School for Social Work

SOCW 500 Social Work Practice with Individuals and Families I (3 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Addresses the fundamental purposes, functions, and methods of social work practice with individuals and families. Links to social work practice with groups, agencies and communities are made in this course, as well as linkages to select policy and research issues. This course will focus on developing practice knowledge, values and skills applicable to practice with individuals and families which are also applicable to practice at all levels of scale (micro-, mezzo-, and macro-). These include: relationship building, data collection, strengths assessment, problem formulation, intermediate and final goal setting, contracting, work with collaterals, resource development, a range of interventions, and practice monitoring and evaluation. Attention will also be given to the stages of intervention, the use of self in helping relationships, modifications in approaches based on racial and cultural variation, experience of social oppression, selection of most relevant interventions and modalities, as well as policy-and agency-based considerations affecting practice, including time-limits, outreach, supervision and case advocacy. Case materials reflecting individual and family practice in a range of service settings and a range of populations at risk are presented. The course will address psychosocial assessment from psychodynamic, family, and social-contextual theoretical perspectives and provide an introduction to the specialization of the School: clinical social work. Issues of social and economic justice are also integrated with individual and family practice. Ten week course. Three quarter-hours each term.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 501 Social Work Practice with Individuals and Families II (3 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 505 Group Theory and Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Introduces students to the history of social group work and focuses on applying the values, skills, and knowledge of the social work profession to a variety of groups. Theoretical and practical principles of group work are introduced to enhance understanding and use of group as a complex system of roles and interrelationships. Students learn how to construct task and treatment groups and how to mobilize the resources of existing groups. Primary focus is given to those dynamics which are common to all groups, and students will begin to explore how issues of difference (gender, race, sexual orientation, age, culture, class, ability, religion) affect group processes.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 510 Preparing for First Year Practicum (1 Quarter Hour)

Coordinating Sequence: Practicum

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Eligibility: First Year MSW or Advanced Standing Students

This 2-day intensive will prepare students to maximize practicum learning opportunities while removing the mystery and performance anxiety related to starting the practicum.The course will:Introduce key practicum experiences and concepts, such as professional ethics, dual roles, being observed & evaluated, managing conflict and role as learner Explore and practice methods that can enhance critical thinking and problem solving skills Provide skills to successfully navigate the complexities of working with colleagues, supervisors and agencies The course takes place the first month of Winter Term (virtually)

Winter

SOCW 514 Theories of Individual Development (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Introduces students to major theories of clinical social work practice. We will focus on major theoretical approaches that will include: psychodynamic theories (including classical theory, object-relations and attachment theory, and relational approaches), humanist-existential theories, and cognitive-behavioral theories. We will begin by examining what constitutes a clinical theory, why theory is important and how clinical theory may guide clinical practice. We will proceed by examining the basic tenets of each clinical theory, while focusing on the theory’s conceptualization of the therapeutic change process. We will compare and contrast theories to promote critical and flexible clinical thought which will support a deliberate engagement with the question of what works? For whom? When?. Throughout the course we will consider how each theory interfaces with an intersectional analysis of the identities of the individuals in the therapeutic dyad (i.e., intersectional framework suggests that individuals experience various social positions synchronously rather than independently); as well as differential forms of oppression and racism in the clinical encounter. We will also examine relevant clinical research applicable to each theoretical framework. We will begin to query about the role of research in informing clinical practice, and, how clinical practice informs research. As we critically review the theoretical foundation of each theory, students will develop the ability to discern what theoretical approach best informs our clinical understanding of individual development and associated clinical practice when working with diverse populations and complex issues.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 516 Problems in Biopsychosocial Functioning (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Eligibility: First Year MSW or Advanced Standing Students

Draws upon the individual personality theories taught in 130, Theories of Individual Development, to provide a context in which to understand problems in biopsychosocial functioning. The course will provide students with an opportunity to explore how the relationships between biological, psychological, and environmental factors can lead to the development of individual problems in functioning. Students will learn some of the tools with which to make descriptive developmental assessments in examining psychosis, personality disorders, depressive disorders, and anxiety disorders, as well as how ethnicity, race, social class, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, and other social variables intersect with assessment and practice issues.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 520 Family Theory for Social Work Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Theories framing the foundation for social work practice with families are explored and critiqued as they assist in understanding (1) the relationship between the family and its environment, (2) intergenerational family culture, structure, and process; (3) family life cycle processes; (4) internal family organization and process and (5) individual family meanings and narratives. Attention will be given to those theories that have dominated the early family therapy movement as well as newer epistemological positions and concepts deriving from more current feminist and social constructionist critiques. Implications for clinical practice are addressed. Cross-cutting the exploration of family theory are issues of culture, ethnicity, race, gender, socioeconomic status, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability as well as varying family forms. Topics related to gay and lesbian families, divorce, remarriage and single parenting will also be explored. The interface between family theories and the promotion of social justice concerns is addressed.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 522 Sociocultural Concepts (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Introduces students to the sociocultural concepts that define the context of human experience. While exploring the broad thematic areas of culture, social structures, inter-group relationships and identity, concepts of ethnicity, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, and disability will be explored so as to understand how these variables impact individual lives. Implications for practice will be explored. Special attention will be given to the uses and misuses of power in constructing social identities and meanings as well as personal and group experiences, and to the ways that social identity and position affect access to services and resources.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 525 Child Development from Infancy to Adolescence (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

This foundation course will examine the bio-psycho-social development of children and adolescents as a basis for understanding: (a) cognitive and affective developments allowing the child to construct individual and social life at increasingly complex levels of differentiation and affiliation, (b) the use of those developmental levels as paradigms for healthy functioning, (c) a range of childhood experiences which may enhance or deter well-being and development, and (d) the utility of normal child development as a heuristic for understanding developmentally based theories of bio-psycho-social difficulties. Values and ethical issues related to these approaches are identified and related to practice illustrations. Particular attention will be paid to issues of self regulation, internal representation, affect, cognition, relatedness, and separation. The tasks of infancy, early childhood, latency, and early adolescence are examined in the contexts of family and peer relationships and values and in relation to influences of gender, race, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, and other cultural forces on the developing child. Issues of strengths, resilience, vulnerability, and dysfunction in the developing child are addressed. All of these themes are illustrated through practice application. A critical stance is encouraged in which various ideas and theories are examined in relation to the values they imply, the sociocultural contexts in which they develop, and their application to participants’ other courses (such as practice and racism).

