Herman Stein, President of IASSW (1968-1976), has for more than sixty years excelled as an educator, scholar, internationalist, university administrator, and leader in a variety of professional associations. From almost the beginning of his career, the world has been the stage on which he has played those many roles, all of them with an abundance of talent. In fact, while he was in the graduate programme of what is now the Columbia University School of Social Work, he had to decide whether to become a social worker or an actor. As an undergraduate, he became involved in student theatrical productions, where he teamed up with the famous comedian, Danny Kaye, who became a life-long companion and friend. At the end of Stein's first year in the social work programme, he was invited to join an off-Broadway variety show that helped to launch Kaye on his meteoric rise on both stage and screen. ‘If I´d joined,’ Stein has said, ‘the theatre probably was going to be where I would make my career as a character actor.’ Fortunately, for social work and social work education, he chose instead to continue his studies at the School of Social Work, from which he received his masters degree in 1941 and the doctoral degree in 1958.

While the world has been his stage, education has been at the heart of his manifold activities. Following a period of direct service practice as a caseworker in a well-known private agency in New York City, he was recruited by the Columbia School of Social Work in 1945 as a faculty member. With an interruption for a significant overseas assignment from 1947 to 1950, he continued at Columbia for another fourteen years, rising through all professorial ranks to Professor and Director of the School's Research Centre.

Educator and university administrator

During his years at Columbia, Stein became well-known throughout the profession for his talents as a teacher, his ground-breaking work on curriculum development, his remarkable international achievements, and the breadth of his vision for social work education. It was not surprising that he became a prized target for deanships in other schools, but it was not until 1964 that he was persuaded by Western Reserve University to become Dean of the School of Applied Social Sciences.