By Jeff Hunter ’96

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Jaxon Didericksen’s original higher-education plan called for him to graduate from Utah State University with a degree in accounting. But the Smithfield native quickly realized that for him, a career in accounting didn’t quite add up.

“I went to class about three times in management information systems, and everyone tells me, ‘Well, that’s not what accounting is.’ But I just wasn’t really feeling it,” Didericksen recalls. “So, that first semester, I went and met with a psychology advisor and then ended up landing in social work.”

That abrupt pivot during the 2019-20 school year eventually resulted in Didericksen graduating from USU with a bachelor’s degree in social work in 2023. He followed that up by completing a Master of Social Work earlier this year.

But after receiving his MSW on a Friday in early May, Didericksen wasted no time jumping into the workplace. He promptly returned to the Utah State campus the following Monday to start a new job at the Transforming Communities Institute as the first-ever coordinator of the TCI’s Access to Justice program.

Located in the Department of Social Work in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Transforming Communities Institute was formally established in 2021 to conduct research, educate Utah residents and help create solutions for social issues that impact the state’s communities. As part of that mission, TCI Director and Assistant Professor of Social Work Jayme Walters oversaw the creation of the Community Justice Advocate Program (CJAP) last summer.

The goal of the CJAP is to train social workers and other community-based professionals to provide limited legal advice to people who are dealing with serious financial issues and don’t have access to traditional legal services as they try to navigate health care or housing challenges.

The certificate program will first offer non-credit options, and once those are established for-credit options will be developed.

“With the non-credit option, it’s inviting existing professionals — so John Doe or Jane Doe who work in a domestic violence shelter — to come and get this certificate free of charge,” Didericksen says. “And then with nonprofit legal services, they’ll be supervised as they provide legal services.”

While the program is being established, Didericksen says, it will focus first on debt collection issues.

“Debtors in Utah have very little representation, and typically they don’t know where to go,” Didericksen says. “And so the idea is that Jane Doe and the domestic violence shelter can have this training, be able to identify when somebody has debt and not just a financial problem but a legal problem, and then advise them on how to proceed pretty much all the way up until the courtroom.”

In August 2021, Utah became the first state in the country to create a regulatory “sandbox” — a place where attorneys and other legal professionals can provide nontraditional legal services. The Utah Office of Legal Services Innovation is overseen by the Utah State Supreme Court, which still needs to approve the Community Justice Advocate Program’s application and proposed curriculum.

Didericksen is confident the program will receive its certification in the coming months, and his hope is participants in the program will begin training as early as this January.

“We want to make sure that it’s digestible for a working professional, and that every piece of information we’re giving is applicable to the kind of issues that they’re running into,” Didericksen says. “That is why we held a partner panel, so that practitioners can kind of see the prototypes of the curriculum before it goes live, so they can give feedback and make sure it deals with issues that they’re seeing. We want the training to be very nuts-and-bolts oriented, very practical, not so much like theoretical law, substantive kind of stuff.”

Although Didericksen has little legal experience of his own, Walters believes he is up to the task of Access to Justice coordinator because of what she saw from him as an undergraduate and graduate student with a passion for social work.

“Jaxon is a hard worker who has always had a willingness to take on projects, explore new ideas and learn new things,” says Walters, who is in her fifth year at Utah State. “He performed really well in our program, and he displayed commitment and an eagerness to connect with me as a faculty member and trust that there are opportunities out there if you take advantage of them.”

Didericksen says when he first turned his higher-education focus to completing a degree in social work, he wasn’t aware of opportunities he would have to get involved in research as an undergraduate student.

“I kind of just stumbled upon it,” he admits.

During the spring semester of his junior year, Didericksen was enrolled in Social Work 4540: Nonprofit Management for Social Workers. Taught by Walters, the course called for students to complete a project entitled “Choose Your Learning Journey.” At the time, Didericksen was considering a career as a director of a nonprofit organization, so he decided to interview nonprofit presidents and CEOs for his project.

“Jaxon started off doing background research or literature review,” Walters says. “But then I said, ‘You know, there are these really great opportunities for undergraduate researchers at USU, opportunities to get grants and scholarships. So, what if you pivoted a little bit, and took this into actually making it a research study, as opposed to just like a personal exploration and learning about what already exists?’ And so that’s what he did.”

Didericksen’s research led to the recent publication of an article written in conjunction with Walters and USU Assistant Professor Dorothy Wallis. After refining his undergraduate research project for a couple of years, “Understanding the Dynamics of Board-Executive Director Relationships in Nonprofits: A Qualitative Study of Youth-Serving Nonprofits in Utah” was published in October.

But that initial research project as a junior led to Didericksen getting involved with other studies, both as an undergraduate and a graduate student, and presenting his findings at several national conferences. It also led to Walters bringing Didericksen in as a research assistant at the Transforming Communities Institute and eventually placing him as the coordinator of the Access to Justice program.

“Jaxon is eager, and I think that was clear from the beginning,” Walters says. “And him being eager and taking the initiative has led to things that obviously not only led to a job but led to things that have given him valuable experience and opportunities that he wouldn’t have been able to capture otherwise.”

While he admits it’s been a bit intimidating meeting and working with lawyers, judges, and foundation leaders from around the state, Didericksen says he’s grateful for the opportunity to create something new that could have a huge impact on financially stressed people in need of legal guidance.

And Didericksen, who is also currently an adjunct instructor in the Department of Social Work, says having a chance to conduct undergraduate research initially placed him on that path.

“Looking back now, I can trace things back to the spring of 2022, sitting in Dr. Walters’ office and being told I could do a research project,” Didericksen declares. “That really created the domino-like effect getting me to this career. One thing just led to another after taking that opportunity.”