StudyQA — Master: Social Work — University of Georgia (Page 15)

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The primary mission of social work is to enhance human well-being and to help meet the basic humanneeds of all people, with particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty. Professional social workers are employed in schools, hospitals, mental health clinics, senior centers, elected office, private practice, prisons, corporations, and in many public and private agencies that serve individuals and families in need.

Students leave our program as competent and creative social workers ready for advanced practice. The MSW program at Georgia is fully accredited by the Council on Social Work Education and our school is ranked in the top 25 percent of social work graduate programs nationwide.

We invite motivated and dedicated students who want to work for positive social change to apply to our program. If you are accepted into the MSW program at UGA, you’ll choose from two concentration areas:

Family Centered Social Work Practice—your courses will have a clinical focus and will prepare you to work directly with clients.
Community Empowerment and Program Development—your courses will have a broad focus and prepare you to work with community programs and in community advocacy and administrative positions.

The MSW program also offers courses that lead to certificates in:

Marriage and Family Therapy
Gerontology
Nonprofit Management

And we offer three ways to earn your MSW. Full time program—four-semester program starts each fall. Advanced standing program—three-semester program for recent BSWs starts in the fall. Part time program—afternoon and evening classes for eight semesters, including summers, starts in the fall.

MSW Concentration Areas

The two concentration areas--clinical practice and community empowerment & program development--are not mutually exclusive. Leadership in the social work profession is a function of both concentrations. Clinical practice specialists frequently get involved in social advocacy and in administering or supervising programs while attending to the individual and family needs of their clients. Likewise, community and program management practitioners often work with individuals, families, and groups in the course of developing programs and organizing or facilitating empowerment activities. Your first year of study, the foundation year, will prepare you in the areas of practice, theory, and professional identity development that will serve as the basis for your concentration area in your second year.

Clinical Practice

Clinical Practice addresses individuals within a relational context that includes family, culture, and community. This concentration area prepares students for advanced assessment and intervention practice. People are viewed holistically in order to identify and enhance the strengths they bring to the process of change. Couples, parents, children, siblings, grandparents, and extended family relationships may be the focus of clinical practice. Social work roles include counseling and therapy, resource development and facilitation, education, advocacy, group work, and case management, among others.

Core courses for the Clinical Practice concentration include:

SOWK 7203: Advanced Social Work Practice with Individuals
SOWK 7232: Advanced Social Work Practice with Families
SOWK 7222: Assessment & Pschopathology
SOWK 7206: Evaluation of Clinical Social Work Interventions
SOWK 7223: Advanced Social Work Practice with Groups

Community Empowerment and Program Development

The Community Empowerment and Program Development concentration area entails a dual focus on empowering community groups and designing and developing programs. Often called macro-practice, the idea is to address social problems by initiating action within the community or through legislation. Social workers with this concentration assist people in communities to identify and document social problems, design services, develop resources, advocate, broker, and negotiate for resources and policies, recruit participants and personnel, and administer the delivery of services.

Core courses for the Community Empowerment and Program Development concentration include:

SOWK 7153: Community Assessment and Empowerment Practices
SOWK 7411: Advanced Policy Analysis
SOWK 7106: Evaluation of Community and Institutional Practice
SOWK 7123: Program Design and Development

Required Foundation Courses

SOWK 6011 - Social Welfare Policy and the Social Work Profession
SOWK 6022 - Human Behavior in the Social Environment: Theoretical Perspectives
SOWK 6033 - Direct Practice Methods
SOWK 6044 - Theory and Practice with Families
SOWK 6055 - Foundation Practicum and Seminar
SOWK 6066 - Foundation Research Methods
SOWK 6074 - Theory and Practice in Organizations
SOWK 6082 - Cultural Diversity

Required Concentration Courses

Clinical Practice

SOWK 7203 - Advanced Social Work Practice with Individuals
SOWK 7206 - Evaluation of Clinical Social Work Interventions
SOWK 7222 - Assessment and Psychopathology
SOWK 7223 - Advanced Social Work Practice with Groups
SOWK 7232 - Advanced Social Work Practice with Families
SOWK 7055 - Concentration Practicum

Community Empowerment & Program Development

SOWK 7106 - Evaluation of Community and Institutional Practices
SOWK 7123 - Program Design and Development
SOWK 7153 - Community Assessment and Empowerment Practices
SOWK 7055 - Concentration Practicum
SOWK 7411 - Advanced Policy Analysis

Electives

The School of Social Work offers a variety of electives focused both on clinical and CEPD topics. In addition, advanced courses outside of Social Work sometimes fit students' educational goals. In order to have an out-of-department course counted as an elective, a form (see FORMS below) must be completed and approved by the student's academic advisor, and filed in the MSW Program office. No more than two electives may be taken outside of the SSW. Please note that elective offerings vary from year to year.

SOWK 7010 - Issues in Marriage and Family Therapy
SOWK 7127 - Social Work with Women
SOWK 7152 - Immigration and Social Work
SOWK 7122 - Grief and Loss: Social Work Perspectives
SOWK 7132 - Social Work with Abusing and Neglecting Families
SOWK 7143 - Organizing Community Groups
SOWK 7233 - Cognitive Behavioral Methods in Social Work Practice
SOWK 7253 - Crisis Intervention
SOWK 7263 - Social Work in Health Care Settings
SOWK 7273 - Clinical Practice with Addictive Disorders
SOWK 7327 - Topics in Aging
SOWK 7337 - Topics in Community Practice
SOWK 7347 - Topics in Family and Child Welfare
SOWK 7377 - Topics in Program Development
SOWK 7387 - Topics in Social Problem Intervention
SOWK 7397 - Topics in Social Justice
SOWK 6908/7908 - Independent Social Work Research
SOWK 7353 - Study Abroad in Social Work

MSW Application Form
Narrative Statement—directions are found on page 4 of the application form found in the Application for Admissions booklet
Your resume—including details of your work experience in human service and other settings
Three letters of recommendation
Certification of finances forms (international applicants)
Minimum TOEFL score requirement: overall score of 80 with at least 20 on speaking and writing
Minimum IELTS score requirement: overall band-width of 6.5, with no single band (score) below 6.0.