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INTO THE WORLD OF OTHERS

Kitty S. Harris is making Texas Tech the national leader in efforts to help recovering collegiate students to receive a higher education.

Written by Kippra D. Hopper

“Does god want us to suffer? What if the answer to that question is ‘yes’? You see, I’m not sure that god particularly wants us to be happy. I think he wants us to be able to love and be loved. He wants us to grow up. I suggest to you that it is because god loves us that he makes us the gift of suffering. Or to put it another way, pain is god’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. You see, we are like blocks of stone out of which the sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much, are what make us perfect. We think our childish toys bring us all the happiness there is. And our nursery is the whole wide world. Something must drive us out of the nursery to the world of others, and that something is suffering.” – Author C.S. Lewis

World of Others

A symptom of pain, addiction leads individuals into a cyclical black hole of desire, craving and physical dependency on any substance that will change their state of consciousness. A part of every human’s experience, suffering comes at an especially high price for addicts of alcohol and drugs. Those individuals who ascend from their own dark hell of hopelessness and into the light of recovery say their lives, and the lives of those around them, change forever for the better.

Essential to recovery, support comes to students who deal with alcohol and substance abuse problems through the peer-driven Collegiate Recovery Community at the Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery at Texas Tech University. Once an elusive dream, a higher education becomes a tangible goal for these individuals, many of whom lost everything in their lives to their addictions before they found recovery and earned the right to join the nation’s most comprehensive recovery program for college students, in Lubbock, Texas.

A safe environment that nurtures recovering addicts’ journeys to stay clean, the center has garnered respect from state and national lawmakers and public leaders, such as former Rep. Larry Combest, former Gov. Ann Richards, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Rep. Randy Neugebauer. With such high regard, the U.S. Department of Education has awarded the center a $250,000 grant for a demonstration program for the replication of Texas Tech’s successes in the Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery at other campuses across the country.

With the federal funding, Texas Tech’s center will become a training site and will begin its own actual developmental model for replication. Only three universities in the United States have programs that focus on recovering students who deal with addictive disorders, however no other university has a program as comprehensive as Texas Tech’s, according to Director Kitty Harris, Ph.D., of the Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery. Other universities are recognizing the need for replicating what Texas Tech has done, and already Harris and the center are in the process of helping two other universities in the Southern United States to establish similar programs.

The far-reaching goal of the pilot program is to support the estimated thousands of recovering addicts seeking a higher education across the United States. “The lawmakers who have visited the Texas Tech center and have met our students have called the program ‘magical,’” Harris smiles. “They often ask ‘how can you replicate magic?’ and I say, ‘You know, you can. Build it and they will come.’”

The core purpose of the Texas Tech center is to help students make the transition from recovering addict to being a responsible, productive citizen. “Recovery from addiction among youth and young adults is very tenuous, as addictions are perpetuated when individuals return to a social network with the same friends, the same family problems and the same social pressures as they had before they went into recovery,” explains Harris, associate professor of applied professional sciences in the College of Human Sciences. “Texas Tech’s center has changed this phenomenon by creating a recovering community and by being effective in helping persons who otherwise would have struggled to maintain a high-level of functioning.”

The black hole, which most every addicted person can relate to, is characterized by isolation, alienation and a lack of purpose or meaning in life. “What becomes meaningful is that next drink or that next drug,” she says. Typically, the alcoholic or the addict isolates repeatedly, creating more alienation from the world, and experiencing more pain, thus having a greater need for the substance to relieve the pain. “The cycle of pain leads to drinking or drugging, overeating or under eating, or other destructive behaviors. But, the more that behavior continues, the more the negative consequences come as a result of it, including trouble at school, at home and with the law.”

As a 15-year-old high school student in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, David was a blackout drinker, who during his years of alcohol abuse was drinking and driving nightly. He stole from his parents and everyone else he knew. “I basically just destroyed my family life, and even my friends hated me toward the end. I was failing out of school and was very suicidal at the time. I had spent some time in a psychiatric hospital for attempted suicide. Psychiatrists were throwing all kinds of medications at me, but you know the medication just doesn’t work when you’re an active cocaine user. I was just a real sad kid.”

