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Gerry Schamess’ Mark Beloved mentor remembered as approachable and generous
For more than three decades, Gerald Schamess was a beloved teacher, mentor, advisor, consultant and friend to generations of SSW students. In these hundreds of relationships, on campus and off, as well as through his scholarly writing and clinical practice, Schamess left an indelible mark on the field of social work. Known to many as Gerry, he died June 28 at the age of 85. Colleagues and former students remembered him as a teacher and clinician who was exceedingly generous with his time, compassionate, empathetic, and curious about people, and humble and funny with an ironic wit. “He worked closely with the students, and he was revered by them,”
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said Katherine Gabel, A.B. ’59, M.S.W., Ph.D., J.D., dean of the School from 1976 to 1985. “He was very down-toearth, and he was a good storyteller. He was approachable.” During her tenure as dean, Gabel said she and Schamess and Associate Dean Dorcas Bowles, M.S.W. ’60, ran the School as an administrative team, with Schamess serving as clinician in chief. At a time when the School had a near exclusive focus on the clinical side of the profession with little attention given to social policy, “Gerry had a foot in both,” she said. He joined the faculty in 1960, and, over the years, held numerous positions. He edited the “Smith College Studies in Social Work” for 13 years,
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co-chaired the Ph.D. program, taught countless courses, served as faculty field advisor and Associate Dean and published extensively. SSW Professor of Social Work Kathryn Basham, Ph.D., LICSW, who has been on the faculty for 27 years, said Schamess was a primary teacher, mentor and advisor when she was a Ph.D. student in the late ’80s and instrumental in her move to the faculty in 1992. She said he was known for drawing deeply from his extensive clinical work in his scholarly research as well as in his teaching. “He’s been a leader in the field of social work. He was a practitioner-scholar whose scholarship was grounded in his work with individuals,
