About the Founder
Founder. Scholar.
Author. Teacher.
Dr. Timothy D. Goler founded The Goler School and created The Goler Method. His work examines how social conditions shape identity, consciousness, stress, health, and human development.
The founder of The Goler School
Understanding the roots beneath what we see.
Dr. Goler’s work connects sociology, Black psychology, institution building, public policy, and lived experience. Through Liberated Mind, Bonsai Theory, Reconstructed Self Theory, and The Goler School, he created a public place to study the conditions that shape a life and the practices that help people and institutions respond.
He is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Norfolk State University and Research Director for the Center for African American Public Policy (CAAmPP). His scholarship is animated by two connected questions: What conditions produced what we are seeing, and what can we do now?
Professional record
A scholar whose work
moves in public.
Dr. Goler studies how social conditions shape Black identity, consciousness, stress, health, and human development. Through Liberated Mind, Bonsai Theory, Reconstructed Self Theory, and The Goler School, he connects social analysis to clearer action.
Scholarship
Ph.D. in Sociology from Case Western Reserve University; dissertation research on stressful life events, coping, and psychological well-being among urban older adults.
Academic and research leadership
Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Norfolk State University; Research Director for the Center for African American Public Policy (CAAmPP); Co Founder of the Department of Sociology Research Collaborative; and Founding Director of the Human Development and Life Course Lab.
Visit the Sociology Research CollaborativePublic institution-building
Founder and former CEO of the HBCU Preparatory Schools Network in Cleveland; co-founder of PolicyBridge.
The thread
Clarity is not a retreat
from conditions.
It is a way of meeting them honestly. The aim is to help people recognize the forces that have shaped their lives without surrendering their ability to choose, reconstruct, build, and grow.
“We need to stop just pulling people out of the river and we need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in.”
Timothy D. Goler, Ph.D., MUPDD