The roots of a professional and personal mission
Growing up, Goings’ world was a small one. Her tiny, rural town in northeastern North Carolina offered few glimpses of life outside the small-town culture—something that possibly led to some of the substance use and abuse she witnessed—as well as few opportunities for positive activities outside of those connected to school or church. When some North Carolinians hear she is from there, “they can’t believe I’ve made it this far,” she says.

School and church activities were a lifeline to Goings in her small hometown. Here she poses with her parents in her band uniform.
In school, she participated in practically everything available to her: softball, volleyball, basketball, band, JROTC, Beta Club, and somehow, even with few models in her life for higher education, she saw herself on that path. In her junior year she wrote in a class reflection paper, “that I would get a PhD and become a professor,” she recalls. She vaguely remembers the idea came from wanting to inspire young people (her current lab, perhaps not coincidentally, is called the INSPIRED Lab).
The lofty goal may also have something to do with what she learned at home. Her mother worked in home health, and her father was a model of the hard-working, goal-setting provider who sacrificed to provide for the family.
He worked a well-paying job in shipbuilding. Getting up at 4:30 in the morning to make the trip to Newport News, Virginia, a one-and-a-half-hour drive away, he would return home sweaty and exhausted. Then work part-time selling cars, handling his landlord responsibilities, or at their church in the evenings only to do it all again the next day.
I get my work ethic from him
What she witnessed in her father seems to have spawned in her the drive to get ahead. “I think I get my work ethic from him,” Goings says. When she was 14, she started a cleaning business with a friend to make extra money. “She didn’t have to work,” her father explains. “She wanted to do it.”
Despite her drive, she did not fully excel as a student until college. “Once she got in college, it shifted,” her father says. “She really locked in on the seriousness of a good education,” and no doubt, what it could do for her.
Without a clear plan or even an area of interest, her journey specifically into social work and prevention research began somewhat randomly. While considering what college to go to and what to major in, she noticed a one-page flyer on the hallway wall of her high school with a list of majors and a short description of each.
‘’When I saw the mission of social work and I thought about some family members and how it played a role in keeping them safe,” she says, “I decided to major in social work.”
It was the right choice, it appears, because her teaching and scholarship have been well regarded. As the Sandra Reeves Spear and John B. Turner Distinguished Professor of Social Work at UNC, Goings has received numerous awards and a very competitive R01 research grant from the National Institutes of Health. Most recently, she was invited to serve as a standing member of an NIH scientific review panel, a highly selective appointment and a significant honor given that only 3.2% of all NIH reviewers are Black.