Retired Faculty & Professors Emeriti

With over 100 publications in books and journals on adolescent mental health, Dr. Feldman is a respected authority on teens at risk for antisocial behavior.

Dr. Ronald A. Feldman has served as a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley School of Social Welfare and the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University, St. Louis where he also was Acting Dean and a recipient of the university-wide Distinguished Faculty Award.  At CUSSW he has served as Associate Dean (1985-1986) and Dean (1986-2001). He also was a Fulbright Lecturer at the Social Services Academy, Ankara, Turkey, a visiting lecturer at the University of Hawaii, and Resident Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center, Bellagio, Italy. Dr. Feldman is a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.

Among his main scholarly and teaching interests are adolescent mental health, youth development, group work practice, and contemporary professional education. Dr. Feldman was Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Youth Development at Boys Town, Nebraska and Founding Director of the Center for Adolescent Mental Health at Washington University, St. Louis and Columbia University. He has served as a trustee, director or board member of the William T. Grant Foundation, the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, the Martha K. Selig Educational Institute, the International Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions, and schools of social work at the University of Pennsylvania, Case Western Reserve University, and Washington University, St. Louis. He also has served as Chairman of the Commission on Educational Policy of the Council on Social Work Education, Vice Chairman of the Task Force on Social Work Research of the National Institute of Mental Health, sole social work member of the Institute of Medicine’s Board on Biobehavioral and Mental Disorders, U.S. delegate for Oxford University Press, and board member of the Council on Social Work Education, the National Network of Social Work Managers, the Inter-University Consortium on International Social Development, and the Society for Social Work and Research. He has been honored by proclamations from the Missouri House of Representatives, the Manhattan Borough President, and Senator Charles E. Schumer.

Dr. Feldman is the senior author, co-author or co-editor of 10 scholarly books (including Contemporary Approaches to Group Treatment, The St. Louis Conundrum: The Effective Treatment of Antisocial Youths,and Children at Risk: In the Web of Parental Mental Illness).and the author or co-author of 100 publications in professional journals and books. He also has served as Principal Investigator for numerous funded research projects and as an expert witness in litigation regarding adolescent abuse, arson and suicide. In 2012 he was the recipient of the Lifetime Career Achievement Award conferred by the Society for Social Work and Research.

Received Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Michigan School of Social Work in 2016.

As a supervisor, manager, and senior leader of social service agencies, Dr. Greenberg teaches students how to use their clinical skills to move an organization’s vision forward.

Rick Greenberg, LCSW-R, is a clinician, educator, manager, and leader within the social work community of New York City. Prior to his appointment at the Columbia School of Social Work, he had been a senior leader at both Episcopal Social Services and the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, overseeing program divisions and support departments. As a consultant, coach, trainer, and supervisor, Dr. Greenberg works with individuals and organizations to advance clinical, program, and administrative expertise in supervision, management, and leadership, including program development and program evaluation. He conducts all his work through a lens of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice.

As a member of the CSSW Social Enterprise Administration faculty, Dr. Greenberg teaches across social work disciplines with courses in management, leadership, clinical practice, and evaluation. He teaches both residential and online classes. As an adjunct associate professor, he taught Research Methods in the Graduate School of Social Work at New York University for 33 years. He has also taught courses on topics including Differential Treatment Interventions, Linking Practice and Policy, Transference and Counter-Transference, and Assessment and Treatment Planning.

Dr. Greenberg holds a BA from the State University of New York at Buffalo, an MSW from New York University, a PhD from the Columbia School of Social Work, and a certificate from the Institute for Not-for-Profit Management Executive Leadership Program of the Columbia Business School.

With over 125 publications in peer-reviewed journals, Louisa Gilbert is a leading researcher on interventions for women suffering from the co-occurring conditions of gender-based violence, substance use, and HIV, in the United States and around the world.

Dr. Louisa Gilbert is a licensed social worker with over 25 years of experience developing, implementing, evaluating and disseminating multilevel interventions to address gender-based violence (GBV), HIV/AIDS, substance misuse, opioid overdose, and trauma among key affected communities. Her research has advanced evidence-based computerized GBV prevention models that have been integrated into a continuum of HIV prevention, testing, and treatment interventions. She has served as the co-director of the Social Intervention Group (SIG) since 1999 and co-founder and co-director of the Global Health Research Center of Central Asia (GHRCCA) since 2007.

Dr. Gilbert’s research has concentrated on developing and evaluating the effectiveness of implementing a continuum of evidence-based interventions to prevent intimate partner violence and other types of GBV among migrant women, women who use drugs, and women in the criminal justice system. These interventions are now being implemented in a range of organizations in the United States, India, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and Ukraine. She has published on the co-occurring problems of gender-based violence, HIV, substance misuse, and overdose among key affected populations of women. Her research has been largely funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Dr. Gilbert holds a BA from Barnard College, and an MS, MPhil, and PhD from the Columbia School of Social Work.

