Best of CASE District IV Award
 

Institution: Texas Tech University

Title of entry: Strive For Honor: Kelly Cukrowicz Williams

About this entry: Kelly Cukrowicz Williams realized in graduate school she had a special gift: Unlike many of her clinical psychology classmates, she wasn’t scared of tackling severe depression or suicidal thoughts with her clients. In fact, she gravitated toward these issues. After all, the amount of progress she saw after working with those patients was extremely gratifying. During her subsequent 14 years in Texas Tech University’s Department of Psychological Sciences, leading the Suicide and Depression Research Program, she focused on the suicide risk for adults in communities that didn’t offer easy access to mental health services. Many of these communities were small and in rural areas, where any health care was hard to come by. Now, she's tackling the same issues in a new way: teaching future veterinarians how to address their own mental health.
This profile shows a Texas Tech faculty member who is working to improve the odds of survival for a group that's currently facing a suicide rate 2-3½ times that of the general population. It simultaneously humanizes her and builds the impression of Texas Tech as a place where there are real people with lives and stories who want to improve the world around them.