Master of Social Work (MSW) Online

This course provides students the opportunity to explore the foundation of social work practice through the nine core social work competencies. When completing this course, students will engage in self-reflection to support professional growth in social work practice through the alignment of the NASW Code of Ethics. Students will also explore the foundation of the social work profession and review the history of the US social welfare system and its development over time.

In this course students will utilize the skills they have achieved in previous courses in order to critically analyze from a Global perspective social safety net systems and the impact they have on vulnerable populations. While engaging in this critical reflection, students will utilize a right based, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive perspective. This perspective will be utilized throughout the course and ultimately assist the student in learning to effectively identify appropriate conceptual and practice frameworks to assess, intervene and evaluate individuals, families, groups, organizations and communities.

This course equips students with research and evidence-based practices to approach interventions with clients and systems from a rights-based, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive perspective. Students will evaluate the pervasiveness of U.S.-centric, White middle-class values in social work practice, and discern appropriate interventions to mitigate environmental impacts, using a global perspective to ensure equitable distribution of social resources and advancement of environmental justice for oppressed and marginalized populations within a human rights framework. Taking this perspective, students will demonstrate intervention skills using multidisciplinary theoretical and practice frameworks when intervening with diverse individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.

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 course focuses on larger systems that have been a source of oppression and discrimination and the justifications used to perpetuate such structures. Living in communities and interacting with organizations shapes one’s development. The impacts on individuals, families, and groups when these spaces treat people differentially and unequally based on race, social class, and gender is explored. Students will examine different institutions that have histories of discriminatory practices and unequal treatment as examples of structural inequality, including but not limited to the criminal justice system, the child welfare systems, and the public school system. This course provides the foundation for later courses where interventions that target larger systems are explored. 

This course explores the methods of program evaluation commonly seen in social work practice, with opportunities to also evaluate specific intervention techniques for work with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. Distinctions are made between effectiveness of specific interventions from overall evaluations of full programs. Because social workers are required to use research to inform practice and to conduct research into practice, students will incorporate prior knowledge and skills in research as they develop program evaluation strategies for their practicum agencies. Students will also develop methods to evaluate their practice with individuals, families and groups, and explore methods of assessment for determining community needs.