Hanson was the director of the school’s PhD program.

“Meredith was one of the elder statesmen of social work education, a thought leader, and dedicated researcher right until the end,” said Debra McPhee, PhD, dean of GSS.

He was also an avid amateur photographer in his spare time, said colleagues.

“He carried his camera everywhere, because he loved to capture people in their essence,” said his former student and friend Susan Taveras, GSS ’07.

A viewing will be held at Ortiz Funeral Home at 4423 Broadway from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 22. A service for the Fordham community will be announced soon.

Colleagues recalled that Hanson was consistently at his Lincoln Center campus office by 5 a.m. His hardworking ethos remained steadfast throughout his long illness, and he continued to work up until last Thanksgiving.

“I used to teach a class at 7:30 a.m. and he’d already been there for a couple hours,” said David Koch, PhD, director of the Bachelor of Arts program at GSS. “We regular mortals came in at a later hour.”

“There were so many times that I’d email him at 5:30 in the morning and he’d already be at his desk,” said Rebecca Linn-Walton, PhD, GSS ’15, one of his students. “He’d help me understand the problem, so that by the time I saw him at our 8 a.m. class, it would be solved.”

Hanson’s students praised his personal touch, and his colleagues recalled a scholar whose many papers on social justice and evidence-based practice took him to conferences around the globe.

Professor Robert Chazin, PhD, who collaborated on several papers with Hanson, said he’d presented his research worldwide—in Vietnam, the Ukraine, India, and Iceland, among others. His journal articles and national conference presentations were too numerous to mention.

Throughout, he said, Hanson had an uncanny ability to empathize and observe.

“When you watched him with people, he was extremely respectful, and gifted in an ability to draw them in,” said Chazin. “He was particularly committed to critical thinking and he created a place of safety where students could express themselves.”

Ali Flynt, GSS ’15, said that her penchant for perfectionism hadn’t prepared her for all the red markings that Hanson left on her papers. At first she was concerned, thinking that the markings were corrections, but on closer inspection she realized that Hanson’s comments were “a positive dialogue.”

“He had written feedback reacting to each sentence, suggesting different knowledge sources, and referencing other books that responded to my thoughts,” she said. “I cherished those papers and I really had trouble sticking to the page limit, because I wanted more comments from him.”

Taveras recalled Hanson taking a personal interest in her well-being one day when the stress of graduate school led her to erupt in tears outside of class.

“He used his sense of humor to get at the bottom of what was going on with me,” she said.

The two became good friends, said Taveras. She asked Hanson to be the godfather of her two children, Kristian and Kendrick—a role she says he relished. He continued to mentor Taveras and teach by example.

“He never gave an opinion; he’d allow you to think of the answer, and he never overstepped,” said Taveras, who said that she now incorporates Hanson’s style of letting clients “find their own solution” into her own practice.

“He lived this every second. He’d say, ‘You have to let people be who they are,’” she said.

Hanson elaborated on the concept in an Inside Fordham interview conducted in 2012.

“If clients perceive your work with them as very positive, you are going to have a bigger impact,” he said. “And part of being perceived as positive is being collaborative—engaging persons around their struggles and their issues, and drawing from them their own resources to resolve their problems.”

Hanson is survived by his sisters Helen Hanson and Margaret Ribble, four nieces and nephews, six grand-nieces and nephews, two godchildren, and his partner, Elizabeth Gricell Reyes.

It was Professor Hanson’s wish that any donations go toward the GSS PhD Scholarship Program. 

Some years ago, people interested in advanced clinical degrees went for a doctorate in social work (D.S.W.).

But in the last two decades—as the number of social work schools has increased around the country—a new track is flourishing: the social work doctorate of philosophy (Ph.D.).

At the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS), some would say the social work Ph.D. program is synonymous with Meredith Hanson, D.S.W., professor of social work and the program’s director. Since Hanson landed at Fordham some 15 years ago, he and his faculty colleagues have created the selective program, which currently enrolls 79 students and graduates five to six students each year.

Over the years, Hanson and his colleagues have designed and built the Ph.D. curriculum, which focuses on doing qualitative and quantitative research on social work practices and policies, from a social justice and human rights perspective.

“Social work is one of the growth areas in academia right now, in contrast to some humanities,” said Hanson, co-editor of Strength and Diversity in Social Work with Groups: Think Groups (Routledge, 2009). “We have more openings each year for social work faculty than we have Ph.D. graduates across the country.

“A Ph.D. graduate will end up as a researcher and scholar, not a practitioner. Our grads have taken a number of positions nationally. About half of them go into academia; the rest go into places like governmental organizations, institutes and foundations.”

Recently, Hanson has helped to design an additional “practice” specialization for the program. Now all Ph.D. candidates are required to complete a teaching practicum, which means they may teach a class in Fordham’s M.S.W. program.

“It is important that our graduates are prepared to teach practice as well as policy,” he said.

The result, he said, is that Fordham’s doctoral graduates enjoy a reputation not just for being scholars, but for being good teachers as well, which makes them competitive in the growing marketplace.

Bronwyn Cross-Denny is a scholar who has benefited from the GSS doctoral program. The Ph.D. candidate was hired a year ago as an instructor in social work at Sacred Heart University. She said she has only to finish her dissertation and she can move into a tenure-track associate professorship.

“I still consider myself a social worker first, and would never entirely give up private practice,” Cross-Denny said, “but now I can research and teach, too.”

Hanson also has combined a career of practice and teaching. His research interest is in addictions, a field he worked in for more than three decades as a practitioner, program developer and consultant. Recently he received a Gero Innovations Grant to develop curricular materials on older adults and substance abuse in collaboration with Fordham’s Ravazzin Center on Aging.

The materials, he said, have been applied with great results at Fordham.

“Substance abuse in older adults has been ignored over the years, but now that we have so many older adults, we are paying attention to it,” he said.

Hanson’s expertise in teaching evidence-based practice has made him sought-after internationally.

From 1998 to 2002, he and fellow faculty member Robert Chazin, D.S.W., made several trips to Ukraine as consultants on the Chernobyl Childhood Illness Program, funded by USAID. Their job was to teach such less-prescriptive practices to Russian practitioners.

“Some of the most robust findings in psychotherapy research show that the quality of the clinician-client relationship, as perceived by the client, is a major predictor of success,” he said. “If clients perceive your work with them as very positive, you are going to have a bigger impact. And part of being perceived as positive is being collaborative—engaging a person around their struggles and their issues, and drawing from them their own resources to resolve their problems.”

Having never set out to be a teacher/director in a Ph.D. program, Hanson, himself, holds a D.S.W. (“I’ve had people ask me if I am a dentist, to which I answer, ‘That is a D.D.S.!’”)

But after years of social work practice, consultation and community service in which he’d pretty much “done everything I wanted to do in the field,” he took a faculty position at Columbia University and came to love teaching.

“That’s what attracted me to Fordham,” he said. “There is incredible value placed on teaching here. Some of the best satisfaction I have gotten has been seeing my master’s and doctoral students learn something, go into the field and apply it.”

– Janet Sassi