David Pate is a professor in the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare. His research projects involve the use of qualitative research methods to examine the relationship of non-custodial fathers of children on TANF and their interaction with their children, the child support enforcement system, and the effects of trauma and toxic stress on the life course of Black men. His currently funded research from the National Science Foundation (with Principal Investigator, Tonya Brito, University of Wisconsin, Madison, School of Law) examines and compares how attorney representation and more limited forms of legal assistance shape legal access for low-income civil litigants with child support debt and the threat of incarceration. In 2011, he participated on the legal research and writing team which submitted two amicus brief for the Center for Family Policy and Practice (CFFPP) in support of the petitioner in the Turner v. Rogers case to the United States Supreme Court. Prior to his appointment at UWM, He was the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Family Policy and Practice, and held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP), University of Wisconsin-Madison.