Terri Thomas is a recent graduate of the Clinton School of Public Service. She grew up understanding from a young age what it meant to work in public service.
"I think my first interaction was the fact that my dad worked for the government, and so I was kind of surrounded by legislators, people from the Pentagon, CIA. So everybody worked in the government on the street I grew up on. So we all volunteered, did things in the community and were really involved."
That D.C. lifestyle — dad working for the CIA, all of your other neighbors working for the federal government, being active in the community — was not really something Thomas thought would go away, until it did.
"Funny story. My parents tricked us to move to Fayetteville when my dad retired. My grandparents live in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and they wanted to move closer. So when I was 10, we went to go visit my dad's college friends up in Fayetteville. And when we got there, they're like, 'Sike, we're buying a house. We're moving here in the summertime.'"
Moore: It sounds like you might not have been thrilled with that decision.
"No, I mean, I love house hunting, so I had a ball house hunting and finding a house. It didn't really hit me until I had to pack up my house. But honestly, when 9/11 happened, I was actually really thankful to be in Arkansas and I kind of embraced being Arkansan from that."
Thomas says a specific person comes to mind as an early mentor and difference maker.
"Dr. Hoy in my high school. Because I had a learning disability — I'm dyslexic. But back in high school, I didn't really have a name to it. I just had a learning disability, like a generic title. And I just thought that I was just not good at school. Like, I'm just not good at education."
Dr. Denise Hoy serves as the principal of ALLPS School of Innovation in Fayetteville. Thomas says Dr. Hoy suggested she attend the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville, in large part because of their Jones Learning Center, to support her dyslexia diagnosis.
"I was able to get that one-on-one support throughout college, and I felt that first college experience set it up so that I felt so supported and knew how to advocate for myself moving forward in my other degrees."
Thomas went on to work in higher education for a period of time, but she says someone told her more than a decade ago that she should explore social work.
"I was like, no, higher education is my thing. I'm going to get my master's in higher education."
Moore: What do you think they saw?
"I think what they saw is that I love helping and connecting people — if that's to resources, if that's just to another person that could help them, if that is sitting down with them and working with them one on one to get a task accomplished. I just love helping people."
When she decided to make the shift to social work, she moved from working with college-age students to young children. She says she was specifically interested in play therapy.
"Children's language is play, and toys are their words. And so I wanted to be able to communicate with children and help them go through trauma."
Put simply, play therapy is a form of counseling geared toward kids that allows them a chance to express their feelings and emotions through toys and play.
During her time at the Clinton School, Thomas was also receiving her master's in social work. One way she was able to combine her social work education with her public service education was through learning about the practice of play therapy in the field.
"And I had the opportunity of working with the Association of Play Therapy Kenya so I could actually learn more about play therapy, because prior to that, I had no idea."
During the summer of 2025, Thomas spent three months in Kenya working alongside the Association of Play Therapy Kenya — getting firsthand experience with play therapy, but also helping them build an emergency preparedness plan. The plan offers a roadmap for mental health professionals to effectively assist from the first 72 hours of a disaster to long-term community recovery.
Thomas says the first step is being prepared before disaster happens.
"And so that involves community education. It involves training of play therapists. It involves local resources and asset mapping, and building a baseline and child-prepared activities. So we know what to do in case of that emergency."
The next step is immediate response — both the chaos of the first 72 hours and stretching to cover the first six weeks.
"And that is providing that rapid safety and psychological assessment, basic needs and caregiver connection — making sure that they have that connection with the guardian."
From there, the play therapy training and work kicks in.
Education — and higher education more specifically — can be a place where theory doesn't always meet practice in a timely fashion. A student may be pursuing a degree in elementary education, for example, but they don't get to step into a third-grade classroom until their junior or senior year. Thomas says the theory-to-practice model is quick at the Clinton School, and she loves that.
"Because, yes, we learn a lot about the theory beforehand, but we're also in the field practicing it as early as our first semester in the Clinton School with our practicum project. Yeah, I think it really did prepare me for this."
Moore: When you think about your experience in the public service sector, do you have conversations with your dad? Do you have conversations with people who have had different kinds of public service positions and find ways to learn from their experiences, find some commonality in that work?
"Oh yeah. I definitely believe networking is number one to figure out what you want to do. I definitely talk to my dad a lot because he actually is about to retire again as a junior high math teacher. And so he's been in the field for over 25 years."
She says one thing her dad has a strong opinion on: don't get too comfortable in your job. His suggestion is to change up one or two things about your job every five to 10 years.
"So even though my dad's been a teacher, he's switched grades, he's done special education, he's been a para, he's got his master's. He could be a vice president, principal, but he doesn't want to do that. So he's changed things up even though he stayed in the same kind of career his second retirement go-around."
When she thinks about the impact of her work, she uses a parable of a little girl on the beach and starfish.
"You know how starfish come up on the sand — if you don't throw them back, they'll die. And so this little girl is throwing starfish back into the ocean and someone's like, 'Why are you even doing that? There's no point in it.' And she's like, 'Oh, I made a difference to that one starfish I threw back.'
"And I think the thing that sticks with me the most is the stories I have where I made an impact on that one person. Oftentimes as public servants, we don't hear from people we work with that we made an impact in their life, that we were that one person that made a difference to them. I'm fortunate that I've actually been able to — some people have reached back out to me and were able to tell me that if it wasn't for me trying to create a more inclusive residential experience for them, they might not have finished college."
Thomas graduated earlier this month with her master's in public service at the Clinton School. But she says a college education shouldn't be a barrier.
"You don't have to have a degree to do public service. You can make a difference in your community by volunteering, by donating, by just helping a neighbor. And so I really want people to know that this is something you can actually do right now and not something you have to wait to do."
Thomas presented her research from her time in Kenya at an international symposium and plans to pursue her PhD in social work to continue studying play therapy and medical play research.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
