Department of Anthropology
University of South Florida
4202 E. Fowler Avenue, SOC 107
Tampa, FL 33620
Office Phone: (813) 974-0794
Email: wolfe@cas.usf.edu
Education:
Alvin W. Wolfe is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, Anthropology. He was Director of the Center for Applied Anthropology at USF from 1978-2002. He has been president of several national/international professional associations: the Society for Applied Anthropology (1978-79), the Society for Urban Anthropology (1985-86), the Southern Anthropological Society (1991-92). Professor Wolfe was coordinator of the International Network of Social Network Analysts and editor of that society's journal, CONNECTIONS (1988-93). Together with H. Russell Bernard, he was the founder of the International Sunbelt Social Network Conference, and co-organizer of most of its annual conferences (1981-1993). He was the founding editor of CITY & SOCIETY (1987-1991), the journal of the Society for Urban Anthropology (AAA). He has served as secretary of the American Ethnological Society and of the Society for Applied Anthropology.
Professor Wolfe served for nine years (1985-1994) as Director of Graduate Programs in Applied Anthropology. He taught Methods in Applied Anthropology and Applications of Network Models, and supervised the graduate work of doctoral and master's students. Through his role as coordinator of internships Professor Wolfe had significant involvement not only in the instructional program of the univeristy but also in service to the Tampa Bay area community. Some of those service projects that students have accomplished in past years include: Research and planning projects relevant to the USF area neighborhood and community (in conjunction with the USF Planning Commission, Institute on Government, and the Community Outreach Partnership Center), projects for the Children's Board, projects planning transportation for the disadvantaged, and others directed towards improving health and medical services for the elderly. Dr. Wolfe was a member of the Health and Human Services Board, District 6, was chair of that board 1997-1998, and chaired the Statewide Health and Human Services Board in 1999. Since 2000 he has chaired the Florida Health and Human Services Board, a non-profit orgnization that he and others started as a successor after the dissolution of the official board. In earlier years, 1981-1994, he worked with Red Cross Disaster Services, having chaired the Disaster Committee for some years.
Although his current research interests are focused on health and human services systems and welfare reform, in the past Professor Wolfe has done research in Africa, on which he published a book, In the Ngombe Tradition: Continuity and Change in the Congo (Northwestern University Press, 1961), and numerous journal articles and papers. He has done urban research in St. Louis, Missouri (Adaptations to Poverty by Urban White Families, Washington University Social Science Research Institute, 1968). His major interest in recent years has been in the application of network models to complex national and supranational systems. This research includes projects such as, "A Network Approach to Levels of Integration," supported by the National Science Foundation, a study of a network of some 600 agencies and organizations that serve children and families in the Tampa Bay are. That work is expected to lead to more general improvement of our methods of describing and studying urban metropolitan areas, using network models and what he sees as a new form of participant observation. The project used a Human Services Information System, a relational data base management system called "Human Services Information System," originally designed by Professor Wolfe primarily to help planners and evaluators such as the USF applied anthropology interns.
Professor Wolfe has written a number of papers on the subject of graduate education in applied anthropology, including a chapter, "General Placement Issues," In Anthropology Tomorrow: Creating Practitioner-Oriented Applied Anthropology Programs (1988), "Internships and Practica in Applied Anthropology" (Southern Anthropologist, 1991), and "Twenty Years of Internships" (SfAA Annual Meeting, 1994), and has, with Professor Gilbert Kushner, edited a collection of papers, "Internship and Practice in Applied Anthropology" (Practicing Anthropology, 1993).