Staff Spotlight

Trinity Staff Members Learning to Foster Children
By Susie P. Gonzalez

Claudia Scholz and her husband, Eduardo Dueñez

Claudia Scholz, Trinity’s coordinator of research programs, became a parent with only 48 hours notice. Although she and her husband had spent a year taking classes, passing background checks, and signing required documents, the call in mid-December to pick up two foster children came with little advance warning. To make matters worse, her husband was in England on business and the couple had to make several hurried international phone calls to confirm that it was the right time to accept the toddlers.

Adding more drama was the fact that Claudia’s car had just been towed. That left her without time or transportation to buy and haul beds for the children, but she did manage to share her exciting, life-changing news with colleagues on campus. “It tells you what it means to have a social network and to work in a place like Trinity,” she says. On the first day after saying “yes” to the two children, Claudia says sociology professor Christine Drennon “came and held my hand.” Amy Stone, also a sociology professor, donated a bag of books, and biology professor Kelly Lyons brought a Christmas tree. “We were planning to travel for the holidays and didn’t have decorations.” Christine and Diane Smith, associate vice president for Academic Affairs, threw a “toddler shower” so the Trinity community could meet the children and help the family adjust. (The kids have beds now!) Later, geosciences professor Ben Surpless dropped off an unopened box of diapers that his toddler had outgrown.

“A lot of people have rallied and asked about foster parenting and adoption,” Claudia says. “I think that’s kind of cool.” Claudia and her husband, Eduardo Dueñez – a mathematics professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio – hold a license to adopt their two foster children and expect to do so, but they are living with an air of uncertainty about the process. That’s a difficult balancing act, Claudia admits. “We are very much living in limbo. The goal is permanency.” The boy is 2 and his sister will turn 4 in March.

Meanwhile, Emilio Silvas, information systems coordinator in the Development Office, also has become a foster parent. He and his wife Katherine (a Trinity graduate with a bachelor’s degree in communication and a master’s in urban administration) are fostering a 3-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl who have been in the Silvas home since October 2007. “We have an instant family,” Emilio says. “It’s a real change.” But he says he is happy to have kids in the house and despite frequent visits by social workers and other child-agency workers, he sees the children becoming comfortable in a family structure. “They are innocent enough to enjoy life.”