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A chance to make a difference
September 3rd, 2009For dean Harvy Frankel getting into social work was a case of finding the right fit at the right time.
“I grew up in a family that really valued education,” Frankel said. A native Winnipegger, Frankel said both he and his brother Sid were drawn into social work. It probably didn’t hurt that he was growing up in the 1960s.
“Social issues and social consciousness were a very big deal for me,” Frankel said. He was heavily involved in the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) as a kid. The group had a very strong group work component, exposing him to many of the values of social work before he had ever taken a class in it.
“I think also the times were such that traditional professional careers were not all that appealing,” Frankel said. At least not for everyone.
“So law or medicine, those weren’t terribly appealing, if you wanted to make a difference you were attracted to another route. My apologies to the dean of law and the dean of medicine,” he added with a laugh.
“The other thing about social work that was so appealing and continues to be appealing to me is just the range, the vastness of social work; you can do anything from literally direct service to policy development to research, anywhere in the lifespan. You can work with prenatal issues or issues around dying and grief.”
He kicked off his education close to home, completing a bachelor of social work in 1976 at the University of Manitoba and moving into family therapy.
“At the beginning I thought I would be a practitioner for ever,” Frankel said. “These were the days when the family therapy movement was growing.” So when he headed to McGill a few years later to complete his master’s degree the goal wasn’t to get into academia but rather to specialize his skills as a practitioner in marriage and family therapy.
But instead, “I sort of got the research bug,” Frankel said. As a student he dug into questions surrounding the child welfare system and quickly found himself working as a research associate. He also did a lot of teaching as part of the project.
“So yeah, suddenly there were two of the three foci of an academic position – teaching and research – and I have to say I just really enjoyed the academic environment,” Frankel said.
Pursuing a PhD was a more complicated question. Doctoral programs in Canada were few and far between and the University of Toronto, the primary program, was not a good match for Frankel’s interests.
“I looked at the big three in the United States: Columbia, University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago.” California did have nicer weather, he noted with a laugh, and overall Berkeley felt like a good match.
There was a long tradition of Canadians heading to Berkeley to study social work, so Frankel had Canadian peers when he arrived and even ended up being joined by his brother while he was there. As with any move outside the country, half the education came simply from being in a new environment.
“It’s interesting, most Americans they assume we’re like them, because we speak the same language and share some of the same geography but the differences become clear in terms of them – and this is a gross generalization – having more of an emphasis on individualism and us on collectivism,” Frankel said. “But Berkeley is really an interesting community. It’s a lively somewhat leftwing community in an island of conservative California, like most American cities it was absolutely segregated which was our first real experience with that and that was probably the most jarring part.”
The cohort of students, however, were drawn from around the world, making the classroom a lively meeting place for ideas and approaches.
“It was really a nice exchange. We learned a lot from each other. We stay in touch to this day,” Frankel said. But as much as he enjoyed the experience, he was also in a hurry to get on with his academic career.
“I didn’t like this sort of albatross of a dissertation lying over my head and that kind of stuff. So I worked really hard and I finished in three years, which was the record at the time, I don’t know if it’s been beaten.”
Frankel and his wife Sandy Loewen – she was in social work as well and is now a social work manager in the health care system – had originally anticipated going back to Montreal after graduation. But a phone call from the U of M’s Peter Hudson tilted them to Winnipeg.
“We thought we would stay two or three years,” Frankel said. Instead they’ve been here over 20 and have had two children, Jessica, 16, and Julian, 20, a science undergrad at the U of M. It probably didn’t hurt that Frankel ended up being joined at the U of M by his brother Sid.
“He did his bachelors and masters here and PhD at Berkeley, we overlapped by a year,” Frankel said. “His area is really more research in social policy, focused on poverty reduction. We make a really good research team. Our interests and our strengths are different enough that we complement each other so we collaborated on a number of projects. I’ve become much more interested in poverty reduction as a result of our work together and he’s become more interested in the clinical.”
Frankel said coming back to the same school where he did his undergrad was a little nerve-wracking at first. But almost as soon he walked in the door one of his old professors was there to greet him as a colleague and he quickly settled in.
“Once I was tenured I began to flirt with academic administration, I directed a research group for a while and acted as associate dean when various associate deans were away, and then became associate dean,” Frankel said. Last year he took up the dean’s job. It was a chance to make a difference at the faculty level.
It’s a complicated faculty, teaching students at the bachelors, masters and PhD level, delivering certificate programs with the help of Extended Education, and teaching directly in rural communities through distance education and satellite programs.
“We’re also the only accredited social work program in the province. So we feel we have an obligation to serve the entire province,” Frankel said.
“Right now we’re reviewing both bachelors and masters programs. It has been at least a decade since they’ve had a review and social work, in some ways, has changed a lot in a decade. The importance of indigenous practice and aboriginal people in social work has intensified tremendously,” Frankel said. “We have more Aboriginal students than any other faculty, but we also have to have content and curricula that acknowledges Aboriginal practice and ways of thinking.”
The faculty also continues to debate how it should think about social work.
“We’re emphasizing anti-oppressive practice and social justice more than we have in the past,” Frankel said. “And that continues as we bring on new faculty members who have that sort of orientation, social work has always struggled with what in the professional literature is called the cause or function debate. Is social work about helping people adjust to the challenges of living in this society or is social work about social change?”
Some faculties choose sides and say broadly that they’re interested in social policy and social change. But given the University of Manitoba’s role as the only social work program in Manitoba, Frankel said they need to be balanced.
“We’re a faculty that says both, that we have an obligation to work on social change but we also have an obligation to work with people that are really effected by the current social structure.”
One of the current projects the faculty is looking at – along with a range of partners in the field – is creating a social work strategy to map out Manitoba’s needs. It would be similar to nursing strategies that the province has undertaken over the last few years that have seen the number of nurses graduating in the province expand.
“We think it is now time for a social work strategy, because a large number of social work positions are underfilled especially in the Aboriginal services,” Frankel said.
Beyond that, there are the day to day tasks of running the faculty, a job that Frankel said is made easier given the quality of staff and faculty members he has working around him.
“Being an internal dean can sometimes be really difficult but I have to say both faculty and staff have been incredibly welcoming, very enthusiastic, and everyone is working very hard,” Frankel said. Being dean has meant his research work has taken a hit. But he still keeps engaged in projects.
“I think a dean has to be prepared to speak on behalf of the faculty, the profession and if you’re in social work that means you need to be involved in what’s going on, you need to be current,” Frankel said. And while it’s generally as a favour for friends, he still engages in clinical practice on occasion, which means meeting directly with clients: the sort of direct engagement with people that attracted him to the field.
Posted in: Social Work