2 C o l u m b i a U n i v e r s i t y RECORD November 12, 2003

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(UPS 090-710 ISSN 0747-4504)Vol. 29 No. 5, November 12, 2003

A Glimpse of Columbia History . . .

A portrait of the 1886 Summer Surveying School, School of Mines. According to the 1886-87 CU Handbook of Information, the course insurveying was taken between the second and third years. Students underwent a six-week course with exercises in surveying and theconstruction of maps using progressively accurate methods.

PHOTO COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES AND COLUMBIANA LIBRARY

Columbia Mourns the Death of Social Work Professor Howard Polsky

Howard W. Polsky, pro-fessor of social work,died on Sunday, Oct.

19, in New York.A distinguished educator,

researcher and prolific author,Polsky had been teaching atColumbia’s School of SocialWork since 1961. His researchinterests focused on juveniledelinquency and treatment; orga-nizational development; stafftraining; corrections institutions;family life education; children’sservices and more. In 1998 hecreated a popular new researchcourse, “Social Work andEthnography.”

In the 1950s and 1960s he wasone of the pioneers who usedsocial science knowledge, partic-ularly sociology, to improvesocial service programs.Throughout his career, Polskyplayed an important role indefining social advocacy for seg-ments of the population who areconfronted with inequalities ineveryday life.

Polsky’s seminal work Cot-tage Six, The Social System ofDelinquent Boys in ResidentialTreatment is regarded as a socialwork classic. The book has beentranslated into four languagesand more than 40 years after itsinitial publication in 1962 itinfluences research and practicethroughout the field of children’sinstitutions. His formulation ofyouth and adult peer structures inthe book, known as the “Polsky

Diamond,” is still used as a diag-nostic tool.

Everyday Miracles: The Heal-ing Wisdom of Hasidic Storieswas a best-seller. Its popularityprompted Polksy to conductseminars about the book inlibraries throughout New YorkCity and in Jewish centers andhomes for the elderly.

For Polsky, the capstone of hiscareer came with MainstreamingInstitutions: From Custodialismto Community in ResidentialCare, written with his wife RoniBerger. The thesis of the book,according to Polksy, is that it isas important for social servicesto change their normative andsocial structures as it is to “heal”or “empower” clients.

Among his other contribu-tions, Polksy was the principleinvestigator of the Child WelfareLeague of America’s OdysseyProject at Edwin Gould Acade-my in Westchester from 1994 to1998. The project was a nationalstudy of children and teenagersliving away from home in resi-dential treatment centers, grouphomes and foster care.

From 1987-1989 Polksy was amember of the New York CityFire Department Project plan-ning and management team. Theteam’s goal was to establish aworkplace climate conducive togender integration. He analyzedand diagnosed FDNY culture;and designed, trained and imple-mented the action programs. Theproject allowed him to fulfill achildhood dream of riding on afire engine.

Colin Morris.............Staff Writer and Production Editor for this issueMichelle Oh.............Calendar Editor

Columbia RECORD Staff

Published by theOffice of Public Affairs

t:212-854-5573 f:212-678-4817

June MassellVice President for Communications

and External Affairs

Susan Brown Assistant Vice President of Public Affairs

University’s Horst StormerBriefs Congressional Staff

Legislative Update

BY ELLEN S. SMITH

On Oct. 20, 2003,Congressional and keyFederal Agency staff

received an introductoryoverview of the key concepts innanoscience and nanotechnologyby leading scientists, amongthem Professor of Physics andApplied Physics Horst Stormerand Evelyn Hu, BC ‘69, GSAS‘75, scientific director, Nanosys-tems Institute, UC Santa Bar-bara.

The briefing was attended byclose to 100 staff and was coor-dinated by The Science Coalition(TSC), as part of its Science 101series to assist lawmakers inmaking informed policy deci-sions in this area.

The professors led the atten-dees through the groundbreakingscientific concepts behind nan-otechnology, or the art of manip-ulating materials on an atomic ormolecular scale and buildingmicroscopic devices. Theresearchers explained that manycore scientific disciplines such as

chemistry and physics interact toform the basis of nanoscience.They also described the poten-tial applications of the new sci-entific frontiers, noting that likeall scientific discoveries—evensuch common ones as theknife—this new technology canyield both positive and negativeuses.

The Science Coalition wasformed in the mid-1990’s toexpand and strengthen the feder-al government’s investment inuniversity-based scientific, med-ical, engineering and agriculturalresearch, its mission statementnoted. Sustained support forresearch across the entire rangeof scientific disciplines is themost important step the nationcan take to maintain America’sposition at the forefront of thescientific discovery, technologi-cal innovation, and economicgrowth in the 21st century.Columbia University was afounding member of the groupwhich includes 400 organiza-tions, with member universities(over 80) serving as the steeringcommittee.

Polsky received a B.A. fromUniversity of Chicago, 1949,and an M.S.W. in Group Work(1954) and Ph.D. in Social Psy-chology from the University of

Wisconsin (1957).He is survived by his wife

Roni Berger. The cause of deathwas complications from emer-gency heart surgery.

BY KRISTIN STERLING