Harris says that the negative consequences of alcohol and drug abuse become overwhelming and individuals begin feeling bad about themselves, with strong senses of shame and guilt. “If a person is feeling a lot of shame and guilt, then basically, he or she is feeling more pain. That’s the black hole, that cycle of feeling bad about oneself, having to use more and more of the substance to not feel so awful, and using more, thus feeling worse. Then, a person wakes up one morning and says to themselves, ‘who is this person?’ and, ‘what was this about?’ I think the black hole is that place we go to when we’re out of options, and when all of a sudden we realize that our choices and our decisions have been bad ones, and we feel shame and guilt. In addiction, and the inevitable hopelessness that comes, a person experiences no sunlight of the spirit. The black hole is the absence of sunlight. I don’t think there’s an addict or alcoholic that wouldn’t relate to that.”

Brian

"When I was addicted, pretty much my whole life revolved around getting and using drugs. I didn't have a goal. Now, I have ambition, my life has momentum and I have things to look forward to." - Brian

The George C. Miller Family Regents Professor, Harris was in private practice for 20 years before becoming director of the center in 2002. She focuses her research on the effects of substance abuse on adolescents and young adults, the prevention of high-risk behaviors during adolescence, mentoring models for adolescent development, and the development of resiliency in adolescents and young adults. She is co-director of the Center for Child and Adolescent Development and Resiliency with Nancy Bell, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies. Harris comments that her primary interest in research is in examining what makes the Collegiate Recovery Community successful, “what makes the program tick.” “I’m looking at the social networks that the kids at Texas Tech build and how that reinforces and supports their recovery. I’m interested in program development research and program evaluation. What I want to know is what we do well that works, what we need to do better, and what areas we could pinpoint that would allow kids to flourish here, even more than I think they already do,” she says.

The dramatic results of Texas Tech’s Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery are “miraculous,” Harris notes, with a 90 percent or better continuous successful recovery rate among the students in the center. “The recovering students are in a new environment with new pressures, options and expectations, even though they are developmentally delayed. Looking at national statistics, our students are beating the odds. It’s phenomenal for the whole program.”

Several factors play in the center’s successes. Students are required to have a year of continuous sobriety before they can enroll with the center. The center staff literally nurtures, affirms and encourages the recovering students. “We provide a safe environment for them that supports their recovery, allowing them to get an education, and helping them get back into the world that they escaped from with alcohol and drug use for all those years,” she says.

Just as impressive, students in the center have a cumulative grade-point-average of 3.34, higher than the overall GPA of Texas Tech undergraduate students. Many of the recovering students previously had flunked out, had been suspended or otherwise had been terminated from college during their use of substances, many with 0.00 GPAs. The center’s staff carefully monitors the academic work and achievement of recovering students. The majority of the center’s students, 70 percent, graduate from the university.

Throughout the country, students have enrolled at Texas Tech specifically because of the Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery. Currently, more than 60 recovering individuals have formed a true recovering community on the campus, as they go to school, study, play, work, and to a large extent, live together. “They support other students with a profound loyalty,” Harris says. “My goal for our students when they leave here are three things: No. 1, that their recovery is as good as it’s ever been; No. 2, that they have a college education that they can do something with; and No. 3, that they have grown in terms of their character and their integrity and have become well-rounded citizens.”

No longer a sad kid, David first learned about the center during his treatment in Dallas. “I went straight from high school to a treatment center. I was a senior when I sobered up. Most people, when they get sober that young, have done some hard drugs, like I did with cocaine. It’s incredible that I’ve been sober for three and a half years now. I always wanted to go to college, but I really wasn’t going to be able to if I continued doing the things I was doing. This program allowed me to go to a good university.” Now a junior, philosophy major earning straight A’s at Texas Tech, David has aspirations for earning a doctorate in philosophy and an eventual university faculty career.

“I know for me, the environment in college is very intimidating for someone who’s trying to be sober because it’s normal that people my age are drunk at parties on the weekends,” he says. “Maybe I’m a little aged at this point in my life. The center offers something that I couldn’t get at any other university in the nation. I have a peer-support group of people who are going through the same thing I am. With my very strong social network, I am not alone in going to 12-step meetings or in having a family of friends. That kind of support is what I need to really feel comfortable on campus, and the center allows for that. The center is just a very positive environment. Anytime I’m on campus, and I need a break from life, or I want to see my friends, I come to the center, a very safe place. The center allows me to be a better college student because my other responsible peers are trying to do their best, and I’m trying to do my best, and that inspires me.”

