Jeanne Mueller, a professor emerita in the College of Human Ecology (CHE) who advised the U.S. and foreign governments on social services, died Nov. 2 in Rochester, New York. She was 100. 

Mueller, who became a professor emerita upon her retirement in 1998, joined the faculty at Cornell in 1972 and designed, implemented and directed the undergraduate social work program, which ended in 2001. 

“She was passionate about the social work program, and it was clear that she cared deeply about students and them having engaged learning experiences through their fieldwork,” said Alan Mathios, professor in the Department of Economics and the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, who was director of undergraduate studies at CHE when Mueller was the program director. 

Mueller spent two sabbaticals in Israel interviewing elderly kibbutz members in order to make recommendations to the Israeli government on services for senior citizens. She also received grant funding to develop and deliver training to caseworkers from the New York State Department of Social Services. 

In 1992, the New York Times reported on a Cornell course she taught in New York City, “Modernization and the Korean Family,” which examined the cultural adjustment of Korean grocers to life in the U.S. The most comprehensive study of the city’s Korean population at the time, the research was conducted by 15 Cornell students, 13 of whom were of Korean descent. In addition to learning about their own heritage, Mueller then said, the students learned about research methodology and experimental methods in the field. 

Mueller also served as a consultant to the U.S. government on Project Follow-Through, a program for children who had completed Head Start. She studied daycare programs in Sweden while teaching summer school at Lund University in Lund, Sweden. She presented her recommendations to the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. 

Mueller earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology, her master of science in social work and her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She taught briefly at her alma mater and Bryn Mawr College before coming to Cornell.

“Jeanne was an optimist who chose to look to the future, rather than dwell in the past,” said her daughter, Madelynn Mueller. “She had an insatiable intellectual curiosity. She was a voracious reader, who was fascinated by new frontiers in science. She was generous with her time and knowledge and encouraged all who knew her to continue their education, whether formally or informally.”

Robin Roger is the assistant dean for communications in the College of Human Ecology.