Mike Foster to Retire

Fredrick Michael Foster (Mike) CalSWEC Field Consultant at California State University, Long Beach, School of Social Work (CSULB) since 1994, is retiring at the end of June. Those of you who know Mike may find it hard to believe that this youthful soul has reached this point in time. Actually, one of the many unique things about Mike is that it seems that everyone knows him and that he knows everyone.

Mike received his undergraduate degree from Whittier College and his MSW from USC in 1977 with a concentration in mental health and gerontology. He worked for 17 years at the Children’s Bureau where he moved up the ranks from Casework Specialist to Director of Community Services. He arrived at CSULB after serving as a field instructor for both CSULB and UCLA.

At CSULB, Mike has served as field liaison to the School’s various distance education sites over the years: Sonoma, Ventura, Channel Islands, Humboldt, Chico and San Marcos. In this role he has guided site coordinators, field instructors, and students to maintain a high level of educational integrity. He has facilitated the integrative field seminars over the years at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and has become the “go to” person in-house for seminar liaisons wishing to consult about group development, process, or creative group activities.

Mike has served as the point person for placements for our Child and Family Well-being concentration. He has represented CSULB on the Job Fair Committee—an annual event sponsored by the SoCal Consortium of Schools of Social Work.

Beyond his work at The Children’s Bureau and CSULB, Mike has been deeply engaged in his community over his career. In 1999, he became a founding member of the Latino Alumni Community Advisory Committee of the USC School of Social Work and has remained involved all these many years. He has served on the Whittier College Social Work Program Alumni Council and Advisory Board since 1994. In 2003, Mike received the Outstanding Alumni Award from Whittier College. Beginning in 1994 and continuing to the present, he also serves on the Community Advisory Board for El Monte School District Local Education Agency.

Mike has been an active member of NASW throughout his career and has participated in NASW’s Lobby Days event a number of times. According to California NASW-CA Executive Director Janlee Wong, Mike was a founder and leader of the NASW Jane Addams Council in the 1990s and 2000s.  The council was active in promoting greater understanding and education among social workers regarding LGBT and cultural humility issues and sponsored workshops on LGBT concerns and social work. Mike has always been active supporter of the local NASW unit at CSULB and later as the South Bay unit.  He also supported the Southern California Legislative Days program for many years and was also an advocate for Native American issues.

Mike Foster has accomplished a great deal in his career. Those of us here at CSULB know Mike as especially easygoing, always willing to help the team, a staunch advocate for our students and for the field of social work, and a lover of bags, shoes, and most of all, buffets. We felt the best way to close this testimonial would be to share Fredrick Michael Foster’s teaching philosophy from his CV:

Social work is a discipline and a profession that embraces the human spirit, endorses the importance of relationship as the primary means toward acknowledging human capacity and potential, and advocates and strives for improving the quality of life for all. It is my mission in my teaching to continuously acknowledge and model these foundations to my students; to define, delineate, and develop the competencies needed to practice and perform effectively as a professional social worker; and to be self-aware, self-reflective, and self-evaluative as an ongoing process of the work.