Dr. Cynthia Chambers has spent nearly two decades preparing high-quality teachers and supporting families of children with disabilities. Now, she is channeling her personal loss into a way to help others.
Driver Wyatt Chambers, the son of Don and Leann Chambers, died by suicide at 13 years old.
Driver was Chambers’ nephew and known as a budding guitarist with a witty personality and a passion for music. A whirlwind of imagination and creativity, Driver’s energy was infectious and filled every room he entered with laughter and love. His loved ones defined his dedication to music as remarkable.
“The creativity that he learned from his mother just showed in everything that he did,” said Chambers, professor and associate dean of educator preparation and academics in ETSU’s Clemmer College of Education and Human Development. “He had that swagger of his father so he brought a lot of light to the people who knew him. A light has dimmed because he’s not in our world anymore.”
Chambers, surrounded by researchers in her daily work, saw an opportunity to create change. The Driver Chambers Research Fund will provide financial assistance to support research for program-required theses or dissertations that include a mental health component, specifically for graduate and doctoral students currently enrolled in the Clemmer College.
“I want our students to be thinking about a mental health component as they plan for their research in the field,” Chambers said. “If this fund can encourage student researchers to include mental health in their studies, my hopes would be to bring more attention to it as a critical area to study.”
For Chambers, the fund is both deeply personal and forward-looking.
“Once you have a loss like this in your family, there is nothing you can do about that,” she said. “But what can you do for the next kid and for the next family? Thinking about how we can be proactive and thinking about reaching out to these kids that have something going on in their lives that they may not be sharing with us.”
Chambers hopes the fund will inspire future educators and researchers to develop take-charge strategies to support young people.
“The memory of Driver and how amazing he was is important,” she said. “We don’t stop talking about him.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide was the second leading cause of death for youth ages 10 to 14 as of 2022. The suicide rate among youth ages 10-24 increased 62% between 2007 and 2021. A 2021 CDC report also found that nearly one in five children in the United States had been diagnosed with a mental, emotional or behavioral health condition.
“If we are not talking about it, then we are not helping people,” Chambers said. “Back in the day, people used to hide behind these kinds of things, and I think we don’t help the next kid if we’re not talking about it. If we can put some proactive strategies in what we’re doing, intervention-wise, then perhaps we can save a life.”
To make a gift to the Driver Chambers Research Fund, visit here.
