Archives
Obituaries
Frank Corbett, former director of Office of Urban Affairs
Frank J. Corbett, clinical associate professor emeritus of social work and former director of the UB Office of Urban Affairs, died Feb. 5 under hospice care in Westminster Suncoast Nursing Home in St. Petersburg, Fla. He was 86.
A native of Rocky Mount, N.C., Corbett graduated from Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte and received a graduate degree in social service administration from the University of Chicago.
He joined the faculty of the UB School of Social Work in 1968 after holding senior management positions in race relations, inter-group education and community planning and development agencies in Flint, Mich., and Bridgeport and New Haven, Conn.
In 1970 he was named director of the Office of Urban Affairs, a post he held for 18 years. He served as the architect of the university-community relations program through which the research and public-service missions of UB were extended to the Buffalo minority community. He also helped to create the first affirmative action program on campus, as well as the graduate degree program in applied public affairs studies and the UB Institute for Education and Training, an initiative conceived by former state Assemblyman Arthur O. Eve.
Corbett retired in 1997 and moved later that year to St. Petersburg.
Corbett was a recipient of the UB Foundation's Outstanding Education and Civic Service Award in 1975 and the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Professional Service in 1977.