Columns::Gift honors former prof by endowing new professorship in family and child welfare

since 12/15/98

Columns::August 12, 2002

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Campus News

Gift honors former prof by endowing new professorship in family and child welfare

By Larry B. Dendy
ldendy@uga.edu

The School of Social Work has received a $250,000 gift to establish an endowed faculty position that honors the late Pauline M. Berger, a former professor in the school.
The gift from Berger’s husband, Dr. Israel Berger of Dallas, Texas, will create the Pauline M. Berger Memorial Professorship in Family and Child Welfare. It is the largest donation the school has ever received, and will create the second privately endowed faculty chair in the school.
Pauline Berger joined the social work faculty in 1966, two years after the school was established, and retired in 1976. She had been an instructor in the UGA sociology department for two years before joining social work.
In addition to teaching, she also served as the school’s admissions director.
Israel Berger, a retired radiologist, said his wife was totally devoted to the social work profession and to teaching and working with students.
“She often said she loved her work so much she would do it without getting paid,” Berger recalls. “This gift is a way to ensure that her interests in family development and child development continue. I can’t imagine a better way to remember her.”
Bonnie Yegidis, dean of the school, says a nationally known scholar in the field of family and child welfare will be recruited for the position.
“Professor Berger had an exceptionally warm demeanor with her students and was remarkably clinical in her orientation,” Yegidis says. “This gift should make a major impact and fill a significant need in the scholarship of family and child welfare.”
Pauline Berger graduated from New York University and earned a graduate degree in social work from Columbia University. Before joining UGA, she worked for the American Red Cross, which is how she met her husband when he was in the U.S. Navy. The Bergers were married for 57 years before Mrs. Berger died this past year in Dallas at age 86.
While living in Athens, Pauline Berger served on the board of the League of Women Voters and was active in other community organizations. After she retired, the couple lived for five years in Las Vegas where Mrs. Berger was a volunteer intake worker with a state mental health agency. They later moved to Dallas.

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