Blackburn Institute

Community Member Spotlight:  Dr. Cheree Causey

October 14, 2010

Dr. Cheree Causey has proudly been a lifelong resident of Tuscaloosa. Prior to working at The University of Alabama, she owned a fitness and health exercise company in Tuscaloosa. Upon joining the University community in 1988, she began working at the Student Recreation Center. Later, she went to work in the Dean of Students office and then in the Student Affairs office as the Assistant Vice President, where she began her experience with the Blackburn Institute. 

As Director of the Blackburn Institute from 1999 to 2008, Dr. Causey played a critical role in connecting the Blackburn Fellows to Dr. John L. Blackburn so that his vision for the future of the Institute could take shape. Meeting frequently with Dr. Blackburn, Dr. Causey would talk with him about the fellows and discuss events occurring within the Institute. In turn, Dr. Blackburn offered advice and insight to direct the Institute towards its ultimate goal of shaping ethical leaders.

Dr. Causey has watched the Institute grow from four years of fellows—the number of classes in the Institute when she became involved—to fifteen years of fellows currently. As new fellows continue to join the Blackburn community, many of them will not have known Dr. Blackburn, so advisors, directors, and older fellows must keep Dr. Blackburn’s vision alive by relating it to new fellows, as Dr. Blackburn intended. Dr. Causey firmly believes that the way to keep his vision alive is through two of Dr. Blackburn’s overarching values: networking through the generations and a lifetime commitment to the Institute’s mission.

Dr. Causey sees the timelessness and remarkable wisdom of Dr. Blackburn’s vision in the networking that continues to take place. Because the number of fellows has grown, networking has expanded across the country and even across the world. Dr. Causey said that it is wonderful to see Blackburn fellows call on each other for advice or to look for a job and for them to find such warmth and willingness in other fellows to connect them to different opportunities. Fellows that had the remarkable opportunity to know Dr. Blackburn must recognize the need to network with new generations of fellows to emphasize every fellow’s responsibility to be a change agent for their community, whether Tuscaloosa, another community in Alabama, or a community across the globe.

Networking across community, professional, and cultural borders thrives because joining the Blackburn family requires fellows to commit to enacting positive change for a lifetime. As Dr. Causey stated, “Students must be intimately aware of their lifetime commitment.” The continuity among generations within Blackburn keeps Dr. Blackburn’s vitality and spirit alive within the Institute because older generations pass along guidance and direction until younger generations’ experiences allow them to pass their wisdom along to even younger ones. The heart of the Blackburn Institute lies not within any particular individual but within the vision that many individuals seek out through a collective effort over time.

Dr. Causey feels very passionately that students always remember their obligation to act as progressive agents of change in the community, regardless of which community they are in. She emphasized that fellows “hold the key” to the future of our state and nation. The Blackburn Institute effectively fuels positive change because it continues to be a living, breathing body comprised of Blackburn fellows that seek to keep it vibrant, healthy, and moving forward for years to come.

-Jillian Sparks, Blackburn Class of 2010

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