Dr. Irwin Garfinkel is a world-leading researcher on poverty and the welfare state and a go-to resource for policymakers interested in anti-poverty programs at all levels of government.

Dr. Irwin Garfinkel is the Mitchell I. Ginsberg Professor Emeritus of Contemporary Urban Problems at the Columbia School of Social Work. 

Irwin Garfinkel conducts research on the benefits and costs of existing and proposed welfare state programs. He has examined both universal programs, including national health insurance, child allowances, an assured child support benefit, and basic income as well as means tested programs including Food Stamps, TANF and its predecessor AFDC, and the benefits and costs of means testing as compared to universality. A social worker and economist by training, Dr. Garfinkel’s book Wealth and Welfare States: Is America Laggard or Leader? (Oxford University Press, 2010) and paper “Welfare State Myths and Measurement” challenge widespread half-truths, such as that the American welfare state is small and has always been a laggard, and most important, that the welfare state undermines productivity. In all, he is the author of over 200 articles and 16 books or edited volumes on poverty, income transfers, program evaluation, single-parent families and child support, gene-environment interactions, and the welfare state.

Much of Garfinkel’s work has focused on the economic insecurity of single mothers and their children and policies designed to increase their security. From 1980-1990, he was the principal investigator of the Wisconsin Child Support Study. His research on child support influenced legislation in Wisconsin, other American states, the U.S. Congress, Great Britain, Australia, and Sweden.

His most recent research focuses on the benefits and costs of a universal child allowance.  He served on the National Academy of Science Panel that produced the 2019 report “A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty.” Child allowances were the centerpiece in two of the four program combinations recommended by the committee.  

In 1998, in partnership with his wife, Sara McLanahan of Princeton University, Dr. Garfinkel initiated the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Nearly 5,000 children in 20 large American cities were enrolled in the study at birth and are now in their early 20’s. In 2012, in collaboration with Chris Wimer, Jane Waldfogel, and Julien Teitler, with funding from the Robin Hood Foundation, he initiated the New York City Longitudinal Survey of Well-being, called the Poverty Tracker.  The Poverty Tracker collects representative longitudinal data from New York City residents to track the dynamics of poverty and wellbeing in the city over time.

Dr. Garfinkel was co-founding director (2007-2014) of  the Columbia Population Research Center and also co-founding director (2014-2022) of the Columbia Center on Poverty and Social Policy  . Previously, Dr. Garfinkel served as the director of the Institute for Research on Poverty from 1975-1980, and the School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin from 1982-1984. He also served as Interim Dean of CSSW from 2017 to 9/2019.

Garfinkel holds a BA in History from the University of Pittsburgh, an MA in Social Work from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in Social Work and Economics from the University of Michigan.

Edward Joseph Mullen is the Willma and Albert Musher Professor Emeritus, previously serving as CSSW Acting Dean and Associate Dean. Before joining the Columbia University faculty, he was a tenured professor at the University of Chicago and Fordham University. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Bibliographies in Social Work, Oxford University Press.

Dr. Mullen’s scholarly work has focused on social work practice research, mental health services research, and evidence-based policy and practice implementation, contributing to the development of rigorous methods for assessing policy and practice outcomes. Dr. Mullen has authored numerous books, book chapters, and journal articles, contributing significantly to the profession’s knowledge base. His scholarship is the subject of the festschrift: Soydan, H. (Ed.) (2015). Social work practice to the benefit of our clients: Scholarly legacy of Professor Edward Joseph Mullen. Bolzano, Italy: Bolzano University Press.

Dr. Mullen has held numerous research leadership roles, including as principal investigator for multiple National Institute of Mental Health-funded predoctoral and postdoctoral mental health services training programs at the University of Chicago and Columbia University. He has directed several prominent research centers, including the Institute of Welfare Research, Community Service Society of New York; Center for the Study of Social Work Practice, Columbia University and the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services; and the Willma and Albert Musher Program for Life Betterment through Science and Technology, Columbia University.

Dr. Mullen has been a leading contributor to international social work and social welfare research, notably as a co-founder of a European network of social work research centers that fostered collaboration and advanced research in social welfare across Europe. Dr. Mullen led the Asia Society’s Southeast Asia Development Advisory Group as Deputy Chairman of the Vietnam-Laos-Khmer Panel. He has held leadership positions with the Networks of Centres of Excellence of Canada. He is contributing to social research methods education in China through the Beijing-based GEC Academy.

