Lighting the way Lighting the way Lighting the way

Created in 2017, the Distinguished Teaching Legacy Award honors a UW teacher who has influenced and inspired students long after they graduated.

J’May Rivara’s official title at the UW is Associate Teaching Professor Emerita in Social Work. Her former students don’t call her that, however. They call her: a cornerstone of support, advocate, champion, guiding light, an enduring influence.

A UW faculty member since 1985, she was first appointed Lecturer at the UW School of Social Work in her role as Associate Director of Social Work at UW Medical Center. She left UWMC two years later to join an interdisciplinary project, “Traumatic Brain Injury in Children.” Rivara is revered for the way she has taught, mentored and nurtured graduate social work students and since 1995 as a Faculty Liaison to students in their formal practicums. Teaching graduate social work students “fell in her lap” first in 1976 in Hazard, Kentucky, when the University of Kentucky took its social work distance-learning program to Eastern Kentucky so social workers could have the opportunity to obtain an MSW. She says her experience with the diverse students there in low-income Appalachia greatly influenced her teaching philosophy.

At the UW, she has supported students committed to cancer care, palliative care or end-of-life care. She also served as co-director of the Carol LaMare Traineeship, part of the endowed Center for Integrative Oncology and Palliative Care at the UW School of Social Work. “She consistently embodied what it means to be a social worker. When I mention her name, colleagues tell stories of the profound influence J’May has had on their identities as social workers, professionals, and individuals,” says former student Warren Leyh. Adds former student Danielle McLaughlin: “Her actions and words have shown me that being a social worker is not a time-limited role, but rather a set of values and relationships that are pursued over the long haul.” Rivara is quick to praise all of her social work colleagues for the values they pass on to their students. “There is nothing more inspiring to me,” she says, “than seeing the torch being passed to our next generation of social workers.”