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 530 Introduction to Social Welfare Policy (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

The course is designed as an introduction to the field of social welfare in the United States and the development of the social work profession. The course provides a framework for the analysis of social welfare policy and then uses that framework to explore selected social policy areas. Part of the framework involves an examination of the history both of social welfare in the United States and of the social work profession. Finally, the course offers an opportunity to view social work in an international context. Attention will also be paid to ways in which social workers can advocate for needed policy changes.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 540 Principles of Social Work Research (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Research

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Social work practice requires clinicians to employ evidence to inform their clinical practice, and to use their practice expertise to inform new research. This course introduces key conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and empirical concepts at the foundation of social work research. Students will engage with these concepts as both consumers and producers of clinically relevant social work research.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 580 Practicum Instruction in Social Work (30 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practicum

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Eligibility: First Year MSW Students

M.S.W students are assigned a practicum for 30 hours per week for a period of 34 weeks from September through the end of April, with a two week mid winter break and additional periods of vacation and independent study both prior to and following the practicum period. First year practicum is specifically chosen to provide students a strong general foundation for clinical social work practice.

Winter

SOCW 581 First Year Practicum Learning Seminar (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practicum

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Eligibility: First Year MSW Students

The First Year Practicum Learning Seminar is designed to help students successfully enter into and engage in the learning of the first year practicum. The seminar will address issues related to the Essential Attributes and Abilities and is designed to support students in achieving the defined learning objectives for first year practicum and to deepen their understanding and integration of content from the summer course work. Students are expected to use the seminar as a forum to discuss their own clinical work and to actively engage in the integration of theory and practice as relevant to their own practicum setting. The course meets for 10 sessions September-April for 2 hours/month.

Winter

SOCW 600 Clinical Social Work Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Builds upon the academic and clinical foundations of the introductory practice course and the first year field placement and develops more intensively and precisely the biopsychosocial framework for assessment and intervention. Students will learn to assess clients' functioning using a psychodynamic developmental model, descriptive diagnosis and social theories which explore the fit between person and environment. The course will focus primarily on clinical interventions with individual adult and adolescent clients. Students will examine the practice implications of different theoretical frameworks with particular attention to the usefulness of these theoretical and practice models with populations at risk. In addition, critical aspects of the therapeutic relationship which promote growth and change, the application of social work values and evaluation of practice are areas of focus. Ten week course. Two quarter-hours each term.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 601 Clinical Social Work Practice II (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 615 Comparative Psychodynamic Theories for Clinical Social Work Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 618 Racism in the United States: Implications for Social Work Practices (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Examines the historical and contemporary functioning of racism in the United States for their implications for social work practice. This course is founded on the person-in-environment framework, the foundational eco-systemic social work perspective that views individuals and their multiple environments as a dynamic, interactive system in which each component affects and is affected by the other. From this perspective, an individual’s views and experiences of race and racism cannot be understood without consideration of the ways in which ideas and practices of race and racism operate within the multiple systems that constitute that individual’s environment. The course will, thus, examine the ways in which racism operates at the macro (structural), meso (institutional), and the micro (individual) levels within our society, with an emphasis on examinations of the multiple ways in which those systems influence, shape, and define one another. Recognizing that an individual’s social location influences the system of lens through which we engage clinical social work practice, students choose one of two course sections available: From the Perspective of Whiteness and Perspectives from Clinicians of Color. The overarching goal of the course is to aid students in becoming effective social work practitioners attentive to the dynamics of race and racism in the clinical setting. Because the main instrument of clinical practice is the clinician’s use-of-self, the course aims to encourage students to engage in critical self-reflection that is anchored in an informed analysis of the larger institutional and social structures in which they live and practice. The course will utilize a wide range of pedagogical methods, including lectures, discussions, experiential learning, and clinical case analyses. The course materials and assignment are designed to guide students in developing an on-going practice of assessment, analysis, reflection, and evaluation that informs their engagement with the individuals, institutions, and systems they will encounter in the second year field placement, as well as in students’ efforts to formulate an appropriate and effective anti-racism field assignment. The study of the complex history and contemporary functioning of race and racism in the United States and their implications for social work practice cannot be accomplished in any single course. This foundational course aims, therefore, to begin the conversations, examinations, and reflections that can aid students in developing a life-long engagement in the process of learning to become social work practitioners whose work is grounded in the principles of social justice.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 627 Agency and Community Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Introduces students to the macro-component for community-based practice. It will introduce students to selected concepts from organizational theory that help them understand and bring about change in human service organizations. It will also introduce students to the processes of community development, organizing, planning, empowerment, and change -- to bring about change at the community level. It will provide conceptual frameworks that support ways that clinical social workers can change organizations and communities. Finally, it will prepare students for and provide knowledge, skills and tools to engage in practice aimed at promoting social and economic justice.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 631 Social Welfare Policy II (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Drawing on frameworks introduced in Introduction to U.S. Social Welfare Policy, this course presents an analytical framework through which to critically examine specific social welfare policies and applies this framework to key social problems and their policy solutions. The impact of policies on clinical social work practice is a key aspect of policy analysis and is considered throughout.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 648 Research for Clinical Social Work Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Research

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

This course focuses on social work research within our clinical specialization. In particular, this course generates skills for clinical social work practitioners to engage critically and employ existing research in their clinical practice as well as to use their clinical practice experience to inform new social work research. General social work research principles will be applied to clinical practice, and additional theoretical / conceptual, and methodological ideas specific to clinical research will be introduced. Students will engage in clinical case examples as a starting point to identify and appraise research that could inform their practice within a given case example and to generate clinical practice-informed questions based on this case material for further research.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 650 The Future of Social Work: Integrated Behavioral Health Care from Policy to Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

Current advances in the provision of health services in the United States call for substantial integration of primary care and behavioral health care services. Research on these approaches suggests the possibility of both cost containment and improved service quality as well as potential reductions in health disparities. Such models require a re-thinking of the role of social work and clinical practice, as well as the skill set required to be successful in new integrated settings. The course will examine models in integrated health care including accountable care organizations, medical, and behavioral health homes and the role of social work within these models. We will then address the practice dilemmas posed by such models, including a focus on care coordination, triage, and screening, brief intervention and referral models (SBIRT)

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 651 Gentrification, Urban Renewal, and Social Policy (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

The histories of Urban Planning and Social Work are deeply intertwined and interrelated in current urban challenges and opportunities. There is a long history of distinct social power and inequality dynamics that have played out in both professions. This course will focus on unpacking the relationships between social work, the urban environment and housing policy, especially urban renewal and gentrification. The goal of this course is to understand social inequality in the urban environment and how social workers can have agency within that. In this course students will strengthen their ability to identify and analyze power dynamics within urban environments and examine the social worker’s social responsibility within this context. This course will use perspectives informed by power analysis, intersectionality, planning theory and history.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 652 Social Welfare and Federal Policy on Indigenous Americans (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

