After nearly 24 years of service, Karen Nichols is retiring on June 14. The associate director of the Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies (CRTCWS) looks back fondly on the experience. “I feel really fortunate and grateful to have had this opportunity to be a part of this much bigger picture of working to improve tribal child welfare. It’s been an amazing ride and I will definitely miss it,” she said.
Nichols is proud to have helped realize Professor Emeritus Priscila Day’s vision for the Center as well as its Annual Summer Institute in American Indian Child Welfare training and annual Indian Child Welfare Act Conference. “They’re amazing events and still going strong 15 years later,” she said.
The innovative and collaborative training approach developed by staff at the CRTCWS prioritizes American Indian family preservation and engages tribal leaders, government entities and the child welfare workforce. Over recent years, the CRTCWS and the Tribal Training and Certification Partnership (a related, sister organization), have become recognized as national leaders in training child welfare workers.
Though she is humble and quick to credit others, Nichols has played a pivotal role in expanding the impact of the UMD Department of Social Work, where the center is based. She has helped secure millions of dollars in funding to support student scholarships and tribal child welfare training. She has also provided critical administrative support, including putting together budgets, administering complex grants and adeptly managing and mentoring people.
Nichols was honored with the University of Minnesota President’s Award for Outstanding Service this spring for her efforts. This award “recognizes faculty and staff who have provided exceptional service to the University, its schools, colleges, departments, and service units. Such service must have gone well beyond the regular duties of a faculty or staff member, and demonstrate unusual commitment to the University community.”
In glowing letters of support for her nomination, colleagues praised Nichols’ extraordinary commitment to co-workers, students and the community. They touted her leadership, work ethic and character, and referred to Nichols as selfless, adaptable, organized, competent, and always willing to go above and beyond.
“Ms. Karen Nichols is a highly valued colleague for the multiple skill sets she brings to bear in organizing and managing multiple fiscal and personnel responsibilities,” said CEHSP Dean Jill Pinkney Pastrana. “She is a highly valued colleague for her cultural literacy and commitment to equity and access within our programs and the keen attention she pays to creating structures that enable transformative work across the multiple programs that exist within the department of social work. Finally, Ms. Nichols is a valued colleague due to her tireless work ethic and service orientation. She embodies the very best in precise and professionally respectful competence...”
The path to meaningful work
Early on, Nichols had an experience that influenced both her mindset and the course of her career. As an undergraduate mechanical engineering student at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, she had the chance to study abroad in Kenya for a year. She calls the experience “transformational.”
Nichols was tasked with a solar crop dryer research project at the University of Nairobi. She was surprised to learn that she found talking to farmers more interesting than the actual engineering. She credits UMD Professor Emeritus Joyce Kramer, a leader of the study abroad program, in helping her to “develop interculturally” through this experience.
After obtaining her undergraduate degree, Nichols spent two years working with the Peace Corps in Zanzibar, Tanzania. She went on to earn a master’s degree in Intercultural Administration at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont. Then Nichols spent 7 years as the executive director of the Foundation for the Peoples of South Pacific Vanuatu, an NGO that supports the needs of the Indigenous people.
Eventually, Nichols returned to Minnesota where she completed a doctorate in Higher Education Policy and Administration from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She reconnected with Kramer, who encouraged her to apply for an engineering job at UMD. But Nichols would find employment and her niche with the Department of Social Work instead.
Since 2000, she’s had a wide range of responsibilities at UMD, including managing Title IV-E and other externally funded projects, helping to develop new projects for the Center, and working with students on the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI).
Part of Nichols' job included educating the University about working well with American Indian communities. Nichols describes Day as “an amazing mentor” who taught her to “work within a bureaucracy in a good way.” This has involved some advocacy and education. “We need to and want to work in ways that are good with tribal communities. That doesn’t always fall within university procedures and policies,” she explained.
Nichols credits her colleagues at UMD. “I couldn’t do this on my own. Grants wouldn’t matter if we didn’t have this team of people doing really, really important work in the community and people behind the scenes supporting that. At the Center, we’ve done amazing things and gotten grants to do really good work with communities. It hasn’t been me. It’s been us.”
In retirement, Nichols is looking forward to traveling. She’s taking a trip to Scotland, England and Switzerland this summer and is excited to visit family and go on walks along the Scottish coast.
She’s looking at the possibility of doing a year-long Peace Corps stint. “It’s my dream to go back abroad to live and work again,” Nichols said. “I love living and working interculturally. I love being able to use my skills and abilities to do something that feels meaningful and important to me.”