Indiana University School of Social Work Professor, Dr. Bob Vernon, is set to retire in 2021. During Dr. Vernon’s career, he has worked in the Department of Urban Affairs for the University of California San Diego, Disaster Services for the American Red Cross, as well as served as an Assistant Professor of Social Work at San Diego State University and also at Keuka College in New York. Additionally, Dr. Vernon worked as an Associate Professor of Social Work and served as the Program Director at the University of Indianapolis. Below is a question-and-answer session with Dr. Bob Vernon on his career in social work.

Q: Did you choose social work or did social work choose you?
A: A bit of both. I was a community organizer long before studying social work. Service leadership comes naturally. I organized a chapter of Future Teachers of America while in high school. As an undergraduate, I revived UCLAmigos in my first university year. UCLAmigos was a student organization that was completing abandoned Peace Corps training sites in Tijuana, Baja California. We built clinics, schools, and orphanages. I took the organization from about twenty volunteers to over two hundred. It remains active. As a senior, I was elected to the UCLA Student Government Board as Commissioner of Community Service and managed twelve student-service organizations. I helped develop an additional tutorial program for children with disabilities. I graduated “Southern Campus Honor Senior” for this service work. On graduation, I worked for General Telephone as an installer and was very active in our union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. I discovered social work somewhat later. It seemed a natural fit, especially the research, policy, and macro dimensions.

Q: What have been the benefits of being a social worker?
A: Social work has provided many opportunities for program development and policy advancement. This is especially true for social work education. As an adjunct at San Diego State University, I was honored to co-chair their first BSW accreditation. This led to my developing two BSW programs from the ground-up plus MSW Direct. Service opportunities have been excellent as well. I was elected to the national CSWE Board of Directors and subsequently served on its Accreditation Commission. I love to travel and have been an accreditation site visitor for over thirty programs throughout the country. Practice opportunities have also provided major benefits. I have a varied practice history including neighborhood development through War on Poverty programs. I was a Red Cross caseworker with the first wave of Vietnamese refugees in 1975, working on family reunification, unaccompanied minors, and special cases. In addition, I have been active in rural and urban housing development with students, exploring virtual world supports for people with disability challenges, rural aging action research, and fourteen years a volunteer practitioner in adult day care.

Q: What have been some challenges you faced?
A: Challenges are opportunities. One challenge has been getting clinical colleagues to understand the value of technology, and how it impacts so many dimensions of modern life. Another challenge has been getting colleagues to see macro practice as just as legitimate in our profession as clinical work.

Q: How has the field of social work evolved?
A: The knowledge base for our profession has increased by at least an order of magnitude since I studied for my MSW. Our use and reliance on technology has vastly changed. I am very committed to technology in social work. Dr. Darlene Lynch and I wrote the first book on using the Web in social work, over twenty years ago. Together, we presented on technology and social work over forty times during the last three decades. I was one of three co-authors writing the initial technology policy for “Social Work Speaks.” I wrote most of the standards for using technology in macro practice for the first CSWE-NASW Standards on technology. I also provided technical support for the more recent CSWE-NASW-ASWB Standards for using technology in practice. And technology continues to shape social work practice and education.

Q: What has social work taught you?
A: Always be amazed at the spectacle and spectrum of human behavior and the social environment.

Q: How has working at the School impacted your life?
A: IUSSW has been an altogether delight. The opportunities for program development and leadership have been excellent. I was able to start the school’s Technology Committee, serve as Chair of the Faculty Senate, and lead the school through a strategic planning cycle. The level of collegiality is tremendous. People support each other very well and there is a very strong culture of respect and valuing of our many skills and experiences. Being awarded the 2019 national CSWE award for Leadership and Service was incredibly affirming. The supports from the IUSSW made this possible!

Q: What words of wisdom would you like to share with current and future social workers?
A: Partner with colleagues who have different skill sets. Dr. Lynch, for example, is a NASW Clinical Diplomat. For me, “DSM” means “Dynamic Systems Management.” Our work together has been incredibly synergistic because of our mutual interest in technology and major practice differences. Don’t look for opportunities that simply match your skills and interests. Instead seek opportunities that will take you to a new level. In the words of Bob Dylan, “He who isn’t busy being born is busy dying.” Mentor! It costs nothing. It promotes everything! Just remember: Society has three institutions for preventing individuals from screwing it up: Prisons, mental hospitals, and universities! Always keep that sense of humor intact!

Q: What is a fun memory of working with the school?
A: Developing MSW Direct. Dean Patchner used to joke that he could lead our faculty into a burning building easier than developing online social work education. Then, Marilyn Flynn, Dean at the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work, announced that she had 2000 online MSW students. This certainly got the faculty’s attention and made our developing MSW Direct a lot easier! (Marilyn chaired my doctoral dissertation committee, by the way. Tech is still a small world.) A second fun memory has been subjecting unsuspecting MSW students to the mysteries of my infamous Elizabethan “Overseers of the Poore” lecture.

Q: What is the first thing you are going to do as a retiree?
A: I published a children’s game on the origins of writing almost fifty years ago. “The Talking Rocks” is based on migrating nomads leaving pictograph messages for other wanderers to discover. As soon as COVID permits, I plan to travel and see pictographs and petroglyphs from the last ice-age in France. Definitely a long-term goal on my bucket list. Remember my being on the CSWE Board and Accreditation Committee? This amounted to six years and eighteen all-expenses paid trips to Washington D.C. Hard duty but someone had to do it. During these trips I became an approved “reader” at the Folger Shakespeare Library. As a result, I have a heck of a lot of notes on “Overseers of the Poore” from original materials there. I even have an electronic copy of the instruction manual that came out with the Poore Law. I plan to write my research up and circulate the script I developed for “Overseers of the Poore” so other colleagues may subject their students to the experience!