At a Glance | Boston University School of Social Work

Mission & Vision

Our mission is to develop dynamic and diverse social work practitioners, leaders, and scholars through rigorous teaching, innovative research, and transformative community engagement.

Our vision is to advance a just and compassionate society that promotes health and well-being and the empowerment of all oppressed groups, especially those affected by racial, social, and economic inequities.

Our Values

Develop visionary social work practitioners who use effective clinical, community, and policy methods to enhance strengths in urban and other contexts.
Promote equity, especially in the area of health, through high-impact prevention and intervention research and scholarship, characterized by trans-disciplinary and inter-professional collaborations.
Advance graduate social work education through innovative instructional methods and promotion of life-long learning.
Further social justice through local, national, and global partnerships and service that value community capacities and expertise.

Our History

Home to a rich history of excellence, innovation, and 100 years of social justice education.

Our school’s history dates back to 1918 when it opened as the School of Education located on Beacon Hill and later renamed the School of Religious and Social Work.
In 1937, The Division of Social Work inaugurated a two-year graduate program. In 1939, our school was accredited provisionally, and in 1940 officially became a separate entity. In 1979, Associate Dean Ken Schulman led the school’s first ever Travel Study Seminar in Cuba. In 1980, the dual degree program in social work and theology was established.
In 1982, our school launched the Off-Campus MSW Program, offering a part-time weekend option to those living and working in educationally under-served areas of Massachusetts. It began with the Fall River Campus at UMass Dartmouth where we welcomed students from southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
1982 also marked the launch of our public health dual degree program option, the first of its kind in the country. In 1988, our school partnered with BU’s School of Education—now Wheelock College of Education & Human Development—to establish the dual degree program in social work and education.
We opened a new Off-Campus site at Cape Cod Community College in Barnstable, Massachusetts in 2002. In 2009, the first BU-North site of the Off-Campus Program opened in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts and relocated to Bedford in 2026.
In 2011, BUSSW launched one of the first online MSW programs in the U.S.
Building on the long-standing success of the school’s Social Work and Master of Public Health dual degree program, in 2015 the Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health (CISWH) was established after a generous gift from an anonymous donor to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable populations nationally and globally.
In 2019, we launched the Worcester Hybrid MSW Program, offering an innovative, off-campus/online part-time format based at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
In 2025, Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, PhD, MPA-URP, a renowned researcher of child health equity and social policy, and director of the newly created Institute for Equity in Child Opportunity & Healthy Development (IECOHD), joined BUSSW. IECOHD is a multimillion-dollar research institute and is home to www.diversitydatakids.org, a comprehensive research program and indicator database on racial/ethnic equity in child opportunity and well-being, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.