An early part of the center’s efforts focused on raising scholarship money for recovering persons who had academic promise. To date, the effort has reached an endowment in excess of $1 million. The students themselves have raised additional funds through their Association of Students About Service organization, with its membership of more than 60 students.

David is one of dozens of recovering students, including those suffering from alcoholism, addiction, eating disorders, co-dependency and those who are children of alcoholics, who have received scholarships from the center. Recipients must have a minimum of one year in recovery, one year out of a controlled living situation, and active participation in a 12-step program of recovery. Scholarship recipients may major in any program at the university. All scholarships have a built-in academic incentive, with the basic scholarship given of $500 per semester and the expectation that recovering students will maintain a minimum GPA of 3.0. With higher GPAs, students can receive, for example, up to $2,000 per semester for earning 4.0 GPAs. Of the 63 students who are part of the center this semester, half are on scholarships.

Sarah

"My life was like a tree that was wilted and dead. Since I've been in recovery, the tree has been nourished and it's growing. I'm happier and a lot brighter. My life has totally changed." - Sarah

One of the myths that Harris hopes to crumble is the stereotype that individuals with drug and alcohol problems are not intelligent or motivated. “Our kids are very bright. We have large numbers of students who make the Dean’s List and the President’s List every semester. They are excited about learning and about their lives. They’ve all been given a second, and sometimes third or fourth, chance. They use the chance for all it’s worth. They function as well in a classroom environment as any other university student. They aren’t any different from any student on this campus. The GPA statistics, the recovery rate and the graduation rate all are exciting, but the most satisfying part of the center to me is that we love these students; we help them re-socialize; we re-parent them if they’ve lacked families or have had bad family experiences; we try to give them an unconditional, loving environment in which to grow and flourish. I cannot think of anyway I can help make a better contribution to society than to be able to return these individuals to the community, to the society that they really hid from during their active alcohol and drug use, and allow them to come back to those places where they can become who they are.”

Tripling in size since its founding in 1986, the center’s population has changed in character over the years. Adolescents and young adults are seeking treatment at an earlier age than previous generations. When the program was created by founding Director Carl Andersen, Ph.D., now retired, the heart of the program consisted of non-traditional students, who were older, had families, had workplace experience, had sobered up and wanted to come back to school. Today, the majority of the center’s students are true freshmen, with 53 percent being between the ages of 18 and 21, and 30 percent being between the ages of 21 and 27.

“The change in population demographics has occurred because kids are starting to use chemicals at younger ages and are getting sick faster. If you start using at age 16, you might be able to wait until you’re 22, 23 or 24 to get healthy. But if you start using at age 13, there’s a good chance you’re not going to make it through adolescence without having to go into treatment. Their little bodies just don’t handle the substances as well as adults; they don’t have good judgment; they get into more trouble; they get picked up more; and they have more consequences. Therefore, they are bottoming out earlier, and are getting into treatment younger,” Harris explains.

Addiction studies show that, oftentimes, adolescents who use substances experience developmental delay. “The bottom line is that the age at which they begin using chemicals is often the age at which they quit growing emotionally, socially and relationally. The drugs and alcohol step in to become their coping mechanisms. So instead of learning how to cope with disappointments and conflict, they go out and drink or drug. They literally stay stuck at whatever level they have developed up to the point of their initial alcohol and drug use.” The majority of the students at Texas Tech’s center began their use during their adolescent years, anywhere beginning from age 11, with ages 13 and 14 being the median age of onset of use, according to Harris. “I really believe without that understanding of the developmental delay of young users of drugs and alcohol, that we wouldn’t have the ability to do the work we do here.”

The entire structure of the program has undergone change, from accommodating the first 20 non-traditional students, to currently helping more than 60 students who are developmentally adolescents. “Some of the students show maturity beyond their age in so many ways, and they do great with their academics. They keep this program functioning,” she says. “But then you find that maybe emotionally, they’re still at age 14, and they have trouble in relationships. They have trouble finding people to connect to or doing so in an appropriate manner. All the developmental issues bring their own challenges, in terms of working with them and caring for them.”

