Sheila Kamerman

Professor Sheila B. Kamerman has been named interim dean of Columbia's School of Social Work. Kamerman, the Compton Foundation Centennial Professor of Social Work at Columbia's School of Social Work, specializes in child and family policy.

"Columbia and its School of Social Work are fortunate to have Sheila Kamerman serve as interim dean during this time of transition," said President George Rupp. "Her nearly 30 years at Columbia and her outstanding record make her well-suited to lead the School of Social Work for the upcoming academic year."

Kamerman obtained her doctorate in social work from Columbia in 1973. She held a research position at Columbia until 1979, when she became a member of the university's faculty.

"Sheila Kamerman's scholarship on children and families put her at the forefront of the field," said Provost Jonathan Cole. "In addition, she has had a crucial role in making Columbia's School of Social Work one of the best in the country. Under her guidance, the school will continue to be a model for the profession."

Kamerman replaces Ronald Feldman, whose 15-year tenure as dean of the School of Social Work concluded at the end of the 2000-2001 academic year. Columbia expects to name a new dean by the start of the 2002-2003 academic year.

"This is one of leading schools of social work in the country," said Kamerman. "As interim dean, I will be in a position to build a solid platform for the next dean by working on the major tasks currently confronting the school. I hope to move the school forward in planning the new building, recruiting new faculty, exploring curricular needs, and supporting junior faculty and students."

In 2002, the school will begin construction of a $64 million, 115,000 square ft. facility, which will be located on Amsterdam Avenue between 121st and 122nd Streets. Scheduled for completion in fall 2004, the facility will be the first building in the school's history designed expressly for professional social work education. It will include electronic classrooms, seminar rooms, a multi-media center, a social work library and computer labs. Since its inception in 1898, the school has had five locations, including the Carnegie Mansion, located on Fifth Avenue at 91st Street.

Kamerman is director of the University's Institute for Child and Family Policy, an inter-disciplinary initiative designed to identify and address fundamental problems in the formulation, analysis, implementation, and evaluation of social policies toward children and families that are currently intractable.

In addition, she and Social Work Professor Emeritus Alfred J. Kahn co-direct the Clearinghouse on International Developments in Child, Youth and Family Policies (www.childpolicyintl.org). Funded by a grant from the W.T. Grant Foundation, the clearinghouse is a web-based databank that provides cross-national, comparative information about the policies, programs, benefits and services available in the advanced industrialized countries to address child, youth and family needs.

Kamerman's co-authored works with Kahn include Starting Right: How America Neglects Its Youngest Children and What We Can Do About It (Oxford), Family Change and Family Policies in Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States (Oxford), and Big Cities in the Welfare Transition (Cross-National Studies Research Program).

During Feldman's deanship, the school created 10 endowed professorships, increased its endowment from $8 million to $57 million and raised the amount of financial aid available to its students to more than $2 million annually. In 1997, the School of Social Work established a formal working relationship with the United Nations, the only American school of social work to do so. Under this arrangement, the United Nations and the School of Social Work engage in mutually beneficial programs of training and research.

After a one-year sabbatical, Feldman will return to the School of Social Work faculty as the Ruth Harris Ottman Centennial Professor for the Advancement of Social Work Education and as the director of the Center for the Study of Social Work Practice. The center is a joint enterprise of the School of Social Work and the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services.