The California Social Work Hall of Distinction was established in 2002 to honor those involved in bringing about the betterment of society and to ensure that the contributions of social work leaders, innovators and pioneers would be recognized and preserved for the future.
The Hall of Distinction is located in the Montgomery Ross Fisher building on the campus of the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, California, and is maintained by the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work.
California is a state in the Pacific Region of the United States. With 39.6 million residents, California is the most populous U.S. state and the third-largest by area. The state capital is Sacramento. The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions, with 18.7 million and 9.7 million residents respectively. Los Angeles is California's most populous city, and the country's second most populous, after New York City. California also has the nation's most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The City and County of San Francisco is both the country's second-most densely populated major city after New York City and the fifth-most densely populated county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs.
The California Social Work Hall of Distinction was established by the California Social Welfare Archives, a non-profit organization formed in 1979 to collect materials that chronicle the history and diversity of social welfare in California, with an emphasis on Southern California. Initiated by the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, the Archives is creating access points to its historical database at social work schools and key social service agencies throughout the State of California.
Through 2016, there have been 99 honorees inducted into the California Social Work Hall of Distinction, including Dana W. Bartlett, Emory Bogardus, Barbara Lee, Biddy Mason, Dorothy Lonewolf Miller, Virginia Satir, Judith Wallerstein, and Mariko Yamada. A biography of each honoree is available on the California Social Work Hall of Distinction website.
Dana Webster Bartlett was an American Congregationalist minister, settlement house director, and writer. He was an early advocate of the City Beautiful movement.
Barbara Jean Lee is the U.S. Representative for California's 13th congressional district, serving since 1998. She is a member of the Democratic Party. The district, numbered as the 9th District from 1998 to 2013, is based in Oakland and includes most of northern Alameda County. She is the first woman to represent this district.
Bridget "Biddy" Mason was an African-American nurse and a Californian real estate entrepreneur and philanthropist. She is the founder of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, California. Born a slave, she developed a variety of skills and developed knowledge of medicine, child care, and livestock care. In California, she successfully petitioned a court for her freedom.
The University of Southern California is a private research university in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1880, it is the oldest private research university in California. For the 2018–19 academic year, there were 20,000 students enrolled in four-year undergraduate programs. USC also has 27,500 graduate and professional students in a number of different programs, including business, law, engineering, social work, occupational therapy, pharmacy, and medicine. It is the largest private employer in the city of Los Angeles, and generates $8 billion in economic impact on Los Angeles and California.
Emory S. Bogardus was a prominent figure in the history of American sociology. Bogardus founded one of the first sociology departments at an American university, at the University of Southern California in 1915.
Brad Edward Budde is a former American college and professional football player who was an offensive guard in the National Football League (NFL) for seven seasons during the 1980s. Budde played college football for the University of Southern California (USC), and was an All-American and the winner of the Lombardi Award. He was a first-round pick in the 1980 NFL Draft, and played professionally for the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs.
Irvine "Cotton" Eugene Warburton was an American college football quarterback (1933) who became a film and television editor with sixty feature film credits. He worked for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and for the Walt Disney Studios, and is probably best known for his editing of Mary Poppins (1964).
The University of Southern California Gould School of Law, located in Los Angeles, California, is a law school within the University of Southern California. The oldest law school in the Southwestern United States, USC Law had its beginnings in 1896, and was officially established as a school of the university in 1900.
Suzanne Lacy is an American artist, educator, and writer, professor at the USC Roski School of Art and Design. She has worked in a variety of media, including installation, video, performance, public art, photography, and art books, in which she focuses on "social themes and urban issues." She served in the education cabinet of Jerry Brown, then mayor of Oakland, California, and as arts commissioner for the city. She designed multiple educational programs beginning with her role as performance faculty at The Feminist Studio Workshop at The Woman's Building in Los Angeles.
The School of Social Welfare of the University of California, Berkeley, was established June 1, 1944 and is located in Haviland Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Its focus is preparing social work professionals for the public and nonprofit sectors. Berkeley Social Welfare offers an Undergraduate Major in Social Welfare with the College of Letters and Science (L&S), the M.S.W., and the Ph.D. Haviland Hall includes its own library, founded in 1957, which contains approximately 34,400 volumes and 200 active serial titles. The library originally housed volumes specifically for the social work field but was expanded in 2014 to include education, psychology and public policy.
The academics of the University of Southern California center on The College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, the Graduate School, and its 17 professional schools.
Delta Kappa Alpha (ΔΚΑ) is a national gender-inclusive cinematic professional fraternity founded in 1936, at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, United States.
Sebastian Ridley-Thomas is an American politician who served in the California State Assembly. A Democrat, he represented the 54th Assembly District, which includes the Los Angeles County communities of Century City, Culver City, Westwood, Mar Vista, Palms, Baldwin Hills, Windsor Hills, Ladera Heights, View Park, Crenshaw, Leimert Park, Mid City, and West Los Angeles.
Dorothy Lonewolf Miller was a Blackfoot activist from Iowa. She was a union organizer, social worker and health care advocate, who participated in the Alcatraz occupation, providing support at the health clinic established on the island. She spent 40 years researching social issues and providing social services to Native Americans, children, prisoners, and mental health patients in California and was posthumously inducted into the California Social Work Hall of Distinction in 2004.
Frances Lomas Feldman (1912–2008) was an American social worker and professor at the University of Southern California. She is perhaps best known for conducting a milestone, multi-year three-volume study in the 1970s for the American Cancer Society which provided the first systematic evidence that cancer patients faced discrimination in the workplace. Her areas of teaching had to do with social welfare, including its history, welfare policy, and administration. Her research and writings examine the psychological, social, and economic meanings of money and work in American families.
Celeste Strack Kaplan, was an American social worker, educator, and activist. From 1973 to 1982, she served as executive director for El Nido Family Services, and in 1983 helped found and served as the initial president of the Los Angeles Roundtable for Children until 1990. She was also a professor at the University of Southern California School for Social Work from 1983 to 1990, and helped create the LA County Department of Children and Family Services in 1984. In 2012 she was selected for the Social Work Hall of Distinction.
Ann Shaw was an American social worker and civic leader based in Los Angeles for five decades. Shaw was a leader of the YWCA of the Greater Los Angeles for two terms and the first African American to head the organization and the first woman and first African American to serve on the California Commission on Judicial Performance.
The USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, a school of the University of Southern California, was founded in 1920 with the mission to "improve the well-being of vulnerable individuals and communities, advance social and economic justice, and eradicate pressing societal problems in complex and culturally diverse urban environments throughout Southern California, the nation and the world." The school's central location is Los Angeles, California, although it also holds academic centers in San Diego and Irvine.
Zdenka Buben was an American public health social worker that pioneered the development of many professional standards.
The Grand Challenges for Social Work is an initiative spearheaded by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.
The Coalition for Grieving Students is a collaboration of national organizations representing the full range of school professionals, convened to develop and provide free training materials to schools providing support to grieving students. The Coalition is led by the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement.
Hortensia Amaro is a Cuban-American educator and former director. Amaro was born in Cuba and later moved to Los Angeles, California, where she discovered that there was a demand for public health services in her area, particularly by immigrants and minorities. Amaro has assisted in the development and implementation of numerous treatment and prevention models as well as the creation and establishment of several clinical interventions and programs dedicated to substance abuse, mental health and HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention that target women and minorities. Currently, Amaro resides in California as Dean’s Professor of Social Work and Preventative Medicine and Associate Vice Provost of Community Research Initiatives at the University of Southern California.
Erick Guerrero is a healthcare and organizations scholar.
