NASW Foundation National Programs

NASW Social Work Pioneers^®

Louise Proehl Shoemaker

Louise Proehl Shoemaker has had an illustrative career as a group worker, educator, and the Dean of the School of Social Work, University of Pennsylvania. In the 1940' and 1950's she worked in the Elliot Park Neighborhood Houae, Minnesota, the Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota, for the Maryland State Department of Public Welfare, and the Manhattanville Community Center of New York City.

Her teaching has not only been national but international in such schools as the Unitarian Service Committee, United States State Department, University of West Virginia, University of Hamburg, West Germany, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and the School of Social Work, University of Pennasylvania, where she was assistant professor, associate professor, acting dean, and dean.

She has been concerned throughout her career in working within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America about issues related to social justice and equality of women in the church as well as minority ministry. She has also been active and concerned about international matters and while Dean nof the School of Social Work, University of Pennsylvania she worked to attract more African American students and faculty and while Dean of the Pennsylvania School of Social Work boasted the University's highest percentage of African American faculty members.

She has traveled widely and has taught in schools of social work in Africa on many occasions. She adopted two orphans from Sudan who had previously spent 13 years in refugee camps. Both are now college students.

Louise was a charter member ofNASW having belonged to the predecessors of such organizations as AASW and AAGW. She is highly thought of throughout the Lutheran Church of America, international circles, by the field of group wokers, and social work education.

She graduated from the University of Illinois, cum laude, received her MSW from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work, an ABD from trhe University of Edinburgh, and a DSW from the University of Pennsylvania. She has conducted and written over three hundred institutes, lectures, and papers given in the Unired States, Europe, Africa and Asia..