Historical survey of Federal Indian policies and their effect and impact on Native Americans and American Indian tribes. Multiple methods used to analyze and confront themes in the policies, including factors and conflicts (e.g., assimilation, treaties, land rights, education, child welfare, adoption/tribal child welfare) that influenced and shaped policy development. How implementation aided and/or obstructed the overall well-being of the First People and tribes.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 653 Mental Health Policy and Services (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

Explores the social context in which emotional problems are defined and treated. Contrasting paradigms will be examined including the contribution made by each in understanding the etiology of mental health problems and the functions of treatment. Attention will be given to the special situation of women and people of color and current dilemmas in mental health policy. Current national and state laws, funding arrangements, and judicial decisions that impact on mental health programs as they affect the role of social workers in the delivery of services will be explored as well.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 654 Health Policy and Services (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

Examines the U.S. health care system, its sociopolitical origins and evolution, and its complex service delivery system and financing. The topics we discuss include: (1) factors in disease causation; (2) the structure and processes of health care organizations; (3) approaches to financing medical care; (4) healhcare outcomes, including disparities.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 655 Child Welfare Policy and Services (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

Focuses on major social and demographic changes in the family and the economy that affect the development of and impact on the construction of national and state policies designed to protect and provide for the care of children. Particular emphasis will be placed on understanding the current trends and policy issues emerging in foster care, adoption, and child abuse and neglect services.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 656 LGBTQ Identity and Social Policy (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

Examines the intersection of social policy and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender ("LGBT") identities in a variety of contexts of importance to clinical social workers. We will study policies of general applicability that have a particular impact on LGBT individuals and families as well as those that are LGBT-specific in design. The course will focus on a range of laws, policies, and practices including those that impact family formation, child custody, youth (including in and out-of-home care), health care, incarceration, immigration, military, hate speech and bias laws, and nondiscrimination in the context of employment and public education. Students will consider the role of such policies in their own clinical experiences.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 657 Criminal Justice Policy: Implications for Social Work Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

Social workers work toward social justice by impacting social systems at multiple levels – frequently by working with disenfranchised populations. The U.S. criminal justice system has a tremendous impact on disadvantaged populations and, as such, has much overlap with social work in terms of persons involved in both entities; moreover, there is a historic link between the profession of social work and the shaping of U.S. criminal justice policies and practices. However, the training of social workers in this area may be inadequate to allow them to recognize the interface between criminal justice and social work policies to impact positive outcomes for the individuals and client systems they serve. This course will extend our understanding of the U.S. criminal justice policies and how they interconnect with the social work profession and client systems. This course is applicable to social work students who wish to increase their understanding of how the criminal justice system and its policies interact with the people and communities with whom social workers engage.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 658 Good Trouble: Organizing for Change (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

The maintenance of representative democracy requires the active participation of an informed citizenry. The promises of equality before the law and the potential to redress grievances fall squarely on our collective shoulders. In order to fulfill our promise we must develop an organized citizenry capable of formulating, articulating, and asserting their common interests. In this course, each student will engage in learning to create social change through collective action. Emphasis will be placed on developing a leadership approach to organizing which includes; building power from the resources within a community, use of public narrative to focus values and intentions, and building public relationships that enhance collective capacity to attend to the demands of representative democracy. The goal of the course is to enhance the capacity of students to engage in taking a leadership role in organizing. Students begin by asking themselves three questions: who are my people, what challenges do they face, and how can they turn their resources into the power they need to meet these challenges?.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 659 Education Policy through a Social Work Lens in a New Administration (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

Public education is a complex social institution with a rich and complicated social work history. This course will provide a brief history of education reform with a focus on key and pressing issues currently at stake in public education, with a particular focus on issues of equity. Students will strengthen analytic skills as they explore the design and initial implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act [ESSA] – as well as implications for social work practice within schools and communities. The course will include investigation and analysis of the evolving policy agenda in the executive branch and Congress, and students will ultimately explore opportunities for intervention at the local, state and federal levels.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 660 Social Justice & the Law - The U.S. Supreme Court: What Is Its Role in Protecting Civil Rights? (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

Explores how the U.S. Supreme Court decisions shape, expand or contract civil rights and civil liberties. We will focus on those rights that impact our client populations and/or social work practice. Significant historical and current cases, civil and criminal, will be selected for review and analysis. We will explore how these cases impact policies of institutions where we practice. One session will focus on the social worker as witness in a court proceeding. (Content overlaps with previous course 0375- Social Justice and the Law: Public Policy and the Laws of the United States content)

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 661 Managing Ethnicities: A Socio Legal History of Immigration (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

Examines the socio-legal history of immigration. We will review major U.S. legislation concerning immigrants and immigration, refugees and asylum, and citizenship and naturalization. The legal codes will be analyzed through the lens of theory, specifically poststructuralist theories of identity, race, ethnicity, and culture that enabled the legal and social discourses of immigration and citizenship and current theories of identity and participation that challenge past assumptions and practices.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 662 The Impact of Substance Abuse Policy on Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

Substance use, dependence, abuse is a complex experience which has been pathologized and criminalized in a variety of ways. In this course students will review the history and current scope of substance use in the United States. We will examine current multidisciplinary evidence based prevention, assessment, care, and treatment modalities. Students will explore how policies that are intended to reduce substance abuse impact medical and behavioral health care, social services, and criminal justice systems. Students will examine how such policies impact communities and individuals in disparate ways.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 663 The Policy/Policing of Gender in Health and Behavioral Health Care (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

The history of interactions between individuals who identify as transgender or gender non binary the health and behavioral health system is one of oppression and resistance. Providers and leaders in both health and behavioral health care led and were complicit in proposing, codifying and normalizing treatment models that reinforced the social construction of binary gender and punished those who did not conform. This course will examine the history of health and behavioral health policy in this area and review the current state of such policy including new protections under the ACA, HIPAA, JCHOA and Medicare and Medicaid regulations. This course will also offer an explicit and clear overview of current policies with regard to medicalized interventions for gender confirmation and discuss informed consent models as an alternative. The role of social workers in the contemporary context will also be examined and critiqued.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 680 Practicum Instruction in Social Work (30 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practicum

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Eligibility: Second Year MSW or Advanced Standing Students

M.S.W. students are assigned a practicum for 30 hours a week for a period of 34 weeks from September through the end of April, with a two week mid-winter break and additional periods of vacation and independent study both prior to and following the practicum period. The second year internship offers an opportunity not only to deepen clinical skills and experience, but to develop areas of specialization within the profession.

