areas and different people. I was always interested in how we are similar as people, and how we are different. How culture gets created and shared. How we influence cultural changes, and why us humans do what we do. Those combined helped me fall in love with sociology. That is my primary discipline. We got to Oklahoma and it felt like we moved to a foreign country and looking back I know that is not the case, but when I was 10 years old that is what it felt like. B: [Laughs…] G: And we stayed in Oklahoma ever since. B: Very nice! I can see how that is the underlying inspiration for sociology and how it relates to even anthropology. Did you go from finding inspiration to sociology into finding interest in anthropology? Was that a later discovery? G: While I was studying sociology in my undergrad I had options of taking anthropology courses along with sociology, a lot on native studies and indigenous population. It extends what we study about culture a little bit into the anthropological theme B: Interesting! Let’s go to into your experiences prior to TCC as far as being in the workforce. G: Sure. After I completed my bachelor’s degree I went to work in social services. I thought I wanted to be a social worker, and discovered I was not adept to doing that. I worried about people too much. After working for five years in social services I made a change. I went into professional development for people who work in social services. Predominately, people who work with homeless youth who have been abused and neglected. That was the field I was in. I knew people and knew what the ongoing training needs were, so professional development 20/25 years doing lots of training workshops and all kinds of topics and how to deal with kids that live on the streets. How to teach people how to be trauma informed. Kids and families that go through trauma. We did hundreds of training workshops, and so that is what I did. While I was doing that I went back and got my master’s degree. I knew I did not want another direct service degree, so I continued with sociology to work with people in social structures and cultures. So, I did that and after several years I decided I really wanted to teach at the college university level. I went back and got my PHD and became a private consultant doing training, workshops, and program development. I had done quite a bit of programs for a lot of different organizations. I went back and got my PHD. I started as an adjunct. I was an adjunct at Rogers State, OSU, and now TCC. I have been involved with TCC since 2000, and a full-time position came open by 2012. B: Wow, quite the experience. With TCC specifically, I know you mentioned trauma evaluation, that is something currently being developed here at TCC. Mental Health Awareness and how trauma effects people