Social Work Comprehensive, B.S.W.

The Program Mission
The mission of the Shepherd University Social Work Program, in concert with the University mission and the Council on Social Work Education Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (2015), is to prepare competent beginning level professional practitioners who possess the knowledge, skills, values, and ethics necessary to intervene effectively on behalf of diverse clients on all practice levels. Through practitioner preparation, the program enhances the practice community’s ability to both facilitate the social functioning of clients and advance social change. The Social Work Program envisions graduates as regional leaders whose efforts improve the social service delivery system and work toward social and economic justice.

Program Goals

In keeping with our mission to prepare new social work professionals and support the existing professional community, the Shepherd Social Work Program serves as a link and liaison between the professional community and the university. Our goals focus on student learning outcomes to continuously renew the program’s ongoing commitment to social work’s mission and principles in our region and beyond.  At the completion of the program, students are prepared to:

1. Practice beginning-level, evidence-based generalist social work with individuals, families, other groups, organizations, and communities through the use of professional knowledge, skills, values, and ethics, as well as cognitive and affective processes.
2. Utilize policy to inform and transform interventions targeting human rights and social and economic justice, particularly with oppressed and vulnerable populations.
3. Integrate knowledge of human behavior and the social environment to view diversity and difference as strengths and resources and effectively use these to respond to the impact of context on professional practice.
4. Identify as a social worker whose professional judgment is informed by critical thinking and self-awareness and communicated through the professional use of self.

Accredited by the Council on Social Work Education, Shepherd University offers a four-year liberal arts-based curriculum leading to a bachelor in social work degree. The curriculum has been designed to provide for a broad educational base in the humanities, the biological sciences, the social and behavioral sciences, creative arts, and communication, together with a sequence of core social work courses. The primary purpose of the social work program is to prepare generalist beginning-level social work professionals. The course content also is appropriate to the preparation of students for admission to graduate schools of social work offering advanced professional education.

Preparation for practice includes classroom instruction, audiovisual laboratory experience, field observation, field work experience, community and on-campus workshops, and an intensive program of academic and professional advisement. Social work students are also encouraged to take advantage of opportunities to further their development as individuals as well as to fulfill their obligations as responsible citizens in a democratic society.

The social work program curriculum is based on a philosophy of social welfare through social change. The curriculum therefore emphasizes generic content areas, principles, and methodologies that will allow for generalist practice with various client and target systems. Students are exposed to a variety of intervention theories and methodologies and are encouraged to select for their practice those interventions which are compatible with the philosophy of social work and which are most useful to the tasks at hand.

Please note that there are specific admission requirements  for entrance into the Social Work program at Shepherd University.