UHD professor goes beyond community service, lives ‘social work in action’

News – The Daily Cougar

Faculty & Staff

By Traynor Swanson March 8, 2017

“When you do this type of work, when you’re engaged personally with someone and it’s your work trying to help relieve their suffering in any way that you can, you see how connected we are in ways that you wouldn’t in a more sort of professional setting,” said Dawn McCarty, the director of the social work program at UH-Downtown. | Ajani Stewart/The Cougar
Tucked away off Washington Avenue behind Velvet Taco is an unassuming set of buildings and converted garage apartments where a dedicated professor spends half her week helping, serving and even living with immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers and the poor.
As an associate professor and director of the social work program at the University of Houston-Downtown, Dawn McCarty has a natural intellectual curiosity toward less-privileged communities. But from Monday to Thursday, McCarty goes one step further in immersing herself by living at Casa Juan Diego, a Catholic Worker House of Hospitality.
“It’s what I do,” McCarty said. “It’s my life. It’s not like I’m making some great sacrifice — I’m not. People ask me that, but I’m not. I’m the person who benefits here. Sometimes people will surprise me. It’s such a part of my life that it’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m going to do my service now.’”
McCarty is tasked with running the food distribution at the shelter. Every Tuesday morning, she leads a crew of volunteers and full-time workers at 5:30 a.m. to prepare the morning’s food and open the doors by 6:15 a.m. McCarty said the meal serves about 300 people.
“We give out food all the time, but we do it in sort of a concentrated frame for people (on Tuesdays), and that’s open to anyone,” McCarty said. “We have such a food insecurity issue in ...


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