Rachel Phelps, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Before joining the faculty at Fort Hays State University, Dr. Phelps spent 15 years leading systemic change across K–12 education, designing scalable programs that prioritized student well-being, equity, and sustainable impact. Her work focused on building and coaching high-performing interdisciplinary teams, optimizing resources, and aligning mental health, academic, and community services. She has led the development of school-based mental health systems, launched district-wide leadership initiatives, and written multi-million-dollar grants to expand access to care and support. In addition to her K–12 leadership, she has taught in higher education across bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral social work programs, with a focus on grant writing, research, psychopathology, leadership and supervision, and interviewing skills.
Through her work as a business owner, Dr. Phelps consults on school-based mental health systems of care, program design, strategic planning, program evaluation, and professional development. She also serves as a program evaluator and research collaborator for the Culturally Informed Responses to Grief and Loss (CIRGL) project, contributing to training and train-the-trainer modules for school-based mental health professionals, with a co-authored publication in progress. Her work bridges practice and scholarship to build trauma-informed, sustainable, and equity-rooted systems.
At FHSU, Dr. Phelps will teach courses such as Grant Writing, Program Development & Evaluation, and Advanced Internship in Sociology, where she supports learners in building real-world skills that meet the needs of families, communities, and society. She empowers learners to identify and pursue funding opportunities, leverage collaboration for shared impact, and apply sociological thinking to create transformative solutions to real-world challenges.
Her doctoral research at Simmons University in Boston (2024) focused on designing graduate-level interprofessional education to address inequities in K–12 schools through a liberatory leadership lens. She also holds a Bachelor of Social Work (2016) and Master of Social Work (2017) from Park University in Parkville, Missouri. (In a former life, she also taught Title I reading, where she learned just as much from kids as they did from her.)
In addition to her consulting work, Dr. Phelps is the founder of a nonprofit organization providing trauma-informed mental health services through holistic, play-based, and healing arts approaches. A lifelong learner, she is currently completing her Clinical Social Work Licensure and pursuing certification as a Registered Play Therapist to further support youth and communities through culturally sustaining, developmentally appropriate care.
Dr. Phelps brings an unshakable belief in collective brilliance to every space she enters. She is here to support learners in becoming not just professionals, but visionaries, builders, and social architects of a more just world.
Hopefully, you'll see these values show up in Dr. Phelps’s work (and probably written on a sticky note somewhere near a caffeinated beverage):
- Rooted learning that connects theory to lived experience and practice
- Courageous leadership that centers equity, healing, and relationship
- Applied action that translates sociology into real-world solutions (not just papers)
- Shared power in classrooms, teams, and communities—because hierarchy is overrated.
- Being human—making mistakes, occasionally face-planting, but always falling forward with grace, and a willingness to learn out loud
- People are not broken—we are blooming. And sociology gives us the tools to rebuild together.