WCU Stories      November 12, 2024

By Cam Adams

Randa Gardner wrapped her arms around Beth Harmer, an assistant professor of social work inside the College of Health and Human Sciences at Western Carolina University, with emotions flowing out. All day, she was nervous, and all her life, she hadn’t graduated from anything.

That changed last Thursday night.

Gardner was one of six that graduated from the first cohort of Project AWE, which stands for Addiction Workforce Education, at the Health and Human Sciences Building at WCU.

The other five graduates of the program include BJ Duncan, LeeAnn Gibson, Candace Mink, Missy Parran and Lee Thorpe.

“One of the things we do in social work is we talk about the end from the beginning, and so we’ve been talking about this moment since the beginning,” said Harmer, Project AWE director. “They have worked so hard, and it’s so awesome to just see it come to fruition and just see how excited they are for the success they’ve encountered.”

Project AWE is an addiction workforce education and training program hosted by WCU’s Department of Social Work. The program trains certified peer support specialists, who help others with addictions they once struggled with, to become certified alcohol and drug counselors.

After attending class twice a week since February, these participants have completed 180 hours of addiction specific education. Once they complete an additional 90 hours of education and complete 6,000 hours of supervised practice, they will be able to practice independently as a certified alcohol and drug counselor in North Carolina.

However, following their completion of Project AWE, graduates are currently credentialed as certified alcohol and drug counselor interns. And for Duncan, getting to help others in a greater role means a lot.

“I am a peer support specialist. I got that certification, and it is everything to me,” he said. “This type of work, this job is everything to me. It’s my purpose. I truly believe it’s what God put me on this earth to do.

“It’s my way of having such a negative past and turning it into such a positive way to help other people with their addictions and substance abuse and mental behavioral issues and things like that, so when I had the opportunity to grow, I took it."

Project AWE’s classes were taught by Chris Merendoni, who earned his Master of Social Work from WCU in 2022. The project was developed by Harmer and Amy Murphy-Nugen, also a part of the social work faculty at WCU and is funded by a two-year grant from the Dogwood Health Trust. 

“Usually, when you take a class or are doing something extra, you kinda dread it when you have to login or get on a Zoom meeting. This I look forward to,” Gardner said. “Even if I was having a bad day once I logged in, I felt better after each and every class.”

The project is already in its second cohort with 19 new participants from the region. Harmer is hoping the program will receive more funding after this cohort — and that people who come through it like Duncan can continue to change lives.

“Anything that comes in my path that’s going to better me as a human being, a peer support specialist, just a person overall, I’m ready for it because I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, man,” Duncan said.

“I was messing up for 18, 19 years, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and I just love this field man. I love it, I really do because there’s no high out there off of substance abuse or alcohol that can give you the high that’s helping someone.”