Harris’ fascination with adolescents and young adults comes from her belief that those youthful years are pivotal in the course of human development. Adolescence is one of the most challenging times in the life span, she notes, saying that the particular time period in a person’s life can make or break the individual, in some respects. “Individuals either develop the needed resiliency for life, and they learn to deal with their problems and bounce back, or individuals do not develop resiliency and stay pushed down all their lives,” she says. “I love adolescents because they’re responsive. They have these horrible chips on their shoulders, and they act like they hate the world, but if you can break through that wall, they’re just so vulnerable. They have so much to give, if you value them. I’ve been drawn to adolescents because as a society, we almost look down on teenagers, and I think that is absolutely the worst group in the world to look down on. They have so much to offer. Sometimes kids just don’t get their needs met, and you have to look really hard to know what those needs are, and then be willing to do what you can to get through it. If you work with adolescents and love them, it teaches you unconditional love, the ability to look beyond what the outside looks like.”

Also previously having worked for 13 years at Charter Plains Behavioral Health Hospital as program director for the Adolescent Substance Abuse Program, Harris says that throughout her career, she always has been committed to youth. “From the time I started teaching early in my career, I felt an urgency to stand up for adolescents, to take them seriously, to listen to them.” That core commitment has guided her choices during her life. “Very truthfully, my position at the center is very much a spiritual calling. I really believe that this is what I was supposed to do next. For me, I have been very lucky in having a sense of what I’m supposed to do with my life. I love to teach. Teaching is exciting and stimulating and offers such an opportunity to watch the light bulbs go on for the students,” she says. “The priority in my life is relationships. I think that’s what we’re here for. I think we’re here to help each other, to care for each other, to share our journeys together. Teaching allows us to share that with so many people. We have the opportunity every day to say something or to reach out to someone, which, at some point down the road, will have made a difference in making that person’s path a little smoother, making that journey a little bit more meaningful.”

Jesse

"When I used drugs, I thought I was on top of the world. I was invincible. I used to run to the drugs to cover the feelings, but now I walk through them. Hearing the doctor say that I wasn't going to make it pulled my chain. I was given another chance, so I took it." - Jesse

Harris’ mantra in dealing with others is that one has to meet other people where they are, at their point of pain, at their point of growth, at their point of willingness to grow. “I often talk about our students being high-maintenance, and they are, because basically we’re dealing with an adolescent population that’s in college and having to take on especially overwhelming college responsibilities and college stress-loads. It’s amazing that they do so well. That’s the part I find so exciting and fulfilling, the part that I love to come to work for. I watch them everyday rise to the occasion and take on that challenge. I take pride in their success. I take pride in their resiliency.”

Many of the students in the Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery have been in hard places. Some of been kicked out of their homes; others have lived on the streets; a few have been in jail or prison situations. Some of the students come from very affluent families and had everything in the world given to them, then suddenly, they found themselves with nothing left. Each student has a unique story, however, the familiarity that runs through their stories are their emotional struggles with whom they are, and the consequences of the choices they have made in their lives.

Through a continuing care model, Harris hopes the Collegiate Recovery Community can be replicated on other campuses to provide yet another step out of the darkness and into the light for college-enrolled addicts.

As a high school student, Julie had great academic potential. She held tightly onto her aspirations of “being in a fly-in-the-night, powerhouse position, to be the female doctor to end all female doctors.” She was voted in high school as most likely to succeed and had received one of the two largest academic scholarships of anyone in her class upon graduation. She ruined her dreams, she says, because she felt bad about herself. “So, I left town riding high, and I came back a strung-out cocaine junkie. More than anything, I needed a chance to prove to myself that I wasn’t stupid and lazy, or unable to successfully navigate college, or that I wasn’t destined to live a life of mediocrity. I was afraid that I was going to be one of those people that everyone shook their heads about and said, ‘That poor girl, she has so much potential.’”

