May 1, 2003 By: yunews
New York, NY, May 1, 2003 -- A small green face with bulging white eyes peers around the door of Prof. Daniel Pollack鈥檚 office. It is a hand puppet of Sesame Street鈥檚 Kermit the Frog, brought to life by Prof. Pollack whenever students鈥 or faculty members鈥 young children pass his office in Belfer Hall, home to YU鈥檚 Wurzweiler School of Social Work.
鈥淚 do it to make them feel more comfortable when they come here,鈥 Prof. Pollack says. 鈥淭he offices must look quite unfriendly to a small child.鈥
The associate professor of social work does such a convincing Kermit impression that, even after he emerges from behind the door to reveal his closely-cropped beard and slightly graying hair, children continue to talk back to the garrulous puppet in his right hand.
Such a creative approach comes easily to a father of two small children, but it says a lot about Prof. Pollack鈥檚 ability to leap from child鈥檚 play to serious intelle
鈥淪ocial work is a skeleton that needs more meat, and the meat is rigor and discipline.鈥
ctual study. The desire to find a more rigorous framework for helping people in need led him to pursue his JD in 1978, just one year after he received his master鈥檚 in social work.
鈥淪ocial work is a skeleton that needs more meat, and the meat is rigor and discipline,鈥 says Prof. Pollack. 鈥淚t is research that is reality-based, that makes a difference. It鈥檚 not research just for the sake of writing articles and getting them published. It鈥檚 the marriage of one discipline to the other that I find interesting.鈥
Prof. Pollack spent 15 years working in state and human-service agencies and departments before joining Wurzweiler鈥檚 faculty in 1992. As the assistant general counsel to the Ohio Department of Youth Services in Columbus, he worked extensively with the state鈥檚 juvenile courts on cases of abuse, theft, and drug use, and handled arbitration and union matters and real estate deals. Before that, he was executive assistant to the Ohio Governor for health and human services, providing legal advice on mental health and aging.
Such issues dominate his research. Prof. Pollack is a prolific writer, publishing regularly in social work and law journals and addressing conferences across the country. He also writes two regular columns, has published two books, co-edits Wurzweiler鈥檚 Social Work Forum journal, and edits Jlaw.com, a Web site on Halakhah (Jewish law) and American law. Earlier this year, he became a senior fellow of the Center for Adoption Research at the University of Massachusetts.
Marrying Law and Social Work
Unique among Wurzweiler faculty for his expertise in law and social work, he applies these twin insights to his MSW courses, as well as in classes he teaches at YU鈥檚 Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration.
