Founder: John Simmonds as an academic at the University of Sussex in the late 1960s. Photo by Derek Goodall.
John Simmonds, one of the founder members of the University, died at his home in Piddinghoe on New Year's Eve 2008.
John was appointed Senior Lecturer in Social Studies in 1964 and occupied a variety of posts, including Dean of Cultural and Community Studies, from 1971-76 until his retirement in 1997.
He came to Sussex from the London Probation Service with the remit to set up a professional social work education course.
He believed passionately that professional training had to be firmly rooted in research and theory, and created a course that combined two days a week of academic study with three days practical experience in local fieldwork placements.
This formula was so successful that the Sussex course quickly became one of the pre-eminent courses in the country and the pattern of combined academic study and fieldwork was adopted by the Sussex Postgraduate Certificate in Education.
John was one of a small group of academics who established, against the prevailing orthodoxy, the place of social work education nationally as a university postgraduate subject.
To his close associates he was a charismatic man with exacting standards of professionalism and a clear vision that guided his educational practice.
While to more casual acquaintances his trademark ruminative silences could be daunting, the students he taught will remember him as having made a significant difference to their lives and their professional expertise, and as providing much needed personal support in the stressful enterprise of learning to help others.
John Jacobs and Carol Kedward