Dr. Mullen earned his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University and holds both a B.A. and M.S.W. from the Catholic University of America. Over the course of his career, he has been honored with numerous awards and recognitions, including the Distinguished Alumni Award from the National Catholic School of Social Services at the Catholic University of America, election as a Fellow of the prestigious American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, and induction into the Columbia School of Social Work Hall of Fame.

Barbara Levy Simon taught in the master’s and doctoral program at CSSW from 1986-2019. Her books include Never-married Women (1987) Temple University Press; The Empowerment Tradition in American Social Work: A History (1994) Columbia University Press; and The Columbia Guide to Social Work Writing (2012), co-edited with Warren Green – Columbia University Press. Her research focuses on the historical interplay between social movements and the profession of social work in the U.S. Three of her more recent historical publications are:

• “A Microhistory of Cross-Class Feminism in New York City,1907–1911: The Activism of Carola Woerishoffer,” (2023), Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work, 38(1), 40-54.
• “Berlin’s municipal socialism: A transatlantic muse for Mary Simkhovitch and New York City,” (2020), Chapter 3, 35-50 in The Settlement House Movement Revisited: A Transnational History, edited by John Gal & Stefan Kongeter, Policy Press.
• “Sense and sensibility: Dual  knowledge  bases   of Greenwich House, NYC,1902–1920,” Qualitative Social Work (2018), Vol. 17(6) 814–831.

Simon serves as the Book Review Editor of Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work since 2017.  

A popular teacher of MSW students, Dr. Werman draws on a wealth of experiences ranging from running her own clinical practice for many years to serving as an evaluator of social welfare programs. She is well versed in nontraditional therapeutic approaches such as wilderness and outdoor therapy, and animal-assisted therapy.

Dr. Amy Werman, LCSW, has been in clinical practice with individuals and couples for over 20 years. Over the course of her career, she has held positions in medical social work, direct clinical practice, research, program evaluation, and social work education.

Dr. Werman describes her professional path as “anything but linear,” and her experience spans a range of therapeutic models. Her doctoral research built on her interest in family modality and focused on the negative consequences of father-mother-child relationship triangles. Upon receiving her doctorate, she worked on an NIMH study of adolescents with bipolar disorder and developed a specialty in mood disorders in her private practice. Dr. Werman has served as a program consultant and evaluator for Nirim in the Neighborhood and Pizgat Amir School, two organizations in Israel that intervene with at-risk youth using an intensive case management/wilderness therapy model. She has participated in several wilderness missions in the deserts of Israel. Dr. Werman and her pug, Gussie, are licensed by Pet Partners and HOPE AACR as a crisis-response therapy team. During a brief hiatus from social work while raising her young children, Dr. Werman also established a small baking business.

Dr. Werman holds an MSW from the Columbia School of Social Work (1982) and a DSW from Adelphi University School of Social Work (2001).

Allen Zweben, Ph.D. has been an active researcher in the addictions field for more than 40 years. His contributions to the addiction field have involved developing, adapting, and testing innovative behavioral treatments and medications for alcohol-related problems. Dr. Zweben has been principal investigator in large scale, multi-site, collaborative, NIH-funded clinical trials. He played a key role in developing and testing motivational enhancement therapy (MET), a brief intervention that employed motivational Interviewing strategies for alcohol-related problems. MET was tested and found to be a promising approach in a landmark study known as Project MATCH. Consequently, MET has been adapted and  employed in community agencies serving individuals having addiction and related problems He is co-author of a widely used textbook entitled “Treating Addiction: A Guide for Professionals” with Bill Miller and Alyssa Forcehimes.

Dr. Mui is a world-renowned social gerontologist in cross-cultural research. Her current focus is on dementia caregiving and on the validation of dementia screening instruments among community-dwelling older Chinese and Chinese American populations in New York City and globally.

Dr. Ada Mui is a social gerontologist specializing in cross-cultural research. She has extensive practice experience with older adults in Hong Kong and the United States. Her research interests include international gerontology, productive aging, older volunteers, age-friendly communities, self-care, family caregiving, medical care, community-based long-term care, psychological well-being, depression, religiosity, immigration, and acculturation experiences among older populations.

Dr. Mui’s awards and recognitions include a Fulbright Scholarship, the Fulbright Senior Specialist Award, the Busse Research Award from the Pan American Congress on Gerontology, and the Outstanding Mentorship Award from the Gerontological Society of America. She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and a faculty associate at the Center for Social Development at the Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Mui is also an honorary professor at Beijing Normal University, Beijing Youth Politics College, and the University of Hong Kong, China. She previously served as a fellow at the Sau Po Center on Aging at the University of Hong Kong. Dr. Mui holds a PhD from Washington University in St. Louis.