Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

  • SSW MP 783: Planning and Program Development
    Graduate Prerequisites: SSW MP 759; Or permission of department chair. Required of all Macro Social Work Practice students.
    Graduate Corequisites: Required to be in a field placement with this course.
    This course introduces students to planning theory, planned social change, organizational development, program development, proposal writing, and leadership. Specific emphasis is placed on basic concepts, principles, skills, and knowledge necessary to effect change at the organizational and community levels.
  • SSW MP 785: Program Evaluation
    Graduate Prerequisites: SSW MP 759; Or permission of department chair.
    MP 785 equips students with the ability to conduct an evaluation as an essential part of the infrastructure of any program or organization designed to advance social change. Students will learn how to select an evaluation design and method that responds to a program's organizational reality, political-policy context, client and/or community input and that promotes a culture of learning and adaption to ensure the highest quality service. Students will design a comprehensive field-based evaluation plan or conduct an evaluation in the field based on their own collection of data.
  • SSW MP 786: Health Equity
    Graduate Prerequisites: MP 759
    Data indicate, people who identify as white in the United States experience better health outcomes across a myriad of chronic conditions. Achieving health equity requires closing the racial health gap. Macro social workers are poised to fight for health equity -- by dismantling white supremacy culture and colonial ideology that shape the systems and structures, social determinants, which produce ill health. During the course of the semester, students will explore and propose organization and community change strategies to promote health equity.
  • SSW MP 787: Leadership for Equity and Inclusion
    Graduate Prerequisites: MP 759- Comm & Orgs
    Prepares students to assume leadership roles with a focus on promoting equity and inclusion in order to simultaneously advance social justice and the effectiveness of macro-level systems. Theories and styles of leadership are examined and critiqued as students work to identify and further develop their leadership styles. Students will acquire skills for effective leadership aimed toward dismantling white supremacist culture, heterocentrism, ablism, sexism, and other forms of oppression, and building an organizational culture that embraces and utilizes a wide range of experiences, perspectives, and skills.
  • SSW MP 788: Introduction to Community Based Participatory Research: Positionality, Ethics, and Power
    Graduate Prerequisites: SSW MP 759
    This course examines strategies for building community research partnerships in Community Engaged Research (CEnR) as an approach for advancing interdisciplinary collaborative efforts to achieve racial equity. The course familiarizes students with: (1) History of CenR and Participatory Action Research, (2) Positionality and Racial Justice, (3) Principles of Participatory Action Research approaches and CEnR spectrum of participation, (4) CEnR partnership development and implementation, (5) translating research to community action, (6) Ethical considerations, and (7) Partnership evaluation
  • SSW MP 789: Global Social Work Practice: A Rights Based Perspective
    Graduate Prerequisites: MP 759
    This course prepares clinical and macro students for effective practice in a global context. The course covers three broad areas: the first part lays out the framework for the rights-based perspectives; the second encompasses rights-based programing; the third looks at building sustainable systems. The focus of the course will be on applying social work theories and skills to provide a context for social work practice in a global environment. Students will be exposed to "rights-based approaches" to social work practice mainly in countries of the global south. Areas of focus include working with working with marginalized populations such as children in a variety of settings, gender issues, migration as well as working with various NGOs, governmental and United Nations systems. Students will build on basic policy and skills courses to apply fundamental social work principals and practice to global context areas. Students will apply critical thinking with respect to understanding global context areas and their interrelatedness with domestic policies and actions. Special emphasis will be placed on working with diverse client populations including the roles that gender, age, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, spirituality, economic, political and sexual orientation play in influencing life chances for marginalized individuals/groups. Students will engage in class discussion based on the readings, media extracts, experiences of professionals in the field of international social welfare, and current global events impacting social service provision in a global context.
  • SSW MP 794: Macro Field Seminar
    A required monthly seminar in support of field placements for non-MSW-supervised, second-year macro students. There are no readings or assignments.
  • SSW SR 743: Introduction to Social Work Research I
    Graduate Prerequisites: Required of all students. Permission of SSW Registrar for non-SSW students.
    The goal of this introductory course is to develop the student's ability to use and engage in both quantitative and qualitative research in order to inform and evaluate their own social work practice. The course addresses key research concepts and procedures such as hypothesis formulation, measurement, sampling, research design, and data collection. The course also examines ethical issues in the conduct of social research, including informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality, culturally sensitive research methods, and the NASW Code of Ethics.
  • SSW SR 744: Social Work Research II
    Graduate Prerequisites: Satisfactory completion of SSW SR 743 (C or above) or permission of department chair. Required of all students.