Winter

SOCW 681 Second Year Practicum Learning Seminar (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practicum

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Eligibility: Second Year MSW or Advanced Standing Students

The Second Year Practicum Learning Seminar is designed to support second year students' academic learning process during their practicum. The goal is to foster students' abilities to successfully engage with and integrate multiple conceptual frameworks into direct clinical practice. The seminar will revisit summer course content to provide further continuity and integration during the second year practicum. Students will present their own clinical work and critically examine the treatment process including: systemic and structural dynamics in which the therapeutic relationship unfolds, internal transferential and countertransferential dynamics, and meaning making processes that inform treatment formulations, interventions, and evaluation. The course meets for 10 sessions September-April for 2 hours/month.

Winter

SOCW 682 Community Project Anti-Racism Experience (6 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: SSW Core Course

Eligibility: Second Year MSW or Advanced Standing Students

Students during their second field year will identify a coalition, network or community-based organization engaging in efforts to promote social and racial justice within their community. Students are required to join the work of the coalition or organization and engage in a total of 75 hours over the course of the second field year (SOCW 682) to strengthen knowledge and skills in organizational and community level social work practice. The Community Based Anti-Racism Experience involves students in social work activity that goes beyond direct clinical work with individuals, families and small groups to promote anti-racism in organizations, neighborhoods and our larger social systems.

Winter

SOCW 695 Policy Rotating Topic Elective (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

Topics not included in the regular curriculum, but within the Policy sequence. Specific title and description information will be posted in the registration portal for the term offered.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 696 Practice Rotating Topics Elective (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Topics not included in the regular curriculum, but within the Practice sequence. Specific title and description information will be posted in the registration portal for the term offered.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 697 Human Behavior in Social Environment Rotating Topics Elective (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 698 Research Rotating Topics Elective (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Research

Fulfills: Research Sequence Elective

Topics not included in the regular curriculum, but within the Research sequence. Specific title and description information will be posted in the registration portal for the term offered.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 700 Collective Trauma: The Impact of Intercommunal Violence on Individuals, Communities and Cultures (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Introduces students to information, concepts, and controversies critical to understanding the impact of massive violence on individuals and groups of people. Throughout the course understanding the impact of such violence will be coupled with the question of what people, and cultures, need to recover. Widespread violence threatens the constituent elements of individual and community life, especially when the violence is between communitities and targets civilians, as in Rwanda or Bosnia. Each individual caught in such violence has to begin a new life which in some way incorporates the destruction and violation which have occurred, and communities also have to reestablish, or even create, conditions for resuming viable community life. During the course we will consider what enables recovery as we look at mass violence in a number of ways. We will consider the changing nature of warfare, and detail the impact of intercommunal violence (including specific ways women and children are affected). We will consider the role of group identity in the generation of mass violence, and the ways in which violence and the terror it generates affect the subsequent group identities of conflictants (for example, the impact of the 1994 genocide on ethnic identity in Rwanda; the impact of September 11 on the national identities of US citizens). We will look at ongoing impact, through issues such as intergenerational transmission, and group memory of horror. We will look in detail at the controversies surrounding the use by the humanitarian field of concepts such as trauma and PTSD to delineate the effects of mass violence, and consider other frameworks. We will look in depth at some of the ways people and communities get caught in cycles of revenge and violence, and then look at the stages which individuals and communities go through in moving toward peaceful coexistence. We will consider (particularly at the start of the course and again at the end) the impact of working with the issue of mass violence (confronting the brutal facts, working with those involved, etc) upon ourselves as students, workers, and human beings.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 701 Neurobiology and Clinical Social Work (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Synthesizes contemporary literature that demonstrates the increasing relevance of neurobiology findings on clinical practice, with a range of vulnerable populations. Using aspects of child development theory, contemporary attachment theory, trauma theory, cognitive neuroscience, and clinical theory, the course focuses on the adaptive functions of positive early relationships for the achievement of key developmental capacities. A central hypothesis of the course is there is no such thing as a “single brain” and that one’s social brain is fundamentally shaped in interaction with other people. The healing benefits of a therapeutic relationship are explicitly demonstrated. We will explore the central role of affect regulation, mentalization, and implicit relational knowing in adult psychotherapy. We also will explore the outcomes of disrupted attachment and trauma on brain development; in so doing, we will explore clinical implications and treatment strategies for a range of biopsychosocial disorders. Classroom methods will include lecture, small group discussion, videotapes and case presentations.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 702 Social Class and its Implications for Social Work (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Provides the opportunity to learn about social class from a variety of perspectives – theoretical, sociological, cultural, and personal – while considering its relevance to the field of social work. Though class is the primary focus of the course, we will contextualize our understanding in relationship to race, gender, and sexuality. Since this course combines both personal and intellectual discussions of class, it is critical we maintain an environment where people can share their experiences honestly and talk critically and thoughtfully about social class regardless of their background, personal goals, and political orientations. All students who enroll should be prepared to engage in rigorous and concentrated study of this important facet of our lives.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 703 Theoretical Sex Primer for Clin Soc Wk: Conceptualizing Sex/Desire/Pleasure Thru Intersectional Lens (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Concepts and theories of sexuality, desire and pleasure get practiced in the clinical encounter. Rather than taking these concepts as self-evident, we subject them to critical scrutiny: how do we understand categories of sex and sexuality? What is at stake for clinical social work practice when we claim the basis of desire as psychological, genetic, cultural, biological, pornographic, or social? How do normative discourses about desire, race, gender and ability filter into our clinical understandings and practice models? As clinicians how are we grappling with the new roles that pharmacological and social media technological developments are playing in contemporary sexual/relational lives? Importantly, we ask: How might re-thinking sex and desire as a social and ethical practice assist us in our clinical work with clients? Our point of entry for deliberating on how theory meets clinical practice in different settings (rural/urban, liberal, conservative) and with clients identifying across socially marked differences is multidirectional: theoretical readings (drawn from psychoanalytic traditions, sexology, queer of colour critique, trans theory, disability studies), fiction writing, film, class discussion and importantly, clinical case studies.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 704 Is age just a number? Is 70 the new 50? The social construction of aging in the 21st century (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

