Dean’s Message: Longtime Clinical Associate Professor Janice Furlong Retires

Dear SSW Community,

I am writing to share important news about one of our long-time faculty members — Clinical Associate Professor Janice Furlong — has announced her plan to retire from Boston University on June 30, 2022. While we are thrilled for her as she starts a new phase of life, it is bittersweet for so many of us, and our students and alumni who have been enriched by her passion for social work and teaching, mentorship, and her commitment to BUSSW.

Janice earned her bachelor of arts in Psychology from Duke University in 1975, and her MSW from Simmons in 1979. She spent the first two decades of her career as a clinician, supervisor, and training director in community mental health settings.  As a field supervisor, Janice’s earliest connections at BUSSW were with Trudy Zimmerman and Judith Perlstein, who then directed our Field Ed department. Janice began her teaching career at BUSSW in 1998 as a part-time adjunct assistant professor and was promoted to full-time clinical associate professor in 2009. She is grateful to Carolyn Dillon, Maryann Amodeo, and Gail Steketee for encouraging her passion for teaching. “I was originally hired as a content expert,” Janice says, “and, like most instructors, I’d never taken a course in higher education pedagogy or curriculum design. I made it my mission to educate myself about learner-centered teaching methods and pedagogical innovations designed to create more equitable and inclusive learning environments.” She brought this expertise to CP and HB courses and to our PhD program, where she created and taught the seminar on pedagogical theory and techniques of teaching now required for our doctoral students.  Janice also taught at BU School of Medicine’s Graduate Medical Sciences division. In demand as a speaker, she has presented frequently at community agencies and professional conferences including the Massachusetts NASW symposium, Harvard Medical School/CHA conferences, and the CSWE Teaching Institute for Early Career Faculty.

Janice is a four-time recipient of BUSSW’s Teaching Excellence Award. And, in 2015 she was honored with Boston University’s highest teaching award, the Metcalf Cup and Prize for Excellence in Teaching. The Metcalf citation reads: “Exemplary educator, accomplished clinician, and generous mentor to countless students and faculty over the years, Professor Furlong is that rare teacher whose unrelenting devotion to excellence inspires not only the best from her students, but the advancement of her field and the art, itself, of instruction.”

Going forward, Janice will continue seeing clients and providing clinical supervision to community-based social workers. One of her short stories was recently published in the Michigan Quarterly Review and she looks forward to having more time for fiction writing.

If you would like to learn how you can contribute to Janice’s legacy at the school, please contact Kate DeForest at kated@bu.edu.

On behalf of the BUSSW community far and wide, we wish Janice a fruitful retirement – full of deserved relaxation, new projects, and plentiful time with family and friends.

Sincerely,

Jorge