Master of Social Work (MSW) Online

This course is one of two introductory courses required to orient students to the MSW degree program. This holistic course introduces students to Chamberlain’s mission of Chamberlain Care® and how it is integral to their success as a student in the MSW degree program. This course also introduces students to self-care and the importance of maintaining a healthy school/work/family balance. In addition, this course is designed to help students learn and improve skills and strategies that are essential to their academic success.

This is a foundation course in which students engage in in-depth discussions and discourse in areas of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, class, culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation and power and privilege. Students will explore the meaning and value of such concepts as culture, ethnicity, bias and cultural competence as they relate to various psychological issues. While engaging in personal reflection and introspection, students will deconstruct the role of power and privilege and its impact on oppression and marginalization of clients and communities. At the completion of this course, students will understand the importance of social workers developing competence in providing evidence-based contextually and culturally relevant assessments and interventions for individuals, families, groups and communities.

This advanced course is designed to prepare students for clinical social work practice that reflects an advanced understanding of life-span development and socio-psychological identity development in individuals, families, groups and communities. Throughout this course, students will use their learning around life-span development and socio-psychological identity development to understand human behavior and, particularly, individual and family functioning within the environmental context. With an emphasis on ethical practice in social work, this course gives students the opportunity to use this information to inform their assessments, evaluations, interventions and advocacy for their clients.

This course expands students’ knowledge, values, and skills from a generalist perspective in the areas of equity, social, economic, racial, and environmental justice. Through global, anti-racist and anti-oppressions lenses and with emphasis on macro level practice, students examine social work theories, policies, and practices in the United States for their alignment with the principles of equity and justice. The course further introduces students to approaches to practice with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities rooted in non-Western ideas and Western ideas from outside the United States. It is designed as a survey course offering foundational information upon which the entire specialized practice curriculum is built.  

This advanced course builds knowledge and skills for systematically evaluating programs and practice. It enhances effective and ethical social work practice by teaching skills necessary to design, implement, and empirically assess intervention with clients and programs. Previously acquired research knowledge is built upon for elaborating on the conceptual, methodological and administrative aspects of evaluation research. This course is designed to cover hypothesis testing in the behavioral sciences, building on concepts learned in a research methods course. The logic, assumptions, computation and interpretation of inferential statistics will be covered, including one-sample, related-samples, and independent-samples t-tests; one-way and two-way ANOVA; correlation and bivariate regression; and non-parametric procedures. In addition to the logic of hypothesis testing, this course will integrate SPSS as a tool for data management and hypothesis testing.