NASW Foundation National Programs

NASW Social Work Pioneers^®

David M. Austin (1923- )

David Austin grew up in Wisconsin and received his BA from Lawrence College in 1943.  He was one of the first group of social work students supported through the GI Bill following WWII, and entered Western Reserve University’s School of Applied Social Sciences in 1946.  At SASS he studied with Grace Coyle in group work and Dean Leaonard W. Mayo in community organization, graduating in 1948 with an MS in Social Administration.

Following graduation he worked in group work and community planning positions in Boston and Cleveland.  In 1963, he headed Cleveland’s planning team which prepared the first comprehensive community-based action proposal funded under the 1961 President’s Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime.   He entered Brandeis University’s Florence Heller Graduate School in 1965, and received his PhD in Social Welfare in 1969. 

David Austin’s extensive teaching career includes four years (1969-1973) at the Florence Heller School, and 24 years at the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Bert Kruger Smith Centennial Professorship.   He has received UT-Austin’s Lora Lee Pederson Teaching Excellence Award (1982-1983), and University Outstanding Graduate Teacher Award (1989).   He administered the School’s Center for Social Work Research (1974-1979), and served as the School’s acting Dean (1991-1993).  Recently, he has coordinated a program of collaboration between the School of Social Work and Facultad de Trabajo Social of the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon in Monterray, Mexico.

David Austin has served on the Board of Directors of NASW (1963-1966); the Educational Planning Commission of the Council on Social Work Education (1979-1989); the Board of Directors of the American Public Welfare Association (1980-1982); and the Board of Directors of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (1983-1988).   He has been recognized by NASW with the President’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Research (1992), and by CSWE with the Significant Lifetime Achievement Award (1997).

David Austin is married to Zuria Farmer Austin who also received her MSSA from the School of Applied Social Sciences in 1948, and practiced as a social caseworker in Cleveland and Boston.

Social Work Pioneer - 1997