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Sobota practices what he teaches
Before joining social work academia, Sobota spent 17 years as a practitioner in the real world, working in clinics and hospitals. Photo: DOUGLAS LEVERE
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“The Civic Engagement Academy bridged my values as a social worker with the type of experiences that may help our students pursue their interest in being active and engaged citizens.”
A prevalent stereotype of 18- or 19-year-olds is that the world revolves around them. They’re not engaged in politics or service activities, and don’t give a whit about their community.
Peter Sobota, clinical assistant professor in the School of Social Work, has never bought that. Sobota recently stepped down as academic director of the Civic Engagement Undergraduate Academy, a position from which he saw freshmen entering UB who were involved in service and community engagement activities in high school and were interested in becoming part of this unique learning experience at the university.
“We’re not an honors program picking only the most academically elite kids. We are trying to pick young people who are diverse, from different socio-economic backgrounds. The criteria is if they are interested in learning how to make a difference in the world and being an engaged citizen.”
The academy is one of three UB scholarly communities with a common mission consistent with the university’s strategic strengths. Civic Engagement was the first academy, opening in 2006 with academic development from Sobota. It’s a subject that he has always felt passionate about and relishes the opportunity to fan that flame in students.
“What are the social conditions that allow poverty to exist? Why do we tolerate this level of poverty? What does it have to do with race, social class and how wealth is distributed in the United States? These are the things our students are encouraged to think about and how they can make a difference,” says Sobota. “Some of our students come in thinking that civic engagement is expressed by planting a garden or doing Habitat for Humanity. The thrust of the Civic Engagement Academy under my directorship was to support these kinds of activities, but build on them by building skills, providing tactics and considering the larger contexts that foster and maintain social problems. I wanted to encourage them to think bigger. This idea explains my involvement. The Civic Engagement Academy bridged my values as a social worker with the type of experiences that may help our students pursue their interest in being active and engaged citizens.”
Before joining social work academia, Sobota spent 17 years as a practitioner in the real world, working in clinics and hospitals, from mental health to chemical dependency programs, and in workforce environments, from a major electronics corporation to the postal service.
His grass-roots ethics for large-scale social change is at odds with the recent trend of social work from his perspective. “In the last 40 years, many social workers, in an attempt for higher salaries and more status, have focused their practice on psychotherapy. Social workers are now the leading provider of psychotherapy in the country. In many ways, that’s a good thing. What’s disappointing to me is that the social work profession’s roots are in community action and social change. In some ways, we’ve abandoned that. We’ve forgotten what made us unique and why we were built.”
Sobota never forgets his humble, working-class roots. He grew up on Buffalo’s East Side, an experience that he feels shaped him into the person he is now at age 50. “It was an inner-city life, but I couldn’t go two blocks and do something troublesome without it getting back to my parents,” he recalls. “People looked out for each other, kept us in line and took us to task when it was needed. How did I end up in social work? Part of that was borne in seeing the impact that a strong community can have on one person’s life.”
The image that most people have of social workers is that they take away people’s kids and give out welfare checks, Sobota notes. “They don’t realize all the things that social workers do, especially at the master’s and doctoral levels,” he emphasizes.
With a background in counseling, clinical work and organizational development, Sobota’s specialty is interventions. In addition to his work directing the academy, he teaches courses that give students the tools to assess and provide interventions to help individuals, families, organizations and communities change. And he does this with great insights from 17 years in the field.
“I can open up a book or talk about an idea in the classroom, but because I have that experience, I can say, ‘Here’s how it works in the real world.’ I can tell them how issues frequently play out and I can also tell them that the book is limited in its application. I hope to help students bridge theory to practice.”
Sobota and his wife, Catherine, an RN and a social worker as well who practices as the school nurse at Orchard Park High School, are raising their two sons, Matt, 11, and Mike, 8, to be “rabble-rousers” in the social-change tradition, he smiles, complete with lively dinner-table discussions on various issues.
Residents of Glenwood, the Sobotas are avid skiers during the winter (“It’s mandatory living across from Kissing Bridge”), while baseball occupies most of their time during spring and summer with the boys’ full little-league schedules.
Sobota’s current civic engagement is his role as school board member in the Springville district where his sons attend school. “I’m one of those idealists who still believes that a good public education has the potential to be the great equalizer. Whether you’re from high socio-economic status or from poverty, if your community supports education and you attend a good school and get a good education, that gap can be narrowed,” he observes, sardonically adding, “Plus, as a school board member, I enjoy the high pay and public adoration associated with school board service.”
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