A long history of taking care of others
"Why Mom go to school? Mom old." Joscelyn Nickerson heard this question from one of the many Montagnard refugees in Guilford County who call her "Mom." As she approaches her graduation in May, 2008, with a degree in Social Work, it is clear that the answer is inseparable from her passion for helping other people, especially refugee families. " Coming to UNCG has been a spiritual journey for me," she reflects.
Before working with refugees or studying Social Work, Jossie had a long history of taking care of others. She is the mother of 6 children and the grandmother of 21. She was a long-term president of the Relief Society for her church, providing support and assistance to 180 women (The Church of Jesus Christ of latter Day Saints). She has also been an advocate for children with learning disabilities and served as president of the Learning Disabilities Association of Guilford County.
As busy as she was with all these responsibilities, she discovered in 2002 a new and absorbing passion: helping with the resettlement in Guilford County of Montagnard refugees from Vietnam. When she and her husband attended an initial meeting for potential sponsors, they did not realize that they needed to have the resources of money and a tax-exempt organization behind them. They solicited the help they needed to qualify as sponsors and soon had a "family" of 6 men to house, clothe, feed, and introduce to American life. Before long, with 900 families in need of sponsors, they agreed to add another family of four.
"I'm 'Grandmom' to bunches, I can't tell how many."
Every day for months, Jossie's days were spent helping these ten people navigate American schools, transportation, stores, health care, and English lessons. Her car became a rolling repository of clothes and household goods. She started a Cub Scout troop. She still takes ten boys to Scout meetings regularly, some who have gone on to be Boy Scouts and also their younger brothers and cousins who are her current Cubs. "I'm 'Grandmom' to bunches," she says, "I can't tell how many." Helping refugee families "is the best thing I've ever done in my life."
In the midst of their work with Montagnard families, Jossie's husband Ken told her, "I have the strong impression that you need to go to school." She felt very intimidated; her high school graduation had been over 30 years ago. "I didn't think I could do it," she remembers; math, science and foreign language were all daunting. Outside of a few continuing education classes, she had never been a college student. She took the placement tests at GTCC and signed up for several courses including a review course in high school algebra I. "If I can't do math, I can't do college," she thought. She got a tutor, took self-paced classes, and availed herself of taped instruction: "I'd watch the explanation on tape, try to do it, stop, replay, and do it again until I could get it," she recalls. She did succeed in math and other successes followed. "Spanish wasn't as hard as I thought it would be," she remembers; "Biology was hard but I learned SO much." She received her Associate of Arts transfer degree in 2006.
As she neared completion of her AA program, Jossie had not decided on a four-year college or a major. She happened to see a magazine published by UNCG's School of Human Environmental Sciences whose back cover featured a Social Work student at UNCG helping Montagnard families. That made a strong impression. She decided to take a UNCG Social Work course through the Consortium (a program which enables students at local colleges to sign up for courses on another campus). There she realized that "social workers do not give out food stamps, but actually provide more counseling than psychologists." A degree in Social Work would enable her to pursue her passionate response to the needs of refugees; it offered a perfect integration of her background and her aspirations. "I see my path clearly now, but I didn't set out to do it," Jossie acknowledges.
Chance meetings deepen ties to refugees
There have been numerous occasions during her college experiences when Jossie's ties to the refugee community have deepened. Once on the GTCC campus, she was approached for directions by a man and his family. "They looked African," Jossie thought, and sure enough, they were from Liberia and needed to find classes in English as a second language. She piled them into her van, already loaded with clothes for her Montagnards, and got them to the right GTCC campus for the classes they needed. "Of all people on campus, it had to be me they approached," she marvels. Another relationship was formed. Later in her Social Work research class at UNCG, Jossie learned more about Liberia working with Professor Maura Nsonwu, who was translating life stories of refugee women from Liberia. Although the timing didn't work out for her to accept, Jossie was afterwards invited to be Professor Nsonwu's research assistant.
Through a great deal of persistence and patience, Jossie did nonetheless develop her own research project, and not surprisingly she chose refugees as her subject. She decided to study Montagnard elders with little or no English who had lost their Supplemental Security Income payments after welfare reform. She found a faculty mentor, secured the services of pastor Y'Hin Nie as translator, and wrote two successful grants for funding from the UNCG offices of Undergraduate Research and Leadership and Service Learning. Then she met further obstacles: she needed approval from the Institutional Review Board for "human research" (this entailed an 18-page application which then had to be re-submitted on a new form). Once approval was granted, she learned that students could not be "principal researchers," so she had to find a new professor willing to act in that role. She found Professor Melissa Floyd Taylor.
Finally she was able to begin. She arranged for a meeting of 22 Montagnard elders, men and women, and asked detailed questions about how they lived, such as whether they were warm enough or could afford to eat regularly. She learned that only 2 in the group could afford to buy clothes. "I care about these issues," Jossie says, "I want to see something done." One outcome of the study will be a journal article that Jossie will co-author with Dr. Taylor; the project was "too much work" not to reach a wider audience, they concluded.
There's another item on her list of things to make happen: she has put in a lot of work toward creating a course to teach new American residents to drive, some of whom had never ridden in cars before coming to this country. "Imagine trying to explain 'blind spot' to someone with limited English and no driving experience," she laughs. "I've gone a long way with it," she says, having found a curriculum from Colorado and funding for a teacher, but there are still road blocks such as finding the space to offer the classes. "This project addresses a real problem," she says. "It WILL happen."
Delighted to have inspired another person to follow in her path
The capstone of Jossie's Social Work curriculum is her senior year internship: two full days a week in the High Point office of the Guilford Interfaith Hospitality Network, which offers temporary housing in area churches to families with children in emergency situations. Not surprisingly, Jossie has worked with an Afghan woman and her children, but one of her most fitting successes was to plant the idea that a single mother from Washington State could go to school instead of getting a menial job. "You could do it," Jossie told her. "I'd love to see you go to college." The young woman is now doing well at GTCC and plans to major in Social Work; Jossie is delighted to have inspired another person to follow in her path as an adult student who is learning to help others in need.
As Jossie approaches the end of her undergraduate courses, she has many indications of success: a 4.0 GPA, admission to Kappa Omicron Nu (the Human Environmental Sciences honorary), and selection as a University Marshal. She gives credit to the support of a wonderful husband, the power of "pleasant persistence," and the value of a course she took her first semester at UNCG, University Studies (UNS), which provided her an introduction to campus resources and helpful study strategies. "I still pull that [UNS] book out," she says, "it was helpful preparing for the GRE."
Yes, Jossie will continue her studies in graduate school. She was recently accepted into a new "Advanced Standing Program" to do a Masters in Social Work. After four classes this summer, she and 20 others will join a second-year class and finish a MSW in one year. And after that? She feels directed to work with refugees in some capacity. "I'm interested in policy, procedures, legislation, health care, benefits," she enumerates, "but I don't know what the Lord has in store and I don't have to know." One thing does seem certain: Jossie's continuing accomplishments will increasingly empower her work with the new American families that she cares about so passionately.
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