Priscilla Riley, 68; taught social workers at Simmons College

“We used to like to go out to eat,’’ said her husband, Donald. “I think she recruited five waitresses into the profession. They’d say they were trying to decide what to do with their lives. She’d start talking to them, and next thing you knew, she was mailing them an application.’’

Having endured the deaths of both parents by the time she was 14 and that of her only sibling several years later, Mrs. Riley was often drawn to students and social work clients whose lives, like hers, had been upended. She also found ways to encourage and find financing for agencies that served those relegated to society’s fringe.

Mrs. Riley, a professor emerita who taught at Simmons College for 34 years and helped find first placements for a generation of social workers, died of cancer Monday at her home in Brookline. She was 68 and had formerly lived in Newton for three decades.

“She was a wonderful teacher,’’ said Suzanne Sankar, associate professor of social work and assistant dean of student affairs at Simmons. “She helped students deal with the anxiety they had going into their field placements in a way that allowed them to be successful in their learning.’’

As director of field education for many years at Simmons, where she taught from 1971 to 2005, Mrs. Riley was a key link between social work students and their initial work sites. Rather than discourage students who wanted to venture into uncharted territory with field work, Mrs. Riley worked to add new agencies to the college’s list of potential placements.

Sometimes, her husband said, that meant helping guide agencies toward additional funding so they could hire supervisors for the Simmons interns.

“Under her leadership, the department developed a very strong reputation in the city and the region, which certainly opened doors to our students in a whole range of new agencies and new geographic locations,’’ said Sankar, who studied at Simmons and turned to Mrs. Riley as an adviser and mentor.

Mrs. Riley was also involved on a national level with the direction of field education, Sankar said. “She worked to promote the status of field education and was really considered a leader.’’

In addition, Mrs. Riley kept a small private social work practice, though the financial benefits were slim at times.

“We used to kid about it,’’ her husband recalled. “I would say, ‘It’s really like you’re running a free agency, Priscilla,’ and she would say, ‘Well, this one doesn’t have much money.’ ’’

The approach she took to clients and to helping students at risk of leaving the program, he said, reflected the personal and academic paths she traveled to her profession.

“She felt a connection to people who were in pain and needed help, and I’m sure some of that was connected to when she was young and what she went through,’’ her husband said. “She had some mentors in her life, and it was something she felt she had to do.’’

Born Priscilla Mullen, the older of two children, she grew up in North Cambridge, where her father was a doctor.

“She lost her mother at 9, and lost her father at 14,’’ her husband said. “Then she lost her brother shortly after we got married.’’

Living with an aunt and uncle, Mrs. Mullen graduated from North Cambridge Catholic High School and was attending Emmanuel College when she took part in a social work careers program, her husband said.

“She got her first taste of it there, and she just fell in love with it,’’ he said.

Graduating from Emmanuel in 1961, she enrolled at Boston College’s Graduate School of Social Work, where she received a master’s in 1965 and met Donald Riley, who was a year ahead of her, and who was immediately impressed by her energy.

“I used to joke with her and say, ‘Where are you racing to?’ She was always walking very fast,’’ he said. “She said, ‘I have things to do.’ She was always on to something - she had some project going or something she wanted to work on - and she was conscientious, too.’’

While Mrs. Riley could be gentle and reassuring with clients, she spoke her mind with friends. Her husband recalled with a laugh. “She was very clear when we first went out. She said, ‘I’m not sure of you and your values.’ ’’

He succeeded in impressing her, and they married in 1966. They bought “a very large house in Newton that needed a lot of repair,’’ her husband said. “We were two social workers going out on a limb.

“We always were the house where if anyone was retiring or leaving the area, we had the party,’’ he said. “She loved to entertain, loved to be with people. There used to be a joke about how many times she went out to lunch and who she went with. She loved going out with people.’’

At home, Mrs. Riley brought her professional sensitivity to the role of being a mother to her son, Justin of Newton, and her daughter, Caitlin Ramage of Fuquay-Varina, N.C., particularly during their teenage years when communication between parents and children can fray.

“If she couldn’t get through, she would write them a letter and tell them what she felt, and they’d write her back, and they’d start talking,’’ her husband said.

“She would never give up,’’ her son said. “Caity and I trusted her. We had no qualms at all about telling her about things. She was the least selfish person I’ve ever met in my life.’’

In addition to her husband, son, and daughter, Mrs. Riley leaves two grandchildren.

A funeral Mass will be said at 10 a.m. today in St. Ignatius of Loyola Church in Chestnut Hill, where she and her husband were married. Burial will be in Newton Cemetery.