Bryn Mawr College's Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research (GSSWSR) will use a $1 million gift to train more social workers in elder care and end-of-life support.

The donor is Judith Deutsch Karofsky, an 84-year-old former Wisconsin mayor who graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1963 with an economics degree. She returned to campus in April 2026 to meet with college leaders about the gift, the college announced.

The money will fund graduate-student practicums, curriculum development and research in the elder-care and death-and-dying fields. The gift comes as the Population Reference Bureau projects the number of Americans 65 and older will grow from 58 million in 2022 to 82 million by 2050, a 42% increase.

Karofsky's motivation is personal. She spent years caring for her mother, Lillian Deutsch, who moved through six assisted living facilities in the Madison, Wisconsin, area over four and a half years beginning in September 2013. Lillian Deutsch died in April 2018, a few days before her 100th birthday, with her daughter at her side.

Karofsky chronicled that experience in her 2025 book, DisElderly Conduct: The Flawed Business of Assisted Living and Hospice. In a Wisconsin Public Radio interview quoted in the college's announcement, she described her mother's decline: "My mother had a more lingering situation: She was aging. Aging was actually what my mother was dying from."

Funding for her mother's hospice care was cut off when Lillian Deutsch was past her 99th birthday because she was no longer expected to die within six months.

Janet Shapiro, dean of the GSSWSR, said many assisted living facilities do not have social workers on staff. She said the gift will help prepare practitioners to address social isolation and coordinate care for aging residents and their families.

Before becoming a caregiver, Karofsky built a wide-ranging career. She was one of Wisconsin's first women mayors, serving in Middleton from April 1975 to April 1977. She later founded a real estate research firm and held roles focused on affordable housing, historic preservation and elder economic security.

One of her three children, Jill Karofsky, is a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, according to a 2025 Isthmus review of her book.

Since the book's publication, Karofsky has done more than two dozen podcast and media interviews. She said every interviewer has told her they are facing a similar caregiving situation in their own families.

The college has not announced a timeline for when the gift-funded programs will begin.