BRIDGE Program

Committed to educating students for practice in an increasingly global world and to serving the growing needs of immigrants and refugees, SSW offers the innovative BRIDGE (Building Refugee and Immigrant Degrees for Graduate Education) Program. The BRIDGE Program trains and supports refugees and immigrants for success in an academic social work program, ultimately aiming to increase the number of ethnically diverse in-community social workers.

The overall aim 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 academic communities where social work is taught at the graduate level.

The BRIDGE Program started as the Refugees and Immigrants Training Program (RITIP) in the 1990s. Today, the BRIDGE Program has trained hundreds of diverse groups of students for leadership positions in agencies serving underserved groups, including refugee and immigrant communities 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 a refugee, immigrant, or child of a refugee or immigrant and received a bachelor’s degree either in the United States or abroad.

For more information, please visit the BRIDGE Program website.