As Tericka White Sanders put together her application to Birmingham-Southern, she decided to write her own obituary. In it, she outlined her passions – like activism in her community, her husband and three daughters, and her focus on education – through the events of her life. She also included her future graduation from BSC, manifesting the success and drive she would bring to the Hilltop.

“With sociology, I have the opportunity to make the change that I always needed and wanted to see,” she says.

Sanders transferred to BSC in fall 2020 following time at Lawson State Community College, where she earned her associate’s degree, and Auburn University, where she studied 20 years ago before leaving during her third year. At Auburn, she explored her interest in construction management and design, something she continues to study as a sociology major.

“Architecture is full of feeling and emotion,” she says. “It’s based on making people feel good. I still wanted to make a difference, and I know that I can impact other people’s lives.”

Once Sanders enrolled at BSC, she knew sociology would be the best fit because it aims to answer why people do what they do and think like they think. The major prepares her to pinpoint how communities and structures can serve people in the best ways possible.

“I want to understand what people need,” she says, “because I know that being exposed to certain things changes people’s lives. I want to teach people why we behave the way we do.”

This desire ties to Sanders’ service in the community, often through block parties and other community events in her childhood neighborhoods in Woodlawn and West Birmingham. She has also served on the junior board for Children’s Village of Birmingham and as a mentor for Caring Men and Women, but she’s stepped back from some of these roles for now during the pandemic and her studies. For the 2021-2022 academic year, she is one of two recipients of the Ali and Charles Goodrich Scholarship, which provided full tuition funding for her final year on the Hilltop.

Her sociology courses – especially poverty studies, urban sociology, and statistics – are deepening her understanding of people at a large scale and the local scale, often giving her new ways to look at her own life. Sanders remembers growing up in a predominantly Black neighborhood while attending a predominantly white elementary school and recalls that “living two different lives was taxing.” She’s interested in using facts and statistics to find solutions and make communities better.

“Everything makes more sense with the numbers,” she says. “In some instances, everything has a reason why it operates, all the way down to the human cell. Sometimes, I want to get into the cells of life, and why we operate a certain way and how we got to be who we are.”

At BSC, Sanders is part of the transfer committee through the Office of Admission and loves talking to non-traditional students and their families about the college experience. It makes sense that she sees herself in an educational role, teaching children and young adults. Sanders knows that one day, she’ll be teaching Sociology 101.

Otherwise, she’s keeping the future open, and there are so many different things she hopes to pursue after finishing her degree. Sanders will always keep her call to architecture and construction, but she’d also love to bring youth from Birmingham City and the greater metro area together and teach basic life skills, sociological theories, and how to cope and communicate with one another.

“When it happens, I’m going to be ready,” she says. “I keep all my plans in my notebook.”

This story was included in a special social sciences edition of From the Hilltop, Birmingham-Southern’s alumni email newsletter.

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