ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

WILLIAM "BILL" DEEMER MSW 1971,
Certified financial planner

“I feel an allegiance to social work and social workers … I think Social Work is getting broader, getting into different things.”

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As a member of the College of Social Work’s first cohort which graduated in 1971, Bill Deemer has seen not only the evolution of the College of Social Work program but of the social work profession.

His initial exposure to professional social work was as a member of the United States Army where he worked in a mental hygiene clinic in the capacity of a BSW with supervision from an MSW. He went on to earn an undergraduate degree in marketing and, after finishing the MSW, an MBA, both from Carolina. So why would Deemer pursue a formal career in social work with degrees in marketing and business?

Deemer explained that he lived a foster home and was adopted as a child. The social workers who helped him and the family that raised him, he remembered, is what motivated him to become a professional social worker.

“The family I was raised with was a very giving family of their time and money and even now I am very active at church with time and money,” he said. “I felt an allegiance to social work and social workers.”

He joined the first class of the College of Social Work and forged long-lasting personal and professional relationships with his many of his 20 cohort members including Dr. Diane Thompson, director of Columbia College’s social work program, with whom he would travel to Charleston for their field placement.

Deemer became the first social worker at the former Central Correctional Institution (CCI) and worked there for a total of 27 years as the social work supervisor, then director of the division of human services for all of CCI, now the Department of Corrections.

“I felt good working in corrections and doing things I had to do,” he said. “We did a lot of good things but CCI was a raw system … you had to find a way to treat (inmates) and it took a while to get to something manageable and acceptable.”

Although he enjoyed working in corrections, he took advantage of the opportunity to retire early and began the process of being certified as an independent financial planner in the early 1990s. He has been working as a CFP ever since and taught part-time at Midlands Technical College until last spring.

“I didn’t know it was going to be so natural. I thought I would just be dealing with dollars and cents.

But Deemer did not totally abandon his mental health background when he transitioned into financial planning. He teaches classes on the psychology of money, which relates to individuals’ behavior as it relates to money.

“Money is powerful and pervasive in all our lives and we all have a money personality,” explained Deemer, who is a donor to the College of Social Work and encourages others to do the same. “Our individual relationship to money – our childhood, parents – affects how we think about money, what it is and what it isn’t. It became an area that I picked up on early and now it has become more popular.”

Deemer teaches on the psychology of money to a various groups from educators to social workers because the topic is so relevant.

The move to the business world is a testament to the diverse professional opportunities made available with an MSW. Deemer said he sees social work becoming broader and more diverse as students are attracted to administration, non-profit work and other opportunities in the field that “weren’t there 20 years ago.”