Professor Sidel died on May 12, 2016. A Wellesley graduate with an MSW from Boston University, she began her career as a social worker in Boston. With two young children, she and her husband moved to New York when he was hired to head Social Medicine and Community Health at Montefiore Hospital.
On a trip to China in 1971, she examined the structures and policies affecting women and children. The result was Women and Childcare in China, her first book and a bestseller. She followed that with new studies, a PhD, and in 1978, a post at Hunter.
“I’ve been here ever since,” she told oral historian Cynthia Tobar shortly before retiring in 2012. “It’s the best job I ever had. I love it, and I love the students.” She taught courses on child welfare and women and leadership, co-founded the Welfare Rights Initiative, and wrote more influential books. One was Unsung Heroines, which fought stereotypes about single mothers. A few, written with her husband, compared family-support policies in the U.S. and Europe.
“Ruth was an extraordinary writer, a great scholar, and a role model who gave generously to the many students and colleagues she came to know,” says Professor Lynn Chancer, chair of the Department of Sociology. Professor Chancer also valued her friend’s sense of humor and groundbreaking approach to scholarship: “When she was attacking stereotypes of single mothers and poor and working-class women, few people were doing research in that vein.”
Students saw her as the perfect teacher as well. “Professor Sidel is a gem,” one wrote in a course evaluation. “Absolutely inspiring. Brilliant,” wrote another.
For these qualities and so much more, Ruth Sidel will be lovingly remembered and profoundly missed. In a final act of generosity to those she studied, wrote about and advocated for, she asked that any memorial donations be directed to Welfare Rights Initiative at Hunter College (wri-ny.org), 695 Park Avenue, Room E1222, New York, NY 10065.
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Professor Salmon died on May 11, 2016. He had retired in 2010 after devoting more than 40 years to the School of Social Work. He came to Hunter with an MSW from NYU and a doctorate from Columbia, and his brilliant tenure included service as associate dean, acting dean, executive officer of the One-Year Residency program, and scholarship director.
The winner of multiple teaching awards, he was admired by generations of students – many of whom credited their own success to his model of excellence. Many also owed their degrees to his ability to raise money for scholarships.
Professor Salmon was greatly admired by his colleagues as well – in large part, they say, because of the respect he gave others and his determination to build relationships across, and upheld by, human difference. Evident to all who knew him was his deep and abiding concern for people; that was his basic, most impactful way of caring about the world. His deep caring started at home, where he was a wonderful husband, father, and grandfather.
He passionately believed in advancing social work through innovation that maximized the field’s responsiveness to human needs. And by championing Hunter’s groundbreaking One-Year Residency work-study program, he enabled social-service workers to pursue their MSWs by integrating their existing jobs with traditional fieldwork. He also wrote influential, widely published articles on that program’s success in giving underrepresented groups an alternative path to a graduate degree.
In the eyes of all who knew him, Professor Salmon made Hunter, social work and the world a better place.
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