BRIDGE Program

Committed to educating students for practice in an increasingly global world, SSW offers the innovative BRIDGE Program. Focused on increasing access to graduate social work education for those who have historically not had it, while addressing critical cultural competency needs within the human services workforce, the BRIDGE Program ultimately aims to increase the number of ethnically diverse in-community social workers.

The overall goal of the BRIDGE Program is to make graduate social work education more accessible, thereby increasing the number of professionally trained social workers from underserved culturally and linguistically diverse newcomer populations. This innovative program provides a transitional “bridge” for these communities to learn about the academic environment for social work education at the graduate level.

The BRIDGE Program started as a unique training program in the 1990s and has evolved into today’s program, which has trained hundreds of diverse groups of students for leadership positions in agencies serving underserved groups across the US.

Application & Admission

Applying and getting accepted to the BRIDGE Program is different from applying to the School of Social Work. BRIDGE prepares participants for applying to a Master of Social Work (MSW) program.

Students are encouraged to apply if:

• They are interested in exploring higher education and careers in social work/human services; and
• They are someone who has historically not had access to social work education, including participants from around the globe, and received a bachelor’s degree either in the United States or abroad.

For more information, please visit the BRIDGE Program website.