Columbia University New York, N.Y. 10027 Office of Public Information (212) 854-5573
Ruth Harris Ottman, an alumna and benefactor of the Columbia University School of Social Work, has donated $1 million to create an endowed professorship to celebrate the school's forthcoming centennial in 1998. to advance social work education.
The new chair, tThe Ruth Harris Ottman Centennial Professorship for the Advancement of Social Work Education, will be held by the dean of the school. It was established by the Columbia Trustees at their October meeting, and. Dean Ronald Feldman was named its first incumbent., a preeminent scholar in social work today, immediately assumes the new position.
Ms. Ottman is the only donor in the history of the school whose generosity has helped endow allowed for the creation of two named professorships. In 1991, she established the Ruth Harris Ottman Professorship in Family and Child Welfare. , now held by Professor Sheila Akabas. A 1945 graduate of the school, Ms. Ottman has been a practicing social worker in the San Francisco Bay area for more than 30 years.
Dean of the School of Social Work since 1986, Ronald Feldman is known nationally as a leading scholar in the field of adolescent mental health and as a pioneer in developing research on the effectiveness of group treatment for children.
A former administrator of Father Flanagan's Boys Home, he gained national media attention in the last year as his opinion was sought in the political controversy over the value of orphanages. Dean Feldman , which he views orphanages as a costly alternative to community-based social work programs for at-risk youngsters.
Dean Feldman came to Columbia from Washington University,(St. Louis), where he was professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, a recipient of the University's Distinguished Faculty Award, and founding director of the Center for Adolescent Mental Health. Previously he was a faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley (1966-68), a Fulbright Lecturer in Ankara, Turkey (1968-69) and deputy director of Father Flanagan's Boys Home in Boys Town, Neb. (1974-78). He has been a consultant to government agencies and private youth service agencies and has contributed numerous articles to scholarly journals. He is co-author of nine books, including Volumes I and II of Advances in Adolescent Mental Health. He is senior author of Contemporary Approaches to Group Treatment; The St. Louis Conundrum: The Effective Treatment of Antisocial Youths and Children at Risk: In the Web of Parental Mental Illness.
He is a 1960 graduate of the University of Buffalo and earned the Ph.D. in social work and sociology at the University of Michigan in 1966.
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