    Students are introduced to the concepts and procedures that are fundamental to both descriptive and inferential statistics. Empirical research examining the effectiveness of social work practice, particularly in the urban environment, is explored. Utilizing existing national data sets, students generate their own research hypotheses and then formulate and carry out an analytic strategy to answer these questions effectively. Emphasis is also placed on gaining skills in presenting and communicating key findings to relevant audiences and stakeholders
  • SSW SR 904: Clinical Research Methods in Social Work Practice
    Graduate Prerequisites: PHD level course, permission required for graduate students
    This course builds upon introductory doctoral coursework in research and statistical methods to develop advanced skills in clinical research. The intention is to familiarize and advance students' knowledge and application of design and implementation strategies for clinical research. A variety of practice research approaches will be discussed and critically analyzed and will include clinical trials, clinical process research, program evaluation, measurement construction, longitudinal, mixed methods, implementation science, and survey research. Topics include conceptualization and design, sampling of participants, assessment, data organization and management, analysis plans, evaluation and outcomes, and ethical concerns. Wherever possible, the instructor and guest speakers will present on completed and ongoing research projects. The course will be conducted as a seminar, whereby students will take an active role in discussions and applying knowledge and skills development. We will examine and critique readings (e.g., assigned, independent) as well as present and provide constructive consultation and feedback to other seminar participants. Original study materials such as questionnaires and standardized research measures will be provided to students. The class will focus on experiential exercises to maximize the relevance to students' own research (e.g., dissertation).
  • SSW SR 906: Qualitative Research Methods
    This course provides doctoral students with foundational knowledge of some of the major theories and practices of qualitative research. The history of qualitative methods is reviewed to situate this long-standing approach within current practices in the social sciences. A variety of approaches to data collection (ethnography, observation, focus groups and individual interviewing) and analysis (narrative, grounded theory, Listening Guide) are introduced along with ethical issues in the practice of qualitative research. Strategies for enhancing rigor are discussed as are writing qualitative research proposals and publications. A series of exercises culminates in a proposal for a small qualitative research project along with an accompanying IRB application. (SR906 and SR907 comprise a two-course qualitative methods sequence.)
  • SSW SR 907: Advanced Qualitative Research Methods
    This course is the second in a two-semester sequence (SR906 and SR907) designed to introduce students to qualitative approaches in social science research and foster development of foundational skills in qualitative research design, data collection, data analysis, and presentation of qualitative research findings. The course builds on students' developing understanding of the diversity and philosophical underpinnings of qualitative approaches and provides an opportunity to deepen one's skills in data collection and analysis through the completion of a small-scale qualitative research project. Students are expected to have obtained IRB approval for their projects prior to the start of the semester so that work on these can begin immediately.
  • SSW SR 910: Doctoral Dissertation Seminar
    Designed as a seminar format, this course guides students in the transformation of their latent ideas into novel researchable dissertation projects. The course focuses on enhancing student knowledge and skills necessary to develop the many components of the dissertation in a coherent manner: introduction, literature review, theoretical or conceptual framework, research questions, methods, results and discussion sections. The seminar also addresses a number of dissertation research-related tasks such as creation of the dissertation committee, understanding research ethics and the institutional review board process, exploring dissertation funding and identifying needed resources, creation of realistic timelines for dissertation phases, and strategies for dissemination of work through conference presentations and publications. Each student will develop a complete draft of his/her dissertation prospectus and evaluate the proposed research in terms of its relevance for the field of social welfare, including relevance to the profession's mission to pursue social justice, the rigor of the proposed study, the originality of the research, and the feasibility of the overall proposal.
  • SSW SW 905: Contemporary Social Problems: A Social Work Perspective
    SW905 is meant to act as an informal capstone experience for social work doctoral students. The class is to be taken in the fourth semester of full time study after students have completed their foundational learning at the School of Social Work as well as their methods and specialization courses in the greater University community. Given the topical and methodological diversity of the social work academic enterprise and the accompanying diversity in student research interests, the course has two over-arching aims: 1. To recognize the unique contributions of social work empirical research to the understanding of contemporary social problems; 2. To have students locate their own nascent research agendas among the diverse methods and topics that are currently characteristic of the field.
  • SSW SW 908: Teaching Seminar
    This required, 4-credit course will orient students to teaching methods and skills specific to course instruction in substantive areas required in accredited social work programs at the master's level. Students will explore diverse pedagogical frameworks for teaching social work clinical and community practice, policy, human behavior, and research. The course will emphasize effective teaching grounded in core social work values of social justice and respect for human diversity.
  • SSW SW 909: Teaching Practicum
    Students will complete a teaching practicum with an instructor of record for a traditional in person MSW classroom course. Course assignments will be made according to the needs and interests of the student in collaboration with faculty advisors and course instructors with approval from the doctoral committee and relevant departments.
  • SSW SW 981: Certified Ft
  • SSW SW 982: Certified Ft
  • SSW SW 983: Cont Study Pt
  • SSW SW 984: Cont Study Pt