Image of Jack Rothman

Award: Significant Lifetime Achievement in Social Work Education Award

Professor Emeritus | University of California, Los Angeles

Dr. Jack Rothman’s professional accomplishments in social work education and practice span more than half a century. He has been a role model and mentor for three generations of social workers. For decades, his initial typology of community practice, first published in the 1960s, framed the discourse on teaching community organizing in social work education, and he was among the first social work educators to address the potential of community-based participatory research.

Throughout his career Rothman promoted innovation and change and working for social justice. He did so with particular attention to serving vulnerable populations; reducing poverty; and integrating the views of clients and constituents, especially those from racial and ethnic minority groups, into the processes of planning, program development, organizing, advocacy, and research. These values informed the dozens of books, monographs, book chapters, and journal articles he published and formed the basis of countless conference presentations and lectures in the United States and other countries.

Dr. Rothman’s organizational leadership includes positions held in the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration and the Council on Social Work Education. His other accomplishments include two senior Fulbright Research Fellowships (Great Britain and Israel); a Harry Lurie Fellowship; a Distinguished Service Award from Ohio State University; and consulting invitations from the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Task Force on Group Life in America, the Veterans Administration, and many other international, national, state, and local bodies.

The numerous awards he has received from professional colleagues in the United States and abroad reflect the breadth of his contributions and the esteem in which his professional colleagues hold him. To this day, Professor Emeritus Jack Rothman continues to inspire, provoke, teach, and encourage his colleagues.