Paul Smokowski became dean of the Kansas University School of Social Welfare on July 1, 2015.

Kansas University’s School of Social Welfare will be under new leadership this year.

Paul Richard Smokowski officially took over as dean of the school July 1, succeeding Mary Ellen Kondrat who retired after eight years in the post.

“My short-term goal is to continue the successes of the school,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s very strong in its ranking nationally. We rank in the top 20 percent of social work programs nationwide, so I want to continue that excellence.”

Smokowski comes to KU from Arizona State University where he served as Distinguished Foundation Professor in Child and Adolescent Resilience. Before that, he spent 16 years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he and his wife, Martica Bacallao, were both research professors. In fact, Bacallao is also joining KU’s social welfare faculty this year.

“We were hired together. You could say as a team,” Smokowski said. “We have worked together for 15 years doing research and teaching in the same area. We both have doctorates in social welfare. We met while doing an internship at St. Elizabeth’s hospital in Washington, D.C.”

Paul Smokowski became dean of the Kansas University School of Social Welfare on July 1, 2015.

Over the course of his career, Smokowski has published more than 75 articles and two book chapters in the field of social work, and his research teams have received more than $10 million in federal funding.

Smokowski said that’s something else he wants to continue at KU.

“I want to support faculty by trying to find collaborations and resources so we can work with businesses and communities,” he said. “One thing we do very well is, we address social needs with prevention and intervention programming. So what we do is serving communities across Kansas with innovative programs, and then we evaluate those programs to make sure we are finding positive effects, and if not, we would be changing the focus.”

Smokowski arrives at KU during a time of transition, both for the school and the social welfare industry in general.

One of the challenges facing the school, as well as all other schools, is the impending retirement of faculty members who’ve been part of the program for many years. That will involve grooming new faculty from within the ranks of graduate students, and recruiting new faculty from outside.

“This is happening all over. It’s just the developmental stage that we have with the baby-boom generation,” he said.

At the same time, he said, the business of social work is facing challenges in an era of reduced public funding. He said that’s true throughout the profession, but particularly in state and local social welfare agencies that work with children, families, and in the health care industry.

“The social needs are still there, or sometimes growing, depending on the economy,” he said. “But we are in an era of declining resources. So we continue to train and work closely with the state.

“We have a number of close contracts where we work with the state both on training individuals who are working in mental health centers and child welfare and residential facilities for the aging, and we also do evaluations to make sure those programs are providing the most efficient bang for the buck, if you will. Like many agencies, we are trying to do as much or more with less, in terms of the resources that are available.”

Smokowski said his long-term goals are to raise the school’s stature and visibility nationally, and to build on the success of its four research centers.

“We have four very strong centers — one on aging and disability, one on mental health, one on children and families, and another on assets and education, helping poor families how to figure out how to save for college,” he said. “Those centers have been doing very well serving the state and garnering national attention, and I want to help that to continue in the long run.”