DALTON, Ga. — Social work scholar Mary Bricker-Jenkins first fell in love with the Southeast 25 years ago, when she came to Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tenn., for a one-year stint teaching social work.

She had lived 20 years in New York City, but the progressive professor said life in Tennessee changed her outlook in “some very good ways.”

“I wasn’t losing my politics,” she said, “but I was losing the hard, angry edge to my politics.”

Now, Dr. Bricker-Jenkins has found a new academic home down South, as a visiting scholar at Dalton State College here. She has taught social work here part-time since 2006, teaching both social welfare policy and Spanish for social workers.

But, now Dalton State is her “home institution” while she finishes a book on U.S. social welfare policy.

David Boyle, dean of the School of Social Work at Dalton State, said the college’s visiting scholars have achieved national acclaim. The college provides logistical support for their research, and the visiting scholars mentor faculty and students.

Back in 2006, Dr. Bricker-Jenkins had retired from Temple University and was looking to teach part-time in the Chattanooga area, where she had made her home. The bicultural, bilingual social work program at Dalton State made a particular impression on her, she said.

“This program really has the best of diversity at its core,” Dr. Bricker-Jenkins said, referring to the school’s emphasis on learning Hispanic and Appalachian cultures.

For his part, Dr. Boyle said, “I was impressed with her work empowering populations that had been marginalized.”

In addition to her academic work, Dr. Bricker-Jenkins works with the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, which organizes a diverse group of stake holders to fight poverty, she said.

At Dalton State, and at Temple University — which has a diverse student body in Philadelphia — Dr. Bricker-Jenkins said she finds that her social work students themselves have been marginalized.

The professor said there is much in common among her students in both regions, and they are much more alike than different.

The large share of those students have encountered poverty, discrimination and violence.

“Most people who come into social work ... they come because ... they’ve suffered, or people they care about have suffered,” she said. “They’ve all got stories.”