All of us will acquire the status of elderhood if we are fortunate to live long enough. But where does that line begin? What are the sociocultural dynamics involved in that determination? The discourses of aging, how we understand when “elderhood” begins, what it should look like, how it should be understood and experienced, are cultural directives which are profoundly gendered, classed, raced and enmeshed in social discourses about the body. Phrases such as “graceful aging” and “dying with dignity” can be seen as efforts to challenge harmful practices and stereotypes about growing older and reaching the end of life in an ableist culture. What are the effects of such dynamics on the well-being of older adults, as well as those of us who can imagine ourselves in this status in our own futures? This course will address how a deep appreciation of the sociocultural context of aging can enrich clinical dialogues and social interventions in social work practice.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 705 Personality Disorders in Theory and Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Provides an introduction to personality disorders and their treatment. The course begins with an examination of theoretical constructs of personality disorder, and some of the controversy that has developed around these constructs. We will then, using a “common factors” model, explore the etiologies, presentations, and treatments of various personality disorders, with a special focus on DSM-5 Cluster B disorders – Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Antisocial Personality Disorder. We will study both classical and contemporary psychoanalytic papers on the topic, as well as contemporary models rooted in psychodynamic and trauma-focused thinking (e.g. Transference-Focused Psychotherapy, Mentalization-Based Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy). We will also invite guest lecturers with particular expertise on different populations and treatments to share their insights and answer questions on theory and practice.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 706 Comparative Theoretical Perspectives on Disability and Ableism (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Introduces students to social work with persons with disabilities and their families. We will consider the history, social construction, cultural perspectives, and demographics of physical, emotional, sensory, and cognitive disability. Major national disability policies and programs are studied and critiqued, along with individual and collective strategies that foster empowerment and social justice. Individual experiences of people with various types of disabilities and families are explored, followed by a discussion of issues of discrimination, equal access, universal design, and social integration. After gaining a sense of the personal experiences and social status of people with disabilities, implications for social work practice are addressed.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 707 Issues in the Treatment of Mental Illness: Clinical and Social Policy Perspectives (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Addresses some of the major policy and service delivery issues in the field of mental health that affect the lives of individuals with chronic mental illness and their families. Particular attention will be given to individuals suffering from major mental illnesses, including Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorders, Major Depressive Disorder, and Psychological Trauma. Course readings and case material will also address issues in the treatment of adults dually diagnosed with major mental illnesses and Substance Related Disorders. Advocacy efforts from clients and their families will be discussed. Students' class presentations of their own clinical work with mentally ill adults will provide opportunities for discussing treatment questions and ethical dilemmas that arise in working with these individuals and their families.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 708 Race and Ethnicity in Psychodynamic Clinical Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Addresses: (a) how socialization of race and ethnicity may influence client’s subjective presenting concerns, transference, defenses and resistance, as well as the therapist’s own subjective countertransference, defenses, and resistance in the clinical encounter and therapeutic relationship, and (b) the therapist’s unique multicultural challenges in mobilizing a working alliance with her or his given client. Contemporary relational and intersubjective psychodynamic concepts will be critically examined with racially and culturally marginalized client populations. Assessment, subjective and intersubjective transference/counter-transference, defense system, resistance/impasses, and the use of self within the therapeutic working alliance will be emphasized.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 709 Transgender Studies: Theory, Practice, and Advocacy (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Situates contemporary trans identities, experiences, communities and movements in their historical and social contexts and explores implications for social work practice. Drawing on literatures from psychology, sociology, cultural studies, LGB studies and queer theory, as well as trans community sources, we’ll examine how categories like trans and transgender have been shaped by medical, psychological, and cultural/community-based discourses and how these discourses continue to play out. Using a range of theoretical lenses, community perspectives and clinical case studies, we’ll compare and critique current treatment protocols, diagnostic criteria, and “best practices.” Assignments will focus on exploring social workers’ overlapping and sometimes contradictory roles as clinicians, advocates and gatekeepers, and identifying/developing ethical approaches to these contradictions in order to support trans individuals and communities to live and thrive with self-determination and dignity.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 710a Perspectives on Transference and Countertransference: Exploring Use of Self in Clinical Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

This elective course will pay close attention to the complex dynamics that occurs both within and across racial identities in doing clinical work. Students will be encouraged to pay particular attention to how the interplay of the intersectional identities of client and clinician impacts use of self in clinical practice. The course focuses on the therapeutic alliance and the complex relational dynamics that emerge in clinical social work through an in-depth study of transference and countertransference. Through a careful reading of both current and historical literature and an emphasis on relational and intersubjective theories, students will be exposed to a range of approaches for recognizing and reflecting on the transference/countertransference field. Students will learn to think critically about individual, interpersonal, and structural dynamics that influence therapeutic alliances and the trajectory of the clinical exchange. Students will be encouraged to pay particular attention to how the interplay of the intersectional identities of client and clinician impacts use of self in clinical practice. Students will explore applications of course material through experiential exercises, shared case material, and appropriately boundaried engagement with the relational dynamics that emerge in class. This course seeks to establish a learning environment where students can freely engage with some of the most challenging affective and relational aspects of clinical work through a learning stance characterized by curiosity, openness to perspectives with which they may disagree, and commitment to mutual support in the learning process.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 710b Transference and Countertransference in Clinical SW: Considerations for BIPOC Clinicians (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

This course examines the complex relational dynamics that emerge in clinical encounters through an in-depth study of transference and countertransference. In particular, the course focuses its examination on racialized transference/countertransference, holding the experiences of BIPOC clinicians as a central analytic.Through a careful reading of both current and historical literature and an emphasis on relational and intersubjective theories, students will be exposed to a range of approaches for recognizing and reflecting on the transference/countertransference field. Students will learn to think critically about both the interpersonal and structural factors that influence how therapeutic alliances form with particular attention to intersectional identities and use of self in clinical practice. Students will explore applications of course material through experiential exercises, shared case material, and engagement with the relational dynamics that emerge in class. This course seeks to establish a learning environment where students can freely engage with some of the most challenging affective and relational aspects of clinical work through a learning stance characterized by curiosity, openness to perspectives with which they may disagree, and commitment to mutual support in the learning process.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 711 Theory and Clinical Practice with Addicted Clients: Dual Diagnosis (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Using multiple theoretical frameworks, this course will focus on the assessment and treatment of people diagnosed with substance use disorders and mental illness. Students will learn how to complete thorough biopsychosocial assessments, with special attention given to the co-occurrence of addiction and mood disorders, psychological trauma, psychotic disorders, and ADD/ADHD. A range of therapeutic interventions will be introduced and applied through case analysis, these include: psychopharmacology, psychodynamic approaches, motivational enhancement treatment and the stages of change, individual, group, and family therapy modalities, relapse prevention, and the use of mutual support programs. Discourse will include choosing priorities in treatment, the challenges of providing integrated treatment, and systemic pitfalls faced by those working in the field and those trying to access services. Understanding that those who are dually diagnosed experience greater risk factors for being part of oppressed and vulnerable populations will be incorporated within the ongoing class discussions. Classroom methods will include lecture, small group interaction, videotapes and case presentations.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 712 Intimate Relationship Violence (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Social workers may encounter forms of intimate relationship violence/abuse during their careers. This course will use an intersectional lens to examine abuse and violence in diverse intimate relationships and contexts, while also exploring historical perspectives, the evolution of services, social policies, and current trends and tensions in the field. Assessment, intervention, advocacy, and prevention at micro, mezzo, and macro levels will be explored, as well as foundational social work skills with survivors.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 713 The Social Determinants of Health (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

