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| Carol J. Williams, Editor |
732.249-6070
A Tribute to Ralph Holcomb
Over the last four years, I have had the pleasure of working with Ralph Holcomb, the outgoing Editor of BPD Update. Those
of you who have also worked with Ralph share with me an appreciation of his positive attitude and wonderful sense of humor.
When Ralph assumed the helm at BPD Update in 1997, he described the publication as a "stapled handout" that
was sent out three times a year to members. Readers may not know this, but until I joined him as Associate Editor in 2000,
Ralph handled every aspect of Update's production. He wrote or jobbed out or chased down articles, snapped or scanned photos,
laid out the issues, took them to the printer, obtained mailing labels for all BPD members, and spent his weekend pasting
addresses on every member's Update (and including handwritten notes to some). He then carried all 700 copies to the post
office and placed them into the US Mail. He handled the ads, the finances, and creation/solicitation of articles.
His greatest strength may have been identifying emerging issues in BSW education, thus providing up-to-date, current content
for the publication. Under his enthusiastic leadership, the Update evolved thematically to the point where each issue was
constructed around a cover story on a topic of current interest to the BPD membership. Guest editors, including Yolanda Burwell
and Mit Joyner, were recruited to assist in presenting issue-focused content on areas such as African American history and
Gerontology. Regular features were developed, including the Technology Corner and the Update Crossword. Ralph developed
provocative questions to pose to interviewees for the occasional Update Interview. Ultimately, covers went full color and
the content expanded to over 50 pages per issue. And then there were the editorials: the interaction of social work education
with war, and spirituality, and elections, and international social work, and a host of other topics.
In addition to publishing the regular Update, Ralph provided a series of three Daily Updates at each BPD Conference.
For Ralph, this meant that his whole conference experience was one of collecting information on conference program changes,
taking photographs at conference events, interviewing key BPDers and new BPD participants, writing articles, laying them out
in an attractive format, rushing to Kinkos to get them printed late at night, and then early the next morning distributing
them to conference participants.
Ralph invited me to join the Editorial Board at the Fall 2000 BPD Conference, with the intent of placing BPD Update online.
This became a reality in the winter of 2001, with Update being among the first professional social work publications to be
published electronically. Our Editorial Board expanded to include a third member in the Fall of 2003, when Claudia Triche
joined the Update Editorial Board as Business Manager. It is my pleasure to announce at this time that Claudia will be assuming
a new role beginning with this issue, as Associate Editor of Update.
I know that all of us at BPD wish Ralph the best in his new role as Director of Research and Evaluation, Multnomah County
Human Services, Portland, Oregon. We also wish him well as he travels next month on his Fulbright, teaching and conducting
research in Trinidad at the University of the West Indies Social Work Programme. It is with some trepidation that I approach
the role of Editor, and attempt to fill those shoes...
Ed.
BPD Update wishes to extend its apology to Dr. Denise Ellis of Kean University in New Jersey, whose September 12th article
appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of BPD Update, but did not include her name as the article's author.
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