A History of the College of Social Work

In the 1930's the country was emerging from the greatest economic depression it had ever known. At its most serious point, fully one-third of the nation's workforce was unemployed. With the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as President of the United States in 1932, the federal government took a new, and larger role in social legislation. The Social Security Act of 1935 established a system of retirement benefits, old age pensions and Aid to Dependent Children. Qualified personnel were needed to staff these programs and the social work profession was ideally situated to expand along with these social policy changes.

In 1938 the UK Board of Trustees established a Department of Social Work within the College of Arts and Sciences. It was the wife of the university president, Frances Jewell McVey, who first had a dream of offering social work training at UK. Frances Jewell, born near Wilmore, had an interesting academic career in the years before she married President Frank LeRond McVey. She was a graduate of Vassar, earned a Master's degree, was a faculty member of the English Department at UK before becoming Dean of Women from 1921-23. In the fall of 1923 she resigned as Dean to marry President McVey. Later she served on the Vassar Board of Trustees and held state offices in the American Association of University Women and the YWCA.

On August 7, 1938, Dr. Vivian M. Palmer was hired to head the new department of Social Work at UK. Formerly she was an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at UK and taught at Texas State College for Women in Denton, and at Macalaster College, St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Palmer had also served as Director of Local Criminal Research at the University of Chicago. She held an M.A. degree from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Courses in the social work department were offered on the undergraduate and graduate levels, with emphasis on the master's level program. Four months after its creation, the UK social work program was accredited by the American Association of Schools of Social Work. The one-year graduate program included courses in public welfare administration, child welfare services, psychiatric information for social workers, and social statistics (showing the application of statistics to social work problems), and a course in social welfare planning for the treatment and prevention of social problems. The curriculum included supervised field work and participation in research.

Two additional faculty members were added to deal with the expanded program: Ms. Ruth Haugen and Mr. Aaron Paul, both of whom held master's degrees in social work. Faculty from other departments and adjunct professors completed the roster.

An interesting historical footnote concerns a series of radio broadcasts by the social work department originating at the University's radio station in McVey Hall (where the Department of Social Work was also housed) and carried over the Southern Mutual Radio Network. The series was entitled "Social Work in the South", and featured topics such as "Good Americans are Good Neighbors" , "Lay Leadership for Youth", and "Organizing a Disaster Committee in a Southern County."

Dr. Harold Wetzel joined the UK faculty September 1, 1944 as Professor and Head of the Department of Social Work. Wetzel had earned a master's degree in sociology at Ohio State and had taught sociology there for 10 years before coming to UK's social work program. As the department expanded, Wetzel hired Professor Constance Popeo (later, Wilson), newly arrived in Kentucky with her master's degree from Boston University. Professor Wilson joined the UK faculty in 1954. She became acting head of the Department in 1968 when Professor Wetzel went on sabbatical. It is she who was instrumental in hiring Dr. Ernest Witte to do a feasibility study of the need for a generalist graduate program in social work in Kentucky; in July 1969 Witte became the first dean of the new College of Social Professions (the name was changed to the College of Social Work in 1980). An additional core of faculty was hired in 1969 which took an academic year to carefully craft the curriculum. By 1970 faculty members included Joanne Bell, Evelyn Black, Stanley Blostein, S. Zafar Hasan, C.A. Holmquist, Robert Insko, Denzel Johnston, Elizabeth Kirlin, LeVerne McCummings, Dorothy Miller, John Myers, George Plutchok, and Roy Yarbrough. Frank Pierce was Associate Dean.

The first graduate students for the new two year program were accepted in the fall of 1970 and graduated in May of 1972. The first class included a member of the current faculty: Nathan Sullivan. S. Zafar Hasan, who became dean in 1979, served as dean until 1996. Dean Hasan earned his master's and doctor's degrees in social work at Columbia University. In addition, he earned a degree in law in India. He served as Professor and then as Dean of the School of Social Work at Lucknow University in India before joining the faculty of the University of Kentucky. The expansion of the faculty continued, as shown in this roster of faculty reproduced exactly from the 1971-72 Bulletin of the College of Social Professions:

Ernest F. Witte, dean
Benjamin P. Granger, associate dean
Caroll W. Beckman, instructor
Joanne I Bell, lecturer
Evelyn Black, assistant professor
Richard K. Brautigam, associate professor
Stanley H. Blostein, lecturer
Don J. Duhigg, assistant professor
Saiyid Zafar Hasan, professor
Chester A. Holmquist, lecturer
W. Robert Insko, assistant professor
Denzel C. Johnston, assistant professor
Saundra J. Johnston, assistant professor
Elizabeth A. Kirlin, lecturer
John W. Landon, assistant professor
LeVerne McCummings, assistant professor
Gwen L. Mead, assistant professor
Dorothy A. Miller, associate professor
John P. Myers, instructor
Roger Nooe, assistant professor
George Plutchock, assistant professor
Ghassan Rubeiz, assistant professor
Robert Viles (joint appointment with Law)
Harold E. Wetzel, emeritus professor
George Wilber (joint appointment with Sociology)
Constance P. Wilson, associate professor
Roy D. Yarbrough, associate professor

In 1974 Professor Ronda Connaway of Washington University, St. Louis, was hired as Dean to succeed Dean Witte upon his retirement. The off-campus MSW program in Hazard was developed under Dean Connaway, and more off-campus programs were developed and expanded under S. Zafar Hasan, the third dean of the College. Master's level courses were offered at Hazard from 1976 to 1978, at Northern Kentucky University continuously since 1979, at Ashland from 1980 to 1984, at Morehead State University continuously since 1988. In addition, some master's level classes were taught at Somerset, London, at Kentucky State University in Frankfort, at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, and at Prestonsburg. The College continues to offer the complete Master of Social Work program on the Lexington campus, at Northern Kentucky University, Morehead State University, and in the Hazard/Prestonsburg area.

In 1996 the Chancellor appointed Edgar Sagan to serve as Interim Dean so that a national search for a new Dean could be conducted. He served for two years and in the beginning of the 1998 school year, Kay S. Hoffman, previously the Director of the Social Work Program at Radford University in Virginia, became the 5th Dean of the College of Social Work. Dean Hoffman came with a wealth of experience and national service in the Baccalaureate Program Directors (Board Member, Secretary, Vice President, and President) and the Council on Social Work Education where she served as Chair of the Commission on Accreditation from 1990 to 1994 and on the Board of Directors. More recently, she has completed two terms as President of the Council on Social Work Education. Under Dean Hoffman's leadership, the College has expanded its research and intellectual inquiry components with the creation of the Training Resource Center and the CATS Clinic and seen the College's endowment increase 160 fold --from less than $55,000 to almost nine million in a little over seven years.

Accreditation is always an important issue in social work education. Beginning in 1938 the graduate social work program at UK was accredited by the American Association of Schools of Social Work. By 1952 the Council on Social Work Education was born with the direct involvement of two persons who served on our faculty: Harold Wetzel and Ernest Witte. At first the Council only accredited graduate programs. Our program was placed in candidacy status, the first step in the process, from 1970-1972. The undergraduate program was accredited in 1974, the year the Council first began to accredit undergraduate programs. Reaccreditation of both MSW and BSW programs occurred in 1980, 1987, 1994, 2002 and is scheduled again for 2009.

College of Social Work main phone number (859) 257-6650
Site Created and maintained by Gary Trumble
Last updated 11-9-06