A Social Determinants of Health (SDH) framework provides practitioners with analytical tools to address structural challenges. This course will examine and critique the health care system utilizing an SDH framework, enhancing clinicians’ ability to create solutions to systemic healthcare challenges. Students will: 1.) Develop a historically grounded understanding of healthcare systems as social and political institutions, that is, the product of compromises amongst competing social actors 2.) Develop the sociological imagination for clinical social work practice as useful tool for understanding the connections between individuals’ health outcomes and the social forces that surround them and to develop foundational theoretical knowledge to enhance clinicians’ ability to provide intellectual critiques as well as solutions to systemic healthcare challenges.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 714 Combat Stress, Moral Injury, and the Modern American Military Experience (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

This course will introduce students to the emotional/psychological dynamics and effects of the combat experience on American soldiers and veterans and the society from which they emerge and subsequently return in the aftermath of violent military operations. We will examine American cultural and political representations of war and their influences on members of society and the military. We will further explore some common experiences of American service members including recruitment, inculcation into military culture, entry-level and combat-specific training, and finally, real-world operations. These conversations will help students better understand resulting cases of post-traumatic stress, moral injury, and other mental health related issues that many veterans experience upon coming home and often endure for the remainder of their lives. The emphasis of the course is on the experiences of soldiers and veterans before, during, and after their military service, not on specific clinical methods or particular strategies of recovery. The individual and collective identities of these veterans as they are formed prior to war and how these identities are often disrupted in war’s aftermath plays a significant role in their ability to engage particular processes of recovery. Parallel to these issues are the perspectives and values of the people in veterans’ own communities, especially friends, colleagues, and family members, and also oftentimes their mental health providers. The spectrum of societal and community reactions to these veterans’ psychological distress and the operations they participated in are crucial to whatever methods and processes of recovery may be employed. We will analyze the various controversies and tensions around veteran care, especially as it relates to attitudes about American foreign policy. While there will be some comparative work done in this course with the military experiences from other countries and eras, the primary focus in this course will be on modern American conflicts and the experiences and treatment of American veterans, as this is a community that students will potentially work with in their careers as social workers.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 721 Couple Therapy: Systems, Models, and Narratives (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Students will be introduced to the fundamental theories and practices of work with couples through didactic presentations and discussion, analysis of videotapes and experiential exercise. The course will focus on three levels (1) the set of expectations and “models of intimacy” brought to the relationship from each partner’s family of origin, (2) the problematic patterns of current interactions; and (3) the larger systemic context that serves to maintain the problem. The theoretical framework for understanding and helping couples will utilize an integrative approach, drawing on intergenerational, structural, trauma, social constructionist and narrative perspectives.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 722 Family Therapy: Narrative Approaches to Social Work (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

This five week course is designed as a beginning process of integrating family therapy theories and concepts into practice. This course will present a brief overview of the family therapy field and approaches. The format will include lecture, group discussion, formal case presentations, role playing, and video presentations. Student participation is key. Vital contextual factors, such as, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, race, sexual identity, immigration and citizenship status will be discussed separately and within the practical application of the different approaches presented. This course offers opportunities for students to fortify their understanding and skill in narrative therapy and to apply specific maps of narrative practice to their own lives as social workers. Students will explore the ways stories shape lives and to experiment with practices that can open space for new stories to emerge. Amidst the various approaches to collaborative family therapy, we will focus on the work of Michael White and David Epston, and developments of their re-authoring conversations approach in Australia, New Zealand, and North America.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 724 The Role of Religion and Spirituality in Clinical Social Work (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Acquaints the student with predominant theories regarding religion and spirituality for the "person-in-the-situation." Particular attention will be given to the function of spirituality and religion in bridging internal and external adaptations throughout the life cycle. Theoretical orientations will include psychodynamic, philosophical and sociocultural. The implications of these theories will be examined in terms of their impact on clinical practice. Students are encouraged to bring case material.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 725 Introduction to Cognitive Behavioral Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Focuses on cognitive behavioral practice as related to evidence based practice. The material covered will include an introduction to and critical analysis of the family of theories which fit into the cognitive behavioral rubric including social learning theory, behavioral theories and cognitive theories of inter- and intrapersonal functioning. Theories will be examined from their genesis to their clinical applications with a goal of assessment of each for fit with particular client problems, therapeutic relationships, situations and contexts based upon empirical research. Theories will also be assessed for racist, sexist, ageist and other oppressive and unjust assumptions and uses. The seminar process will be focused upon the learning of cognitive behavioral methods including cognitive restructuring, contracting, Socratic questioning, thought stopping, motivational interviewing and behavioral reward systems. Use of self and relationship as well as models of integration across theories and methods will also be emphasized throughout the seminar.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 726 Treating Child Trauma Using the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics© (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Provides a comprehensive introduction to the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT™) developed by Dr. Bruce Perry. The NMT™ is a “biologically respectful” approach to understanding the neuro-developmental impact of childhood trauma on Sensory Processing, Self Regulation, Relational and Cognitive functioning of children who have experienced neglect and abuse in a variety of settings and forms. Often children and families involved in foster care, adoption, juvenile justice and residential treatment settings are blamed for their behavior by larger systems around them. This is particularly problematic for youth of color and LGBT youth who are pushed deeper into systems of control rather than receiving attuned and appropriate support and treatment for their experiences of trauma. This course will provide an in depth understanding and framework for working with the neuro-developmental impact of child trauma with an emphasis on identifying and prioritizing which types of treatment will be most effective and in what order - and helping larger systems shift their view of traumatized youth and families from “what’s wrong with them” to “what happened to them.”.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 727 Group Treatment for Children and Young Adolescents (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Addresses theme-centered psycho-educational groups, as well as time-limited and long-term activity-interview, and play therapy groups. The therapist's role in different models of group treatment will be considered, with particular emphasis on group structure, composition, modes of communication, limit-setting, transference, countertransference, creating a therapeutic group culture, and stages of group development. Students will be encouraged to share their experiences in working with child and adolescent groups and to participate in role playing designed to address problematic group process issues.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 728 Beyond Armed Conflict in Domestic/Global Contexts: Addressing Trauma Through Clinical Soc Wk Lens (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Draws from research and conceptual data that explore the effects of deployment and combat stressors on the physical and mental health of active duty US service members and their families. Attention is also paid to the impact of trauma and collective violence on individuals and communities, both nationally and globally, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma. Cultural influences are addressed that shape responses to traumatic events, a “fear-based social learning” or “moral injury” explanation of trauma-related effects, and engagement with healing and treatment approaches. Clinical social work treatment interventions are grounded in a synthesis of trauma, relational psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, attachment, somatic and social theories that inform a multi-modality clinical social work practice plan. Modalities include: individual, couple/family, group and community. An overview of specific trauma treatment approaches is addressed, harmonizing a psychodynamic foundation with empirically-supported treatment approaches (e.g. cognitive-processing treatment (CPT), psychodynamic (PT), cognitive-behavioral (CBT), and EMDR). Settings include behavioral health programs in the community, Department of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Administration Medical Centers (VAMC), federal and local prisons and jails and community-based Veteran-led peace-keeping projects. Attention to intersecting social identities and the use of professional self will be included in all class discussions. We will also focus on the effects of working with these clients as developing clinical social workers, with ongoing attention to secondary trauma and transference/countertransference processes. Priority is given to students who have worked with and who anticipate working with service members, veterans and their families and communities affected by armed conflict and collective trauma.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 729 Social Work Treatment with Adolescents in Culture and Context (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Targeted to any student who would like to improve their understanding and practice with adolescents, and who is interested in bridging the gap between clinical theory, youth development and social justice. The purpose of this course is to teach students how to think critically about social work practice with adolescents and to provide an integrative model of care to improve their practice. The model will focus on integrating developing theoretical, youth development and social justice frameworks to help conceptualize our work with transitional age youth or TAY. Proven approaches for engaging adolescents in this phase will be discussed including strength-based, youth centered, culturally congruent practices. Concepts from neurological development, clinical theory and youth development will be integrated within a multisystemic ecological model of adolescent care. Class discussion will focus on exploring and applying this model of care. We will routinely consider how the social ecology of adolescence including such influences as media, family, school, and community shape individual youth’s experiences. We will also attend to various forms of social work practice with adolescents ranging from traditional psychodynamically-oriented talk therapy to innovative models of hip hop therapy and much in between. Direct case examples of practice that integrates these themes will be presented. The course will be an exciting mix of classroom lectures, group discussions, case presentations, reflective papers, social media examples and an accompanying guest lecture series aimed at complementing, and adding context to, the information covered in class.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 730 Social Work Practice with Children (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

