Twente Hall Memories: Reflecting on 30 years

Fri, 09/27/2024

Edward Canda

"I joined the KU School of Social Welfare in 1989 after three years as an assistant professor at the University of Iowa."

"I became familiar with innovations that were happening at the University of Kansas (KU) through my participation in Council on Social Work Education national conferences in the mid to late 1980s. I was impressed by the ideas of professors Ann Weick and Dennis Saleebey regarding critique of narrow conventional positivistic, patriarchal, and Eurocentric perspectives that dominated social work academia. At the time, Ann was a new dean and Dennis was director of the PhD program at KU. The school formalized and publicized its conceptualization of and advocacy for a strengths perspective in social work as a corrective to the tendency toward reductionist and pathologizing ways of doing social work."

"I am grateful to the School of Social Welfare and Twente Hall for providing a base for me to thrive in my career for 30 years up to my retirement at the end of 2019 and even now."

"I enjoyed my time in Twente Hall at the top of Mt. Oread with beautiful views of the valley to the back and of the magnolia trees, flower garden, and lawns to the front. My office was in room 203 for the entire time. Because this building was once a university hospital, my office had perks of a large window and a bathroom shared with an adjoining office. That room gave the wonderful view to the back and its position atop the mount gave me a great sense of vital energy (i.e., known as gi in Korean geomancy: pungsu, widely known by the Chinese term fengshui in the US). I also enjoyed many years of holding PhD course sessions and dissertation defense meetings in the conference room facing the magnolias. When I moved out of my office at retirement, I took the following photos."