School Alumni Associations

IU School of Social Work Alumni Association

Alumni Profiles

Roger Cunningham

After completing his MSSW (clinical) at Columbia University in 1985, Roger and his wife, Young Ju, returned to Korea where Roger had a private practice working with the international community in Seoul and where he started his Federal civil service career and a family.

His civil service work included adult mental health clinical services and administration and took him back and forth between Korea (Taegu, Pusan, Munsan, and Seoul) and central/northern New York (Canandaigua, Syracuse, and Watertown). He was a pioneer in the field of online mental health services and was one of the earliest members of the International Society for Mental Health Online (ISMHO). He served on the committee which established the code of ethics for the society. He presented at the New York State Association of Social Work Educators conference in 1994, the NASW national conference in Cleveland in 1996 and his work was presented at the International Federation for Social Welfare (IFSW) conference in Ireland in 1997. He was the subject of a feature article in Social Work Online in 1999. He received several awards during his civil service career including one for his research on the drinking attitudes and behavior of soldiers serving on the DMZ in Korea and the highest award a local command can award a civil servant, the Commanders Award for Civilian Service, while serving as the Clinical Director for substance abuse treatment services for US military in southern South Korea.

After 20 years in civil service Roger retired and, after an unsuccessful attempt at leading the hedonistic life aboard his sailing yacht in the South Pacific, he returned to northern New York. He remains active in the peace movement as a volunteer for Syracuse Peace Council and his active membership in Veterans for Peace. He is the founder of The Hermitage, a Buddhist hermitage in the Adirondack Park, where he currently resides with the dairy goats, geese, chickens, dogs, and cat, as the resident hermit. He grows organic vegetables and herbs for the local food pantry and conducts silent retreats for individuals and small groups for people of all faiths. He is very happy.

His son, Lee Hwan, is a commercial pilot who is currently flying aerial survey missions mostly in the eastern United States.  His daughter, JoHee, is a student at the University of Toronto. He welcomes email at nengaku@gmail.com. His address is The Hermitage, 124 Days Mills Road, Saint Regis Falls, NY 12980.

See the IUPUI Office of Alumni Relations Calendar of Events for upcoming School of Social Work alumni programs.

School of Social Work web site 

IUPUI Office of Alumni Relations contact:
Karen Deery, (317) 274-8959 or kdeery@iupui.edu