Mariglynn Edlins

Biography

Long before I discovered "human services," I knew I wanted to help people. When I was 5 years old, I wanted to help people in far-off lands; as a teenager, I wanted to serve people in my community who needed a good listener and some advice. When I got to college, social work seemed like the obvious choice—it introduced me to various social issues, helped me discover an interest in public policy and trained me to work directly with people. After college, I worked as a case manager within the foster care system in Atlanta, Ga. In that job, I was responsible for children who were living in foster homes because they had been removed from their families. To advocate for these children on my caseload, I learned to navigate a bureaucratic system while also managing everything from educational schedules to medical appointments to complicated visitation plans. The longer I worked as a case manager, the more I discovered new questions about my job—about the system, the people I met within the system, the children and, most of all, how to make things better. Eventually, I became so curious about these questions that I decided to go back to school to try to get some answers. This led me to earn first a master's degree and then a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Public Administration. Now, as a professor at the University of Baltimore, I get to continue exploring the ever-expanding number of questions I have about human services delivery and to create environments in the classroom for students (like you!) to ask their own questions and to develop new knowledge about the field. These opportunities make me very excited to be a part of the Human Services Administration program at UB.

Research Interest

Public Policy Public Administration