Service planned for social work program founder

A celebration of life service will be held Saturday for Patty A. Coleman, a former University of Maine professor of social work and one of the founders of the school’s Master of Social Work program who died suddenly Nov. 2 at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.

Family members have not released the cause of death. Coleman, 55, had lived with multiple sclerosis for 26 years, according to a family statement.

A Winterport resident, Coleman was the Maine Social Worker of the Year in 1998 and taught at UMaine from 1988 to 1998, when she retired as a tenured associate professor.

She arrived at the University of Maine School of Social Work in 1989, working to establish the school’s Master of Social Work program.

“Patty was a major part of doing that,” said Gail Werrbach, UMaine associate professor of social work, who worked with Coleman on the master’s program. “She was very good at curriculum design and curriculum innovation.”

Coleman concentrated on the areas of social policy and advocacy, Werrbach said, and impressed upon social work students that they could make a contribution at the legislative level in addition to working with individuals.

One of the lessons Coleman instituted is an assignment that is still in use today, Werrbach added. The lesson involved students learning to give legislative testimony by taking a complex social work issue such as a mental health law and boiling it down to a 11/2-minute presentation.

It was a lesson Coleman’s students apparently took to heart, as they told Werrbach upon hearing Coleman had died.

“Many of them commented on what a role model she was for being a social worker and how much they learned from her in the classroom,” Werrbach said. “I think she really fired up her students.”

Coleman was a member of the Penobscot Community Health Center board of directors and was on the board of the Maine Center for Economic Policy. She was the coordinator of the Project on Women and Disabilities at the Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Center in Bangor and did consulting and training work for government agencies at the state and national level.

Coleman graduated from Kirkland College in Clinton, N.Y., and earned master’s and doctoral degrees from Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pa. She also worked in the social work program at La Salle University in Philadelphia.

Coleman was predeceased by her brother Paul. She is survived by her partner, Ann Blumer, her parents, Mary Irwin of Topsham and John R. “Jack” Coleman of Chester, Vt., and other relatives.

Saturday’s event will be held at 1 p.m. at the First Congregational Church in Brewer. Gifts in her memory may be made to the Penobscot Community Health Center, c/o the Rev. Bob Carlson, 1048 Union St., Bangor 04401.

jbloch@bangordailynews.net

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