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It was a long and winding road for Cole. Raised in Dallas and South Carolina, he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Davidson College, North Carolina. He then graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and Columbia University, where he studied social work. “My energy was really in academia, and especially on mental health issues,” he says. Cole moved to Austin in 2003 to teach at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, where he eventually became dean. He also became the contact person for a dual study program between the seminar and the School of Social Work at UT. When the school’s then-deputy dean announced his resignation in 2014, Dean invited Luis Zayas Cole to consider joining the UT’s Faculty of Social Work. Cole remembers. “I was thrilled. I wanted to be at a research university and I also knew that moving to UT and the University of Social Work really was a great opportunity: I was able to continue what I always did in teaching and research as well as in leadership , but also to take new directions, which was exciting and attractive. “
Five years ago, at 48, with degrees in Philosophy, Divinity, and Social Work, Cole was a powerhouse of multi-perspective knowledge. Then he became an expert on something else, something he wasn’t looking for. One day he noticed that his index finger was trembling for no apparent reason. After it went on for some time, he went to his doctor and was diagnosed with early-stage Parkinson’s disease.
Today, among his many other specialties, Cole is an expert on chronic diseases. He is the author or editor of 11 books, most recently “Counseling Persons with Parkinson’s Disease” (Oxford, 2021). “Knowing the Way: Lessons from Parkinson’s Disease” will be published later this year. And his first volume of poetry “In the Care of Plenty: Poems” will be published in 2022.
“So far I’ve been very lucky,” he says: mild symptoms that can be combated with medication, mostly stiffness and cramps in the feet. “My left arm doesn’t want to stretch anymore,” he says. “We now know that Parkinson’s is really a spectrum disease. If you know someone with Parkinson’s, you know a person because it is snowflake disease – it affects people differently, ”he adds. “But part of my raison d’etre is to raise awareness and raise money through education.” He blogged (PDWise.com) and is a regular guest blogger for the Michael J. Fox Foundation. He wrote “Advising People With Parkinson’s Disease” for a professional audience, but also added aspects of his own story so that the chapters alternate between memoirs and a professional counselor.
He also says, “Parkinson’s opened a new world with many wonderful, extraordinary people that I would never have met. I also teach differently, and I lead differently because of this illness. I’m not disabled, but maybe someday I will be, and I feel like people with Parkinson’s and people with chronic illnesses or disabilities are my people. I’m trying to use my platform to do something good with Parkinson’s. “
We spoke in Allan Cole’s office in the main building on August 25th.
Itis not the university every dayThe President appoints a poet as his deputy, so congratulations to you and to all poets!
I haven’t thought about it in this regard, but I will remind him!
Why did he think it was time to create such a position and why did he choose you? Did you know each other?
We have known each other for a number of years. He was the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at McCombs School, and that’s my role at the School of Social Work, so we went to the same meetings and were on the same network. After he became president, we had a chat one day and he said, “You know I have this idea and I want to take it past you.”
He wanted the university to better target its resources with community partners to address the pressing social issues of the time, and specifically how they were affecting the residents of the city of Austin. As the idea took shape, I was excited about the work and luckily President Hartzell invited me to lead it. It’s still evolving, and we’ll create it over time. However, there are three topics that we agreed on were timely and should attract more attention. That was affordable housing, homelessness, and mental health.
The aim is to identify and coordinate resources at the UT, particularly faculty resources, to more specifically collaborate with community stakeholders and partners. Some of these partnerships now exist; some are identified. And it’s not just about making life better on UT, it’s about how we can make the lives of the people in the larger community all over town better. It really takes a concerted effort to alleviate these challenges.
How do you visualize these three overlapping starting points – mental health, homelessness, and affordable housing?
These overlap, as do other needs such as health care and transportation. We start with affordable housing, mental health, and homelessness. I’m under no illusions that we will solve any of these issues, but if we can make some progress in improving it, I feel like we are using our resources well.
What does success look like for this position? These are big problems, so what would a dent in one of them look like?
I hope the University of Texas at Austin will play a significant role in solving some of the problems we face. If we have fewer people affected by homelessness and more people are getting the mental health care they need, and we are thinking about affordable housing in new, creative, and mutually beneficial ways – and maybe modeling part of it as a university – then I think we were successful.
When you say modeling affordable housing, can you explain that?
In partnerships with developers, community leaders, and elected officials, how do we find affordable models that make sense for everyone involved? How do we get developers on board by helping them build more affordable homes? How do we expand the approaches to land use? How do we collaborate with others in the community doing this type of work to make the most of our resources, which are largely intellectual resources. We have really smart people who know how to help move the needle with some of these challenges. So how can we translate this knowledge into a meaningful contribution to community efforts to improve the public good?
Where are these experts in our faculty? For affordable housing, for example, in which schools and universities would you look for experts?
Certainly the School of Architecture – colleagues in urban planning, town planning and architecture; also lecturer at Law School, McCombs School of Business, LBJ School of Public Affairs; and then my own school, the Steve Hicks Social of Work. These are the elementary schools that are doing this housing construction. But there are also lecturers at other schools who are interested in affordable housing. For example, if we look at construction costs, there are engineering and science people who could be involved.
When we look at mental health, that changes – less faculties in architecture and more in social work and psychology and psychiatry and related disciplines. And with homelessness, the experts change again.
And do you have an appointment with Dell Med yourself?
I have a courtesy appointment at the Psychiatry and Behavioral Science Clinic. My expertise is in the field of mental health. I know less about homelessness and even less about affordable housing. I think I’m pretty good at bringing people together to have meaningful conversations and trying to identify individuals and networks that should be talking to each other. So I’m learning a lot about affordable housing. I learn a lot about homelessness. I will no doubt learn things about mental health too, but I come with more knowledge of this piece than the other two.
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