About the Editor

Marie Weil is Berg-Beach Professor of Community Practice and former Associate Dean at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill School of Social Work, where she teaches community practice, policy practice, and theory for social work intervention. She has led state-wide research and community-based planning and implementation initiatives in family support and family preservation and for adolescent family life programs, as well as consulting and conducting program evaluations for small nonprofits. Previously, she taught at the University of Southern California. She is the author or coauthor of thirteen books primarily focused on community practice; the author or coauthor of over thirty chapters related to community practice, feminist practice, and empowerment practice and service development for families and children; and more than 42 articles and monographs. She began her career working in community development in settlement houses in Philadelphia. She has served as Deputy Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity of Delaware and as Planning Director of the Wilmington Housing Authority. She is a founding member of the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration (ACOSA) and was the Founding Editor of the Journal of Community Practice, producing the first ten volumes. She is a recipient of ACOSAs Career Achievement Award.

About the Associate Editors

Michael Reisch is Professor and Director of the Multicultural Social Welfare History Project at the University of Michigan. He is the author or editor of more than 20 books and monographs, including The Road Not Taken: A History of Radical Social Work in the U.S., From Charity to Enterprise, and Social Work in the 21st Century, and more than 80 articles and book chapters on the history and philosophy of social welfare, community organization theory and practice, the nonprofit sector, and contemporary policy issues, particularly welfare reform. His work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, and Bulgarian, and he has lectured widely in Europe and Latin America. For more than 30 years, he has held leadership positions in national and state advocacy, professional, and social change organizations. He has directed or consulted on political campaigns at the federal, state, and local levels in [Page 698]four states and has been honored for his work by the Maryland State Legislature, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and numerous local and national nonprofit organizations, professional associations, and universities.

Dorothy N. Gamble is Clinical Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Social Work at Chapel Hill. A member of the faculty since 1978, she currently teaches courses relating to citizen participation and sustainable development, and has led summer school abroad courses to Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, and South Africa. Within the university, she had been working for the past five years with an interdisciplinary network to provide guidance for ethically grounded community-based education. She is on the advisory board of the Center for Sustainable Enterprise at the Kenan Flagler Business School, and she is a Center Associate at the Duke-UNC Rotary Center for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution. Her community service activities include numerous consultations with grassroots community groups and service on a number of public and nonprofit boards. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Community Practice and has written extensively in the areas of community practice and development.

Lorraine Gutiérrez is a member of the faculty in the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan, where she teaches courses in multicultural practice and community work. She is an internationally recognized scholar in the area of multicultural practice in social work and has published more than 35 books, chapters, and articles on topics such as multicultural organizational development, working with women of color, group work, empowerment practice, and multicultural community organizing. In addition to her scholarship and teaching in this area, she has served as a consultant on this topic to large and small organizations including the Council on Social Work Education, the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, and schools of social work throughout the United States. She has a strong commitment to using her scholarship to improve services on the local level.

Elizabeth A. Mulroy is Professor of Management and Planning at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, Baltimore. Her research interests include organizations and their environments, and families in neighborhood poverty. Her current research is on “Networks That Work,” a three-city study of diverse multisector collaborations and networks formed to collectively address large-scale social problems such as homelessness. Implications focus on the development of social environment theory to guide management and community practice. She is the author of numerous publications including the book The New Uprooted: Single Mothers in Urban Life (1995), is editor of Women as Single Parents: Confronting Institutional Barriers in the Courts, the Workplace, and the Housing Market (1988), and is writing a new book, New Perspectives on Management and Community Practice.

Ram A. Cnaan is Professor and Director of the Program for the Study of Organized Religion and Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work. He has published numerous articles in scientific journals on a variety of social issues and is the author of The Newer Deal: Social Work and Religion in Partnership and The Invisible Caring Hand: American Congregations and the Provision of Welfare. He is writing a book on the effect of congregations in urban America. He conducted [Page 699]the first national study on the role of local congregations in the provision of social services and has developed a related course. He is a national expert on nonprofit organizations and voluntary action with a specialty in the study of volunteerism and has studied the role of volunteers in human services, volunteer management, and volunteerism as a social construct. Most recently, he is studying the nexus between religion and volunteerism.