A legacy of accompaniment
In the fall of 2002, Paula Coutinho was on the verge of withdrawing from the master’s program at the AVŐďËů College School of Social Work. Her internship was so challenging, she recalled, that she wasn’t sure she could continue pursuing a career in the helping profession.
Sue Coleman
That’s when Sue Coleman ’82, M.S.W. ’86, then a field education specialist at BCSSW, stepped in.
Coleman visited the agency where Coutinho was working, listened to her concerns, and then helped her find her footing again.
“Sue was so incredibly supportive. I never forgot that, and now I understand how a not-great field experience can shatter the confidence of a student and have a lasting impact in their journey in the field,” said Coutinho, who graduated in 2003 and is now the BCSSW associate dean of enrollment management. “She uplifted me in a way that allowed me to see that I had something to contribute and the agency I was placed in was just not a good fit.”
Coleman’s dedication to Coutinho reflects a career-long commitment to accompaniment, which refers to the practice of walking alongside others in their journeys of growth, healing, or professional development. After joining BCSSW in 1997 as a student adviser, and eventually becoming assistant dean of field education, she walked beside tens of thousands of students, faculty, and staff, listening, guiding, and lifting them up when they were down. She celebrated their successes as much as she steered them through difficult moments, helping them see their own potential while modeling the profession’s core values of service, competence, and the importance of human relationships.
“Social work is built on walking alongside someone—in a change effort, a growth effort, a recovery effort,” said Coleman, who retired this fall and was honored as the inaugural recipient of the BCSSW Alumni Association Lifetime Achievement Award. “I feel like we walk alongside students by setting up structures that support their learning and processes that support them if they’re struggling.”
Coleman directed placements for more than 500 graduate students each year, built partnerships with thousands of human service agencies, and helped shape a field education curriculum grounded in reflection, social justice, and trauma-informed care.
Along the way, she played an active role in the New England Consortium of Graduate Social Work Field Education Directors, a regional network that collaborates to support high-quality experiential learning.
“She listens, learns, and allows herself to be changed by the journey,” said Associate Dean of Student Experience Teresa Schirmer. “Whether guiding a student through a difficult moment or advocating for an agency’s needs, Sue has practiced accompaniment as a relational, transformative act.”
Coleman spent more than 40 years practicing accompaniment across New England. She began her career in 1982 at the Gaebler Children’s Center in Waltham, Mass., caring for children with emotional disorders, and later joined the Massachusetts Department of Social Services to address cases of abuse, neglect, and family trauma. Those early experiences shaped her perspective as a clinical supervisor at the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and as interim director and senior clinician for the Federal Employee Assistance Program in AVŐďËů, where she led workplace seminars for dozens of federal agencies.
Colleagues throughout Coleman’s career highlight her ability to treat everyone with dignity and respect, saying that she always takes the time to understand the unique needs of each person.
“She has helped me to understand this phase of my career more deeply by teaching me about the stewardship we hold for the social work profession,” said Assistant Professor of the Practice Kathleen Flinton, who teamed up with Coleman and others to create the Trauma Integration Initiative at BCSSW, a strategic effort to integrate trauma-informed theory, principles, and practice into the curriculum, field education, and research. “Sue has had such a profound impact on the social worker that I am, and I can only hope to uphold a fraction of her immense legacy at BCSSW.”
As she packed up her office in McGuinn Hall this fall, Coleman reflected on all the students with whom she worked.
“It was really amazing to think—with the longevity of this—how many different students I’ve engaged with and had as part of my life,” she said. “It’s been a privilege to be in this role because I never would have imagined it. But looking back on it, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
Jason Kornwitz is a senior writer and editor at the AVŐďËů College School of Social Work
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