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Roger Miller Remembered Colleagues recall Miller’s keen intellect, tireless work ethic, warmth and humility
BY LA UR I E LO IS E L
The year was 2013, and at 86, this was to be Roger Miller’s last dissertation committee, one of the hundreds he had served on during his more than three decades as a faculty member and adviser. He was asked by a medical social worker who was planning to research the near-death experiences of patients in intensive care to serve on her panel, remembers his longtime colleague Professor Kathryn Basham, M.S.W. ’90, Ph.D., LICSW. “He was fascinated with the topic,” Basham recalled, but with his health failing, he would only agree to serve if she promised to cover for him if he died before the project was finished. Miller did not die, but toward the end of the student’s dissertation process, he fell ill with a serious health issue that landed him in the hospital and off the grid for a time. Once out of the hospital, he reached out to the student, informing her that he’d had, if not a near-death experience, something he described as a milder version of one. He told her he had chronicled his experience in writing. “She was so stunned,” Basham said, “that he was thinking of her and her work and then took notes on it!” Later, Basham and the student pro posed celebrating the occasion, know ing it was Miller’s final committee. Miller was reluctant but finally allowed them to take him out for lunch. “ ‘This is just what I do—it was a privilege for me to work with her,’ ” he told Basham later. “His humility was remarkable,” she said. The story is a prime example of who he was—a deep thinker, devoted to rigorous research and a passionate supporter of students making their mark as scholars and clinicians. Miller died after a brief illness on December 14, 2018, a week before his
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Roger Miller, pictured here in 1972, was remembered by former students as a good and patient educator.
93rd birthday. SSW friends and former colleagues remember Miller for his out standing stewardship, in equal measure, of clinical social work and scholarly research. They said he was a kind and caring colleague, and an adviser who held students to high standards, but worked with them tirelessly to support them in completing their dissertations and making a mark in the field. “He was a brilliant theoretician and researcher who linked everything to direct clinical practice,” said Basham, who had been his student and then worked with him as a colleague. “His focus on theory and thinking in research was palpable,” said Professor James Drisko, M.S.W. ’77, Ph.D., who met Miller in 1976 when he was a second year M.S.W. student at Smith, and then went on to become a colleague when he joined the faculty.
S M I T H COL L E G E SCHO O L FO R SO CIAL WO RK
Miller, he said, pushed students to produce high-quality research that highlighted complex themes. “He made sure that research was well-respected in a program that was heavily clinical,” said Drisko. Miller served as director of the School’s doctoral program from when it started in 1964 until 1993, and for many years, he was editor of Smith Studies in Social Work. In these roles he oversaw dissertations, nurtured quality research and influenced the careers of countless social workers. “He felt the mission of the school was to train scholar-practitioners,” said Dean Emeritus Howard Parad. “It was not a new idea, but it was an idea that was mostly treated rhetorically.” As dean, Parad recruited Miller to join the faculty in 1960 and then appointed him to be the founding
