NSU Horizons Fall 2007

26 horizons alumni journal A blue-black cloud hung over the street as Jerry Hollingsworth drove into the impoverished town of Pamplona, Peru. “What is that,” he asked his companion. “Flies,” was the answer. Hollingsworth, a graduate of the Fischler School of Education and Human Services, was doing field studies of children in poverty in Peru last summer as an assistant profes- sor of sociology at McMurry University in Abilene, Texas. “It’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life. There must have been hundreds of trillions of flies everywhere,” Hollingsworth recently said of the shanty town erected just outside of Lima that is home to about 4,000 families. “Basically, it’s just a slum area,” he explained. “The houses are made out of whatever they can find—some tin, some plastic, some cardboard boxes—and the people throw their waste products into the streets where the wild dogs run. “The first time we got off the bus, what we noticed was the smell. It’s like dropping you into a sewer.” But the conditions didn’t frighten Hollingsworth away; he went there to see such things, to study how the children of poverty survive, and to offer his help as an educator. Last year, he had a similar project in Mexico. The results of Hollingsworth’s two summers abroad will appear in a book he is completing this year titled Children of the Sun . “And next summer, I plan to do the same kind of research but on Native American populations, most of it stateside,” he said. “It’s a theme that is developing through this whole work, coming out as I work.” The theme Hollingsworth is tying together looks at the results of European oppression and the reactions of indige- nous people. “In Mexico and Peru, we were looking at the Spanish who came in and conquered these people, mainly Native Americans, and suppressed and oppressed them,” he said. “And we did the same thing here, and most of those people live in poverty.” According to those who know him best, Hollingsworth is a hands-on professor who hopes to offer solutions to basic problems such as childhood poverty. That trait, said Paul Fabrizio, professor and chairman of the political science department at McMurry University, is rare among academics. “He does really interesting research,” said Fabrizio, who Hollingsworth labels as his mentor. “He goes and hangs out with homeless street kids in Mexico and in the slums of Peru, and that’s not the sort of thing that most academics do. Most of us observe from a distance. And in political science, we look at numbers from surveys. But Jerry [Hollingsworth] is doing the ‘soak and poke’ method—he’s soaking himself in the life of the street kids and poking around.” “For my doctoral dissertation on presidential elections,” Fabrizio continued, “I spent my time in a library and looked at computer statistics; Jerry is going out and actually doing things. You’ve got to respect that. It’s the kind of research I don’t have the guts to do.” Hollingsworth carries these methods into the classroom at McMurray. “I thor- oughly believe, as a professional educator, that we should be attaining and sharing knowledge so people can know things. I want to contribute to the field of knowl- edge, and that means I need to get out into the field and report what it’s really like,” he said. “It’s the same thing in the classroom. You’re here for a reason, and you’re going to get the information.” Hollingsworth stresses the impor- tance of having a well-rounded under- standing of your subject. “In my juvenile delinquency class, I want to show them that we’re not doing an adequate job in the field working with kids. So, I go over treatments and what’s wrong with them so students can come out of this class knowing what to do with kids. “As a professional educator, researcher, and writer, that’s what I want to do: enlighten others, flick that switch on—not so I can do it all, but so that others are on fire and they can make a difference, not just me. If I can make other people curious, maybe they can change their little corner of the world. That is my goal.” Passion and dedication to the job at-hand are traits Hollingsworth has shown throughout his professional life. These qualities were especially noted while he was study- ing at Nova Southeastern University, according to Dana Mills, Ph.D., an executive dean of the Fischler School of Education and Human Services. Mills was Hollingsworth’s dissertation adviser. “We have interests that lie in similar areas,” Mills said. “What was clear to me was his passion for what he was doing. His dissertation wasn’t a means to an end (his doctoral degree). No, in Jerry’s case, he really saw it as more of a Jerry Hollingsworth, Ed.D. Class of 2005 By Lisa Bolivar