Memorial planned for former UW-Madison chancellor

William H. Sewell, UW–Madison’s second chancellor and a renowned professor of sociology, died Sunday, June 24, in Madison of complications from a recent stroke. He was 91.

A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. Thursday, June 28, at the Cress Funeral Home, 3610 Speedway Road, Madison.

Sewell’s career as an educator, researcher and sociologist spanned more than six decades. He was a major force in the development of sociology as a scientific discipline.

Professor Robert Hauser, a colleague and close friend of Sewell, calls him one of the great pioneers of empirical social science and a great builder of institutions.

“He brought the social and behavioral sciences into the National Institutes of Health, and his gift for recruiting diverse and talented young scholars and nurturing their careers in a rich and civil environment made the Department of Sociology at UW–Madison the best in the world,” Hauser says.

Sewell joined the University of Wisconsin faculty in 1946. In his early years, his principal interest was in childhood socialization. Over the past 40 years, he guided a remarkable longitudinal study of more than 10,000 Wisconsin high school graduates of 1957, tracing their post-secondary schooling, careers and marriages to identify, measure and explain the linkages between social background and social and economic achievements in adulthood. The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study has become a major national resource in studies on aging.

Sewell served as the university’s top administrator from October 1967 to June 1968, during the height of campus unrest over the war in Vietnam, a period he later described as “the worst possible time.” He resigned from the post before his tumultuous and painful first year ended.

“I accepted the position hoping to implement policy and curriculum changes, but instead spent most of my time working with the National Guard, the sheriff and the police department,” Sewell recalled in a 1980 interview with University News Service. “I found myself confronted with problems over which the university had very little control, and I discovered that my training in sociology was of no help whatsoever.”

In a speech to Madison service clubs in January 1968, Sewell admonished community leaders for what he described as a growing hostility toward students and faculty: “Our students may be questioning our society’s priorities, its goals and its achievements, and many are impatient because of our seeming failure to take quick and effective action in dealing with the problems they see. But they are sincere and are concerned with real problems. They merit your understanding and tolerance, if not your approval.”

Also during his long and distinguished academic career at UW–Madison, Sewell served as chair of the University Committee and the departments or rural sociology and sociology. He was the Vilas Research Professor of Sociology, 1964-80.

On the national level, Sewell served as chair of the National Commission on Research, president of the American Sociological Association and the Rural Sociological Society, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served on the Social Science Research Council throughout much of his career.

As an emeritus professor, Sewell remained active in the research he loved until the end of his life. He worked at the Population Institute of the East-West Center in Hawaii during the winter, where he embarked on a new career of research on the lifelong effects of cognitive ability, and he continued to collaborate with his UW–Madison colleagues on an update of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study until he suffered a stroke.

Sewell, the son of a pharmacist, was born on Nov. 27, 1909, in Perrinton, Mich. He had wanted to become a physician, but first became a licensed pharmacist. He completed a pre-med curriculum as an undergraduate at Michigan State, and was accepted by several medical schools, but he decided to study sociology, earning both a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in sociology from Michigan State, and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.

Sewell is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, of Madison, along with his daughter, Mary Sewell Cooper of LaVeta, Colo., sons William H. Sewell III of Chicago and Robert G. Sewell of Metuchen, N.J., and several grandchildren.

Prior to his final illness, Sewell established the William H. Sewell Graduate Student Award Fund, which will provide flexible research support for outstanding graduate students in the Department of Sociology at UW–Madison. Memorial contributions may be sent to the University of Wisconsin Foundation, P.O. Box 8860, Madison, WI 53708-8860.

Memorials also may be sent to the William H. Sewell Memorial Fund in support of Camp Isaiah near Spring Green, c/o Firstar Bank, 750 N. Midvale Blvd., Madison, WI 53705.