The Dane County Almanac Weblog: Generosity

Biographical Sketch

William Robert Benedict

Upon graduating from Earlham College in 1959 with my political science BA degree I accepted a job offer at the Oesterlen Youth Center, a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed adolescents. Oesterlen is located in Springfield, Ohio.

While at Oesterlen I met and married Patricia Sue Orsborn from East Liberty, OH and received my master of social work degree from Ohio State University, College of Social Work. I served as both a social group worker and later as the Director of Residential Services.

During the ten years at Oesterlen we had three of our four children. I earned a comprehensive social studies certificate from Wittenberg University and a teacher’s license from the state of Ohio. I also completed a year of clinical supervision as a certified group psychotherapist by the Group Psychotherapy Association. I resigned from Oesterlen to accept a position as Instructor at Ohio State University School of Social Work. After just a little over one year I resigned to become a psychotherapist at the Clark County Comprehensive Mental Health Center in Springfield.

Our family moved from Springfield to Edgerton, WI and lived on nearby Lake Koshkonong for one year before moving north about twenty miles to Stoughton, WI, in late 1972 near Madison, WI. Here our fourth child was born and I began what would turn into a thirty year job commitment to Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin & Upper Michigan, first as a clinical social work supervisor and group therapist before becoming a program planning and evaluation specialist and later Director of the agency’s Continuous Quality Improvement Program.

In this professional capacity a colleague and I developed and had copyrighted a goal-attainment scaling (GAS) case record management and program evaluation system called, Eval-U-Treat. This application was modeled after Dr. Thomas J. Kiresuk’s Goal Attainment Scaling methodology. See: Goal Attainment Scaling: Applications, Theory, and Measurement, 1994. I also had published the very first articles on how to use this methodology to evaluate a staff training program as well as a human service organization. During the 1970s Eval-U-Treat applications were installed in mental health and social service organizations across the United States and Canada.

I was divorced in 1994 and retired from LSS in 2003. I have been blessed with a new partner. Suzanne Ellen Bergen and I have been together for well over a decade and are now domestic partners. We enjoy tennis and traveling especially to visit my children and grandchildren. Prior to my retirement I wrote a book entitled “The Benedict Family 1830 – 2001: The Legacy of William Robert Benedict.” You can find a copy in the Earlham library.

Since my retirement I have pursued my political and social justice advocacy aspirations.

I presently serve on two boards: The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and the Wisconsin Coalition for Aging Groups. I now also write regularly and I have drawn from my favorite sociologist, Dr. Talcott Parsons, in a recent published article, “Clarifying values can help reform politics.” I spend most of my time advocating for campaign finance reform and for state funding for stem cell research. I have been extensively published in both these areas in the Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital Times. If you would like to read more about these issues and others you may explore these writings here in my blog. Your comments would be especially welcomed and appreciated.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Generosity

Letter to the Editor

Sunday, April 15th is the deadline for paying our taxes. My partner and I celebrating this Sunday as “Generosity Sunday” and will be inviting our neighbors into our home to get better acquainted with them and also to talk to them regarding how they feel about how our federal taxes are being used.

Our local chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) believe that generosity is a more effective and ethical approach to human security than is military aggression and other, “softer” means of using U.S. power to serve our own interests. We are proposing “The Global Marshall Plan: A National Security Strategy of Generosity and Care.

This plan calls for using 1% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the world’s developed nations every year for distributing aid in a way that is environmentally sensitive and respectful of native cultures to help empower the people. To learn more about celebrating Generosity Sunday and this plan, see our website, nsp.madisonwi.us. We invite you and your neighbors to join us on Sunday the 15th in your own neighborhoods to celebrate “Generosity Sunday.”

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Sunday, April 15, 2007

Generosity

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