Towley, Louis

Towley was a professor of social work at George Warren Brown School of Social Work, University of Washington, St. Louis.

Louis Towley held a number of administrative and supervisory positions in the field of public welfare in Minnesota during the 1930s and early 1940s. Towley's work centered primarily on policy and procedural development by the state agencies that administered and integrated a program of public welfare services. After holding faculty positions at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work and the University of Minnesota in 1944 and 1945, Towley received a faculty appointment at George Warren Brown School in 1946, where he taught until his death in 1959.

Louis H. Towley was born in 1904. He attended Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota and the University of Minnesota, working towards degrees in comparative literature and 18th century drama. In 1934, after a period of teaching and working for local newspapers, Towley entered the field of public welfare in Minnesota. He held various positions, including publicity director of the Minnesota Civil Works Administration and Emergency Relief Administration (1934), where he also served as complaint correspondent and supervisor of correspondence and referrals. From 1936 to 1937, he was special assistant to the director of coordinated field services for the Minnesota Board of Control. From 1937 to 1942, Towley served as assistant to the director of public welfare assistance in the Minnesota Division of Social Welfare and, just prior to World War II, he was made head of the Bureau of Procedures and Systems for the Minnesota Division of Social Welfare.

The war years made it necessary for Division of Social Welfare staff who did not go into military service to shift from one job to another and to undertake multiple responsibilities. From 1942 until the fall of 1946, Towley was at one time or another acting chief of public assistance, supervisor of the field staff, supervisor of the Bureau of Procedures and Systems, and special assistant to the director of social welfare. Towley's work always centered primarily on policy and procedural development by the state agencies that administered and integrated a program of public welfare services.

In the spring of 1944, Towley taught a seminar in the Graduate School at the University of Minnesota, where he had previously lectured to various classes in social work. From September, 1944, to June, 1945, he was a visiting professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. He was made a full professor of social work at the school in 1946, an appointment he held until his death in 1959.