Our History
The Brown School was founded in 1925, and in 1937, Brown Hall was dedicated. It was named for George Warren Brown, the founder of the Brown Shoe Company in St. Louis, and generously funded by a bequest from his widow, Betty Bofinger Brown.
In 1945, the social work department became its own school, offering a Master of Social Work degree. We soon began a doctoral program and became the first school at Washington University to admit African-American students.
Over the ensuing decades, the School prospered and grew to become one of the top-ranked schools of social work in the nation, focused on evidence-based scholarship and impact. In 2008, we added a Master of Public Health degree, and in 2015, a PhD in Public Health Sciences. Also in 2015, the first cohort started for our Master of Social Policy (MSP) dual degree, created in partnership with several universities in China. The Clark-Fox Policy Institute launched in 2017, furthering the School’s commitment to engage in the creation of evidence-based policy solutions. In 2025, the Master of Social Policy degree was launched as a stand alone one-year degree, one of a few available across the country. In the same year, the Master of Public Health degree was transitioned to the newly established WashU School of Public Health, refocusing the Brown School’s programming on social work and social policy education.
“Our philosophy and approach in social work is essentially and optimistic one. We think that it is worth doing something about given situations. We believe that progress can be made toward our goals by the intelligent application of knowledge. We are a dynamic profession, refusing to accept the cynicism and pessimism of some of our contemporaries.”
From the speech titled “What We Believe,” delivered by Benjamin E. Youngdhal, dean from 1945-1962, at the General Session at the National Conference of Social Work, Chicago, Illinois, May 28, 1952