Julie had been enrolled at another major research university when her world crumbled around her. She was fearful in her wondering whether the collegiate environment was her problem and whether she would ever be able to return to school. “When you get into recovery, so many times, you feel so much guilt and shame, and you feel bad about missed opportunities. I had scholarships to a very good university. I had won a lot of good educational opportunities. I studied under some of the leaders in the field that I was looking at as an undergraduate, and I had wasted that chance.” Hearing in her treatment program about Texas Tech’s center, Julie began to rethink her potential, to exercise her intellect, and to see that all was not lost in her life. “When I came to the center, the people just heard me anyway, and I didn’t have a red Corvette, and I didn’t have any money, and I wasn’t a powerful, all-knowing doctor, I was just Julie, and people listened to me. For the first time in my life, I was listened to.”

“I think that coming to the Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery gave me a chance to keep one foot in my safe zone, which was recovery, and stick the other foot into the pool, which was trying to get back into college,” Julie says.

Recovery and academic success go hand-in-hand for Julie and many of the center’s students. “I think that I wouldn’t be so far in my recovery if I hadn’t been able to be academically successful. Knowledge always has been something that’s very important to me. Being able to successfully graduate from Texas Tech and then enrolling in graduate school, I have regained a big chunk of my self-confidence. I have that belief now that there’s nothing inherently wrong with me that will lead to failure. The center for me, and my involvement here, has changed a lot of how I see myself and how I see the world, impacting my career, professional and personal goals. When I first came to the center, I remember feeling good to be a part of something again. My drug addiction had taken me out of everything in my life. All I did was do drugs. To come back to college and to be a part of something that’s good and that’s working pro-actively to make the world a better place, has been such a blessing.”

In recovery at the center, people focus on their strengths rather than their weaknesses, explains the center’s coordinator for external relations, Mandy Baker. “We capitalize on one another’s strengths. Around here, you have support for finding your gifts. We have a very diverse recovering community. The center brings a sense of tolerance among our students.”

Harris believes emphatically that the recovering students’ lives, in the majority of activities, should be the same as every other college student who walks the Texas Tech campus. “I want our students to have a true college experience. I don’t want them to feel separate. I don’t want them to feel apart from. I don’t want them to feel different. The only thing I don’t want them to do is to drink or do drugs. And, that is the part of the college experience that I would like to shield them from.”

In addition to the normal college experience, the recovering students have the opportunity to attend the 12-step or other recovery meetings scheduled on campus every day. The center’s staff helps the recovering students with traditional counseling if needed, with learning disabilities and classroom skills training through the Techniques Center, and with a safe haven in its meeting place, the Serenity Center. Perhaps what the center is best known for within the recovery community is its weekly meeting, called ‘Celebration of Recovery,’ where the center’s students celebrate sobriety birthdays.

Alana

"Now I have a lot of different goals. I want to be a doctor, a mother. I want to be a good sister, a good daughter, a friend. I have gained more happiness and contentment in everything I do. - Alana

An increasing number of individuals have entered the program in the last two years who have eating disorders. In most research circles, Harris says, eating disorders are considered a subtype of addictive behavior. For example, bulimics experience compulsive binging and then purging, while anorexics experience compulsive restriction and eventually can starve themselves to death. “What we have found, oftentimes, is that the 12-step model of Alcoholics Anonymous works very well with individuals who are struggling with eating disorders. The steps help them get into a position where they can recover, and learn to feed and nurture their bodies in healthy ways.”

With addiction, the particular substance or behavior does not matter; individuals experience the same set of emotions, Harris notes. “They express the same sense of deprivation or self-loathing at times, or the inability to control the substance, or the food, or whatever the behavior is. One of the things that recovery literature really tries to focus on is finding commonalities among individuals, as opposed to the differences among people. Everybody has a different story when it comes to their addiction, but what everyone rallies under is that flag of having found the same means of recovery. People in recovery have a sense that the solution becomes the rallying point, rather than the problem, which is one of the positive things about 12-step recovery. The evidence shows that the 12-step approach, while perhaps not working for every addicted individual, is what works the best for the most people.”

Harris believes that alcohol and drug use is a symptom of other problems in a person’s life. “In many cases, these kids or anyone else who gets into trouble with substances, have just tried to find a way to self-medicate the pain. And, alcohol and drug use, in its most basic form, is simply choosing an altered state of consciousness, whether it’s social drinking, heavy drinking, abuse drinking, drunkenness or alcoholism. “If you’re hurting, if there’s pain, or if things aren’t good, then that altered state of consciousness becomes a real pull. I don’t want to hurt. I don’t want to feel stuff that doesn’t feel good.”

