Sue Coleman will retire at the end of October after 28 years of service to BCSSW.
It was fall 2002, and Paula Coutinho was on the verge of withdrawing from the master’s program at the Boston College School of Social Work.
Her internship was so challenging, she recalls, that she wasn’t sure she could continue pursuing a career in the helping profession.
That’s when Sue Coleman, then a field education specialist at BCSSW, stepped in.
Coleman, now assistant dean of field education, 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,” says Coutinho, who graduated in 2003 and now serves as associate dean of enrollment management at BCSSW. “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.
Since joining BCSSW in 1997 as a student adviser, she’s walked beside tens of thousands of students, faculty, and staff, listening, guiding, and lifting them up when they were down.
She’s celebrated their successes as much as she’s 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,” says Coleman, who plans to retire from BCSSW at the end of October. “I feel like we walk alongside students by setting up structures that support their learning and processes that support them if they’re struggling.”
Teresa Schirmer, associate dean of student experience, says that Coleman’s “entire career is a living embodiment of ‘Accompaniment in Action,’” quoting BCSSW’s theme for the 2025-2026 academic year.
“She listens, learns, and allows herself to be changed by the journey,” says Schirmer, who’s worked alongside Coleman since 2006. “Whether guiding a student through a difficult moment or advocating for an agency’s needs, Sue practices accompaniment as a relational, transformative act.”
Coleman has spent more than 40 years practicing accompaniment across New England. She began her career in 1982 at the Gaebler Children’s Center in Waltham, Massachusetts, 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, focused on walking with people through hardship, 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 Boston, where she led workplace seminars for dozens of federal agencies.
Sue Coleman, fourth from the right, poses for a group photo at the 2025 incoming student retreat.
At BC, Coleman has 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’s 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.
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.
“When I think of Sue, I think of her as the social work leader that we can all aspire to become,” says Dave Tack, who’s known Coleman since 1987, when they began working together at the Department of Children and Families. “She leads through the ongoing and unyielding practice of her deeply held social work values that guide the way she listens, is attentive to the unique needs and situations impacting each person, formulates decisions, and supports those around her.”
Marie Mathieu, a field adviser at BCSSW, recalls a moment that exemplifies Coleman’s commitment to accompaniment, a model of education built on listening, kinship, and mutual transformation.
After Mathieu’s first semester as a part-time professor ended with disappointing student evaluations, she went to Coleman’s office to apologize for letting her down. Rather than offering platitudes, Coleman listened carefully as Mathieu recounted the challenges she faced and helped her realize that her skills might be put to better use in another role.
“Fast forward five years,” Mathieu said, “and Sue was right. I love being a field advisor, and it’s been a much better fit.”
Coleman’s devotion to individual growth has defined her career at BCSSW. As she packed up her office in McGuinn Hall one day in early October, she paused over old sign-in sheets, grade lists, personal mementos, and diplomas from her time as a student at BC, where she earned a bachelor’s in psychology in 1982 and a master’s in social work in 1986.
Each item—some nearly 40 years old—told a story of a student she had guided, a joyous moment she had experienced, a challenge she had helped navigate.
“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,” says Coleman. “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.”
Teresa Schirmer and Sue Coleman pose for a photo at the 2025 Mary Mason Breakfast.
Her colleagues find it hard to imagine McGuinn Hall without her unique blend of empathy, humor, and insight.
Kathleen Flinton, assistant professor of the practice, first met Coleman in the mid-2000s while supervising MSW interns and has long seen her as a mentor who helped shape her approach to training future generations of social workers.
“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,” says 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.”
Three members of Coleman’s field education team, Cindy Gordon, Brian Gonsalves, and Ximena Soto, say that she has built an enduring legacy through her unwavering dedication to delivering high-quality learning experiences for countless students.
They praise her for consistently guiding social workers in training through complex challenges—for listening without judging, for meeting people where they are, and for helping them grow with a profound sense of empathy.
“When people get heard, magic can happen,” says Soto, who served as assistant director of field education from 2014 to 2019. “She has always done her best at being present for students and having them feel understood.”
Gonsalves, one of Coleman’s hires nearly 20 years ago, calls her impact on students “lasting and life-changing.”
“Her legacy is cemented at BCSSW for working with students and local agencies,” he says. “She is personal, professional, reliable, and extremely knowledgeable.”
That dedication to students has been at the heart of Coleman’s 28-year career at BCSSW. She’s thankful that she’s had the opportunity to work with so many “brilliant and thoughtful” students—students who have walked alongside her as much as she’s walked alongside them. After all, mutual transformation is one of the key tenets of accompaniment.
“They hold up a mirror that makes me think more broadly and apply myself harder,” she says. “They’ve helped me be more assertive on their behalf in curriculum and practice. They’ve helped me become more confident and grateful.”
Her gratefulness will be on full display at BCSSW’s Accompaniment in Action Lecture and Distinguished Alumni Awards celebration on November 10 in 100 Gasson Hall, where she will be honored with the Alumni Association’s first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award.
It’s validating, she says, humbling. She’s never worked for recognition—she’s done it for the students. Her job has gone on behind the scenes, and she’s had the patience to return to work day after day, offering presence and support without ever imposing an agenda.
“I’ve always championed that the student has to be the centerpiece of why we do everything,” says Coleman. “They’re the reason we get up and come in. That’s something I’ve always been proud of.”
She has two pieces of wisdom for her successor: Stay hydrated, she advises, with her particular brand of humor, and rely on your colleagues. “You’re inheriting a seasoned, committed field team,” she says. “Lean into their strengths. They really care about students.”