By Susan Wampler
The history of social work at USC is effectively the same as the history of the social work profession in Southern California, asserts a new book co-authored by Clinical Associate Professor Ralph D. Fertig. The copiously illustrated 100 Years of Social Work at USC demonstrates USC's early involvement in the burgeoning field to its leadership in global social work education and research today, chronicling the School of Social Work's origins, growth and successes along the way.
Fertig, once dubbed the "conscience of Washington,” says the book shows how USC Social Work has raised the conscience of Southern California – and indeed the nation – in addressing pressing social problems and preparing students to help solve them, whether locally, nationally or even globally.
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USC President Norman Topping meets President Richard Nixon.
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The book, co-authored by Joshua S. Rose – who earned his MSW from USC in 2006 and is now assistant director of the Family Institute in Pinole, Calif. – also details the events that showed the need for such a school and introduces readers to the people instrumental to the school's development and that of the social work movement in Southern California itself.
"Social work at USC didn't happen in a vacuum,” says Fertig, whose long and storied career as a federal administrative judge, civil rights lawyer, social worker and sociologist led to a faculty appointment at the school in 2003. "Los Angeles was multicultural from the start, attracting people from Mexico, China and Europe as well as the middle of the United States. Together they built a small pioneer town into a vital city – but they also suffered from racism and poverty.” Even from the beginning, though, individuals and institutions existed to help those in need, from former slave Biddy Mason and Friday Morning Club founder Caroline Severance – who helped bring the Settlement Movement to the West – to the Hebrew Benevolent Society and the Sisters of Charity.
Those pioneers set the tone for social change that would germinate into the first full-time professional social work program in the Western United States, founded by Dean Emory Bogardus under the intiative of USC President George F. Bovard and with the support of his wife, Emma Bovard, a member of the Friday Morning Club.
In 1920, the Division of Social Work was officially established within the Department of Sociology. Just two years later, the American Association of Schools for the Training of Professional Social Work acknowledged USC's educational strength in the field, as well as its dedication to the community, by admitting the program to its ranks. That same year, USC changed the name from the Division of Social Work to the School of Social Welfare in recognition of the program's growing autonomy and broad-based curriculum.
The book also demonstrates how the USC School of Social Work has changed with the needs of the times, from the Great Depression through the tumultuous 1960s to the challenges of the 21st century. Through it all, though, two aspects of the school remain fixed: its dedication to excellence in education and its place at the vanguard of the field of social work itself.
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