SuMing Sullivan. Courtesy photo.
Growing up on a farm in upstate New York, SuMing Sullivan spent hours wandering the woods, turning over rocks in a creek to see what she might find beneath them. Crayfish. Salamanders. Fossils. Every rock provided an opportunity to discover something new.
Decades later, Sullivan still approaches the world the same way. As she begins a new role as assistant professor of clinical practice at the Boston College School of Social Work, she hopes to instill a similar sense of curiosity in her students—encouraging them to become explorers who uncover new ways of seeing the clients they serve.
“I really want students to internalize their learning so they feel confident enough to change their minds when they know more,” says Sullivan, who spent the past three years as an adjunct faculty member. “I want them to be flexible thinkers, feeling deeply with their clients, but also identifying problems and moving through them.”
This fall, Sullivan will teach “Basic Skills in Clinical Social Work,” “Re-thinking Diversity: Systems of Oppression and Privilege,” and “Human Behavior and the Social Environment.”
As a practicing clinician, she brings cases into the classroom. She often discusses mistakes she’s made in her work in emotionally focused therapy—an evidence-based approach used to help individuals, couples, and families improve their relationships and emotional well-being. She wants students to know that she’s still learning about her practice and her clients—and that the work is never finished.
“I share things that I’ve struggled with so that students know that we’re not perfect, that we are human beings doing this job,” says Sullivan. “I like to give people examples of not only my successes, but also my blunders, so that when they inevitably trip, they don’t feel shame.”
She strives to accompany students on their journeys to becoming professional social workers, walking alongside them during their trials and triumphs. As she tells her students: “It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about being the expert. It’s about going with people.”
“ I really want students to internalize their learning so they feel confident enough to change their minds when they know more. I want them to be flexible thinkers, feeling deeply with their clients, but also identifying problems and moving through them. ”
Sullivan traces her philosophy to two formative experiences: growing up as the daughter of a Chinese immigrant mother, who experienced racism in the United States, and her work at a humanitarian organization in Cambodia, where she supported programs funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development but found herself removed from the people her efforts were intended to serve.
These experiences shaped her interest in how systems, trauma, and lived experience intersect, and led her to reconsider how she could engage more directly with the people behind the programs and policies she had been supporting.
That realization led her to apply for the master’s in social work program at BC, where she specialized in mental health and graduated in 2011.
“For me, social work is seeing the person in the environment,” says Sullivan, who went on to earn a doctor of social work degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 2025. “It’s less about who’s a good person and who’s a bad person and more about understanding how people come to be who they are and seeing their humanity.”
Back at BC, Sullivan plans to channel her curiosity for people, relationships, and new experiences into an elective focused on EFT. As a kid, she turned over rocks and marveled at what she found. As a clinical professor, she wants to get to know her students both as people and as emerging practitioners, uncovering their gifts for helping people in need.
“I want to continue to build relationships with and invest in students,” says Sullivan. “I think that’s magical.”