The purpose of this course is to teach 2nd and 3rd year social work students how to think about and provide a framework for clinical work with children. The course is largely based upon a psychodynamic theoretical foundation and integrated within a contextual and biopsychosocial frame. Elements of the cognitive behavioral methods often required of practitioners in agency-based practice will be offered as well.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 731 Social Work and Health Care: Tools of the Trade (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Introduces students to social work practice in healthcare settings from a biopsychosocial perspective. We will address central practice themes including: the subjective experience of and reactions to living with illness, social work values and ethical dilemmas in health care, communicating with patients at the end of life, the role of integrative medicine, as well as issues of economic justice and access to health services. Students will learn about merging sub-specialties in medical social work (i.e., transplant, oncology, palliative care), as well as gaining a deeper understanding of the shifting role of social work in the interdisciplinary world of health care practice. We will examine differences in the social work role across settings including: inpatient, outpatient clinics, and home hospice, with a focus on more acute settings. Students will gain the knowledge and skills necessary to intervene effectively in medical settings and to work with clients experiencing serious health problems. Practice topics include writing a good assessment, how to run a family meeting, how to discuss advance care directives with patients and navigating complex ethical cases. There will be an overall focus on the impact of structural factors (i.e. racism, sexism, ableism etc.) on patient’s experience with the healthcare system, and how cultural beliefs around health, healing and illness impact the clinical relationship and the service delivery system.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 732 Trans-Affirming & Anti-Oppressive Prac Approach to Clin Soc Wk w/ Trans/Queer/Gender Non-Conforming (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Examines clinical approaches for working with trans and gender non-conforming persons. The term "trans" serves to encompass those who identify as differing from the historic cisnormative binary of gender. Together we will examine the gender identity distinctions, intersections, and the related clinical implications - including those related to transference and countertransference. We will study a variety of clinical intervention approaches that are, and include, the following: psychodynamic and attachment theory related, trauma-informed, EMDR therapeutic, social neuroscience based, sex positive, anti-oppressive, and responsive to the social realities experienced by members of gender expansive communities. In regard to the lives of trans persons and the professional roles of social work, we will dissect and examine bigotry, prejudice, misogyny, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, transphobia, racism, stigma, and shame. Relevant issues will be explored - including depression, suicide, accessibility, and social injustice - in relation to clinical assessment, diagnoses, treatment planning, and evaluation. Diverse, interactive, and dynamic teaching methods will be used to reflect real-life experiences of gender diverse clients and clinicians, and these teaching methods also will capitalize on the expertise of global leaders and the classroom of students.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 733 The Mindful Clinician: Building Professional Resilence and Effectiveness Through Mindfullness (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

