Martha Chickering


Martha Alexander Chickering was an American social work educator who served as director of the California State Department of Social Welfare from 1939 to 1943. She was inducted into the California [Social Work Hall of Distinction] for her work in establishing professional social work education in the state of California.

Career

She was a member of the Chickering family of Massachusetts, later Oakland and Piedmont, California. She attended the NYC YWCA Training School from 1911 until 1913 after graduating from the University of [California, Berkeley] in 1910.
From 1918 to 1920, Chickering headed the Polish Grey Samaritans, YWCA's efforts on post-war reconstruction in newly-formed Poland under the Herbert Hoover-founded American Relief Administration. In the 1920s, she was an executive of the local American Red Cross for five years.
When Berkeley's economics department started an accredited social work certificate program in 1928, Chickering was hired to supervise the field training of the students and became the program director in 1932.
In 1936, she received an PhD in economics at UC Berkeley and was appointed professor of Berkeley’s Curriculum in Social Services the same year. In 1939, she was appointed director of the California State Department of Social Welfare.
After retiring in 1945, Martha moved to the Mojave Desert outside Victorville, California and continued writing. She moved to Pasadena, California when she couldn’t live alone any longer. She died there in 1988 when she was 102.

Legacy

In 1994, the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare established the Martha Chickering Fellowship.

Publications