About the Consultants

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Dr. Kimberly K. Shackelford, LCSW, is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Auburn University. She has a BS from Iowa State University, an MSW from the University of Southern Mississippi and a Ph.D. in Higher Education and Leadership from the University of Mississippi. Dr. Shackelford’s career has included retiring from Mississippi Department of Human Services – Division of Family and Children’s Services as Deputy Director and achieving full professorship at the University of Mississippi with many years in the fields of child welfare and child advocacy. Dr. Shackelford is a co-author of two books with Dr. Josephine Pryce and Col. David Pryce – Secondary Traumatic Stress and the Child Welfare Professional and The Costs of Courage: Combat Stress, Warriors, and Family Survival. Her research areas are traumatic stress, service-learning in international community development, child welfare supervision, and social justice with publications in the Journal of Policy Practice and Research, Child Welfare Journal, Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, The International Journal of Continuing Social Work Education: Professional Development, among others. Dr. Shackelford has written child welfare training curriculum for many states along with Belize, Cape Town, South Africa, and Ontario, Canada. She has had two memoir short stories published in the Birmingham Arts Journal: The Mess Vol. 16 Issue 2, and Alarming Inspiration Vol. 16 Issue 4. She is a board member of the Alabama Writers’ Cooperative and a member of the Alabama State Poetry Society.   

 Nancy Lawler Dickhute spent her life as a teacher: first on the high school level in Iowa and California, then as a law school professor at Creighton University School of Law, where she also served as Director of Legal Writing, Director of Externships, Director of Academic Success, and Associate Dean for Professional Development. She has a B.A. in English and a J.D. from Creighton University. Upon retirement she was awarded emeritus status by the university. While at Creighton she wrote a column for The Nebraska Lawyercalled The Writer’s Block. She also authored a law review article, Jury Duty in the Time of Reasonable Accommodations: The ADA’s Interface with Litigant’s Rights to a Fair Trial, 32 Creighton L.Rev. 849 (1999), and created over 30 moot court problems, accompanying records on appeal and bench briefs for both international and domestic moot court competitions.  

 This is Heidi's first collaboration and book with her writing cohort.  Dr. Heidi Lyght-Schmidt has been an online professor for the past five years.  She has worked as a Department Chair, Dissertation Chair, and Associate Professor at three universities over the last several years.  In addition, she was in K-12 education for 36 years serving as a teacher, Associate Principal, Middle School Principal and District Administrator in midwestern school districts.  Dr.  Schmidt received her master's degree in Educational Administration and doctoral degrees in Educational Leadership/Policy Analysis from UW Madison, Madison, Wisconsin.  Her Ph.D. study centered on job balance. Dr. Schmidt’s recent research has been focused on student mental health. She implemented three tiered K-12 systems for school based mental health programs and was recognized by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and governor. She authored an article that was published in Wisconsin School News (2017) entitled Strength and Resiliency: The Hortonville Area School District’s Journey to Mental Wellness.