Writer: Staff Reports
Published July 28, 2023
The McDuffie Progress
Thomson-McDuffie is welcoming its new University of Georgia Archway Partnership faculty member Sarah Adams, following Sam Perren’s promotion to Operations Coordinator earlier this year. Adams, a Watkinsville native, has served as the Archway Professional in Colquitt County since 2018.
Sarah has her bachelor’s degree was in health promotion and she earned her Master of Public Health from UGA as well. She is also a proud Redcoat, having played the trumpet in the UGA marching band.
Prior to joining Archway, Adams worked for the UGA College of Public Health as part of the Workplace Health Group in Athens and at the YMCA in Moultrie. Adams conducted workshops as part of a Chronic Disease Self-Management Program funded through the National Institutes of Health. Sarah’s career has been dedicated to the improvement of community health and then broadening that out during her time in Archway to community development and improving quality of life for residents.
“McDuffie County is getting a jewel with their new Archway Professional. You could not ask for a more dedicated and committed representative of the University of Georgia,” said Chip Blalock, chair of the Colquitt County Archway Partnership executive committee and executive director of the Sunbelt Agricultural Exposition. “Not only has Sarah helped to guide numerous Archway projects in Colquitt County, but she has also served as such a valuable member of the community. While we will miss Sarah, we congratulate the folks in McDuffie and know they will be in great hands.”
Adams is a graduate of the South Georgia LEADS program and was recently honored with the winning poster submission at the 2023 Gulf-South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Through Higher Education hosted in April by the University of Georgia Office of Service-Learning. Her poster focused on food insecurity for elementary school students in a rural Georgia community that she researched as part of the Faculty Scholarship Academy through the Public Service and Outreach office at UGA. Her research is ongoing and will be submitted to the Journal of Social Work later this year.
She has helped to shepherd a number of ongoing programs in Colquitt County, including the Basics Literacy Program that promotes and enhances childhood literacy, multiple leadership programs in the community, and the branding program from the UGA Institute of Government, another unit of Public Service and Outreach.
In 2022, UGA was awarded the C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship Award from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the organization’s highest award for public service. The submission featured an exceptional example highlighting Adams’s work with the Moultrie Police Department to improve public safety and response to mental health crises through the development of a co-responder model. Through that program a mental health professional is dispatched along with police when an emergency call comes in about an incident involving someone impaired or who possibly has mental health issues.
“I am excited to join the community in Thomson-McDuffie and pick up from the outstanding work of my colleague Sam Perren,” said Adams. “Thanks to Sam and the devoted community members, Thomson-McDuffie has so many impressive projects in the books and on the go. What a wonderful community to become a part of and I’m excited to hit the ground running.”
