After an 18-month-long struggle battling cancer, Wandarah Anderson, associate professor of social work at Sacramento State, died on Oct. 6 at age 43.

Anderson was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 22, 1965. She received a master’s degree in social work from Norfolk State University in 1988. In 2004, she earned her doctorate in social work from the University of Utah.

In 2001, she began at Sac State as a lecturer in social work. Two years later, she took a position as an associate professor. She was highly regarded by faculty, staff and students as an innovator and a team builder, whose focus was on the students and on impacting change.

“She was greatly loved and respected by all,” said Teiahsha Bankhead, graduate coordinator of the social work division. “She had a very kind balance, and a gentle spirit. She was youthful and had a lot of vitality but was also very serious and dedicated.”

Bankhead said Anderson moved to Sacramento with her family when her husband, Joseph Anderson, was appointed department chair of the social work division. Anderson was hired a few years later and established herself as much more than the wife of a prominent professor, but a critical thinking intellectual and a fantastic professor, Bankhead said.

“Wandarah was a great person and one of my favorite professors. She was very challenging, but she was very inspiring. She was amazing,” Nataliya Nanchik, a Sac State graduate with a bachelor’s degree in social work, said about her former professor and mentor. “I didn’t even know she had cancer. She didn’t really tell students that she was sick.”

Anderson is survived by her husband and three children, Bailey, 22; and twins Sean and Caitlin, 20. She is also survived by her mother, Margaret Wagner, stepfather Timothy Wagner, and two brothers, Charles Gregory and Timothy Wagner Jr. Her love for her friends and family was strong, and she wrote about it often in her Care Page.

“I feel very grateful to have so many friends and family surrounding me with love and support,” Anderson wrote on her Care Page, an online journal for medical patients. “Somehow, before I got sick, I didn’t realize how much I took all of that for granted. Now it’s like this momentous gift that I carry with me everywhere I go.”

Once her cancer returned this year, friends and family teamed together to create Wandarah’s Light, a donation site to help fund treatment for Anderson’s sarcoma that was not funded by her insurance.

After Anderson lost her battle, her family expressed their wish for donations to be made in her honor to the American Cancer Society.

A memorial service was held Friday from 1-3 pm at the Green Valley Mortuary, located at 3004 Alexandrite Drive in Rescue, Calif.

For more information on the life of Anderson and the funeral service, see the article in The State Hornet print version this coming Wednesday.

Brittany Bottini can be at [email protected].