Like others, Harris believes that our American society is heavily into feeling good, the quick fix and immediate gratification. “One idea I’ve always believe in is that the reason we have a problem with alcohol and drugs is because the substances work. Alcohol and drugs work to stop the pain, at least temporarily; to medicate the pain, temporarily; to help us to escape, temporarily. If they didn’t work, we wouldn’t have the problems we have. We ask ourselves what I can do that allows me to not hurt.”

For most adolescents, their drug and alcohol use begins with early experimentation, a curiosity, a dare or peer pressure. “I think early experimentation is really what it is – it’s simply early experimentation. Those adolescents are not the ones that always stay with their substance. For a lot of other kids, the ones certainly that are part of the center, the substances did meet a need. It was exciting, or it made them feel not so bad, or it made Mom and Dad’s divorce not seem so tragic, or it made that last breakup with that girl not so overwhelming. These kids get into substance abuse, and the sad part is, that because they’re so young and they have such poor judgment, they’re sucked in and sucked under before they realize it. None of these kids started out, and no one does, with the thought that ‘I think I’ll be an alcoholic, or I might as well be a drug addict.’ Nobody goes into using that way. It’s always a fairly innocent approach into the experience. However, because of their youth, the potency of the drugs today, and the availability and relative affordability of drugs and alcohol, young people who use substances do not even know what hit them half the time.”

The sad stories with the few young adults who have relapsed while in the program break Harris’ heart, as she says, one person is too many to lose to addiction. “I know what they’re capable of, and I know that there’s nothing that’s going to change back out there for them. Any kid that returns to drug use thinks this time will be different. But, the experience is never different; it’s just worse. The students who relapse lose sight of what their last experience with using was like, and they allow themselves to fantasize about the good times, without realizing that the good times will never be good again. They cross that line where they can successfully use alcohol and drugs without negative consequences. Once they’ve crossed that line, they never can go back. We call this the imaginary line, the point at which your alcohol and drug use continues to yield fairly negative consequences.” More times than not, students that relapse return to the center again to find their solutions with their peers. “Once you’ve lived in an atmosphere that’s genuine and authentic, going back out there to using is just not very much fun or fulfilling,” Harris says.

The Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery has been blessed with very good leadership, first with founder, Carl Andersen, and now with Director Kitty Harris, says center staff member Mandy Baker. “The most important thing I’ve learned in working with Kitty Harris, and the most important thing a lot of our students will learn from her, is to pay attention. Leadership is about being a servant. Leadership is not about being the boss. Leadership is not about having the final say. Leadership is about serving other people. I think for everyone here, Dr. Harris has really tried to model that to the best of her abilities, to show us that recovery is about service to others,” Baker says. “The concern with others is what keeps individuals sober, in finding the humility to work with other people in similar situations. The importance of the center is in having the people that the students look to for guidance and support being individuals who are caring, concerned, compassionate, kind, and who are willing to go the extra mile with someone else.”

Baker’s favorite story about what she’s learned from her mentor, Harris, occurred during a potential donor visit on the Texas Tech Jerry S. Rawls Golf Course. Baker, an avid golfer, insisted on carrying her own bag of clubs, although Harris had offered her an extra rolling bag. After playing the fourth hole, as she was complaining of having a sore back and being out of shape, Baker noticed Harris quietly picking up Baker’s golf clubs, putting the bag across her shoulder and carrying the clubs with her the rest of the 18 holes. “I told her I didn’t want her carrying my bag for me. Dr. Harris said, ‘I don’t care what you want me to do; this is about grace. This is a good chance to show you in a physical form what grace looks like.’”

With the ultimate goal of living a significant life, Harris says she always has known that she had a mission. “I have just tried to stand back enough to let life unfold. If I try not to control everything, and get out of the way, life unfolds.”

With a heart for the Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery, its staff and students, Harris’ combination of grace, compassion and service are modeled to the many individuals recovering from their own personal struggles. Making Texas Tech the national leader in such efforts, and now working to expand her calling and the center’s mission to other recovering students on college campuses across the United States, Harris is contagious in her enthusiasm and awe.

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