***Registration in this course requires a mandatory online orientation prior to the first day of classes as well as a a day-long session (7/20 from 9-4). More information will be sent after registration.*** Uses Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction as a framework for introducing students to mindfulness as a foundation for professional self-care, and as a vehicle for cultivating some of the key therapeutic factors that can help you be a more effective clinician such as: presence, attentional control, self-regulation, empathy, compassion, and cognitive flexibility. Because you can't grasp mindfulness through concepts alone, this course is highly experiential in nature. Students are introduced to mindfulness through participating in guided meditation practices, and are invited to experiment with these practices on a daily basis for homework. Class discussion and assignments provide students with an opportunity to reflect on their experience of the practice, and to share both successes and challenges in applying mindfulness in their daily lives and work. Course readings review current research and theory on mindfulness as a framework for fostering personal and professional resilience and clinical skill development. This course focuses on fostering the clinician's own personal exploration of mindfulness, which serves as a first step towards developing competence in delivering mindfulness-informed interventions. Please be aware that in order to allow us to explore the full potential of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Model, this course involves a distinct class schedule.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 734 Constructing Critical Conversations in a Social Justice Paradigm (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Critical conversations are those in which power dynamics in social context are illuminated, substantively examined in the moment and subsequently reflected upon in order to produce change - personal, systemic, institutional (Kang & O'Neill, 2017). This course will focus on supporting students in developing consciousness of structural power dynamics expressed through interpersonal interactions in dialogue - all with the aim to create change. Students will learn how to facilitate and enhance their authentic participation in discussions using the Critical Conversations (CC) Model in addition to other approaches grounded in humanist and critical pedagogy. Centering social justice issues and challenges, students will practice: (a) expanding knowledge regarding manifestations of differential structural forces of oppression and opportunity across systems (individual, family, community, organizational, society, world); (b) examining how structural power dynamics emerge, are enacted, and influence discourse and interpersonal engagement; (c) cultivating dialogic skills including, (1) the capacity to witness one's level of connectedness through disagreement, tension and conflict; practicing "calling in" rather than "calling out" to mitigate potential for offensiveness and harm in critical conversations and (2) applying a stance of curiosity and commitment to explore the intersection between structural forces of oppression as enacted within interpersonal relationships. This will be a highly interactive course. In addition to providing theoretical grounding, reading and course materials will substantively by applied in class discussions. Each session will include critical conversations. Be prepared to engage in a range of strategies including but not limited to reflection, meditation, and out of classroom individual exercised to advance critical awareness.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 735 Knowing, Not Knowing, And Muddling Through (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Knowing, not knowing, and muddling through will each be valued as essential and normative experiences as we encounter the inevitable therapeutic impasses, intense emotions, and unconscious processes inherent to the dynamic understanding of ourselves, others, and the clinical relationship. All clinical social workers experience positive and negative reactions toward their clients, and these reactions must be curiously examined to facilitate ethical and compassionate clinical care that fosters growth. A commitment toward an anti-racist and anti-oppressive lens, which values diversity and facilitates open dialogue, is expected, as well as a beginning understanding and appreciation of one’s own social identities and their effects on clinical relationships and interventions. The course will draw on a range of theoretical and clinical perspectives, including but not limited to psychodynamic (Relational/Intersubjective), contemplative, and CBT models. However, class members will be encouraged to conceptualize clinical material within whatever theoretical framework seems most useful to them and the clinical material at hand. Class time will include clinical presentations, discussion, and lecture.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 736 Social Work & the Schools (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Examines, assesses, and develops skills in the implementation of social work policy and practice in the public education setting. Whether a social worker is employed in the school setting, or in a child welfare agency, the school experience is an integral part of every client’s identity and exerts a significant influence on one’s functional capacity. For some, the school experience itself is traumatizing; for others, it is a welcome refuge from trauma in the environment. Understanding the impact of the school setting enhances the social worker’s effectiveness whether working in schools or in clinical social work settings. Practice issues to be explored and discussed include: 1. Working with “teams” 2. Utilizing the “Response to Intervention [RTI] model” to design and implement systems, group and individual interventions in the school setting 3. Working with individuals, groups, and families 4. Working with a special needs population with the framework of legal mandates 5. Consultation, crisis intervention, and coordination of services 6. School/family/community collaboration Through a variety of methods, this course will help you examine a range of policy and practice issues related to the delivery of social work services in the school setting. An ecological and risk and resiliency framework for practice will be emphasized throughout the course. Furthermore, students will examine the role of school social workers in light of their own educational experience as well as participate in role plays of situations which typically arise at the elementary, middle, and high school level.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 737 Clinical Perspectives on Disability (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Develops clinically meaningful understandings of working with people with disabilities. Through a psychodynamic lens, we will examine the ways in which systems of oppression/ableism impact intrapsychic resources, definitions of health, meanings of physical and cognitive variance, and strategies for healing. We will identify the trajectory of disability as an identity category from illness to disability pride. We will use the framework of Self Psychology to examine the impact of ableism on identity, development, attachment and resiliency. We will then develop strategies for increasing social and emotional resources toward an empowered sense of self.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 738 Psychosocial Capacity Building in Response to Disasters (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Disasters are a process and occur locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. There is a social ecology for every disaster: a matrix of socio-historical factors interacting with geographical, geological, social, cultural and political conditions. Clinical social workers are expected to offer psychosocial services in the wake of disasters. This course will consider different types of disasters and the range of psychosocial responses that social workers provide. There will be a particular emphasis on the immediate, short-term and mid-term provision of services. Traditional disaster mental health approaches will be compared and contrasted with psychosocial capacity building. The relationship between individual and collective healing with community recovery will be explored as will the importance of using group modalities to foster social support. The course will also consider disaster service delivery systems, psychological first aid, crisis intervention skills, critical incident stress management, self-care for responders, policy issues surrounding disaster response and research on the effectiveness of interventions. By the end of this course students will be able to offer basic psychosocial intervention services to individuals, families and communities where disasters have occurred and have the beginning capacity to work with others to plan and evaluate disaster response programs.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 739 Social Work Practice in Forensic Settings (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

This course will provide an introductory overview of social work practice in the criminal justice system. Attention will be given to the history and development of the criminal justice system as well as the role of social workers in it. We will explore the unique specialties and challenges of social work practice in jails, prisons, parole/probation, and the legal system. The course will examine how various psychosocial factors and forces of oppression impact people involved in the criminal justice system. It will identify clinical techniques for assessment, treatment, and outcome assessment. The course will also discuss clinical work with special populations impacted by the criminal justice system including the chronically mentally ill, historically marginalized communities, pregnant women, and juveniles. Attention will also be given to: the use of self in forensic social work, race and gender in the criminal justice system, the intersections of privilege and oppression in forensic settings and the complex role of locked facilities in society. This course will explore relevant interventions and treatment modalities, and safety considerations while reviewing the micro, mezzo and macro opportunities for social workers in the criminal justice system.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 740 College Counseling (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Adapt your practice to meet the unique and complex challenges that arise in college counseling settings. Together, we will examine some of the current issues that face college counseling centers and explore the pros and cons of contemporary models of service delivery. Learn about common mental health challenges such as suicidality, anxiety, and depression as well as developmental issues specific to the traditional college age population including identity and career exploration and the transition towards independence. Identify how to match treatment options to the needs of the student and draw on social work skills to provide a range of interventions including: risk assessment and crisis intervention; groups and workshops; and individual therapy in a brief/time-limited treatment setting. Practice learning/adapting a variety of theories to interventions in this setting including: crisis theory, relational psychodynamic theory, cognitive-behavioral theory and group theory. Consider the intersectionality of clinician and client as a central dynamic of treatment and explore readings that reflect the diverse identities of the populations served including the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, ability, military status, international status, first-generation college students, non-traditionally aged students and graduate students. Experiential exercises, case examples, small group discussions, and in-class activities will enable you to apply developing knowledge and build practical skills to provide comprehensive mental health treatment in a college counseling setting.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 751 Advanced Group Theory and Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Develops a working theoretical base for group psychotherapy, drawing from the Interpersonal, Psychodynamic, and Group-As-Whole perspectives. The emphasis will be on long-term group psychotherapy principles, which can serve as the basis for understanding phenomena that occur in all types of groups. To a limited extent, we will consider the applicability of these theories to short-term groups. Particular attention will be paid to: group dynamics, member selection and preparation, group formation, group development, and leadership techniques. We will also examine the role and impact of projective processes in group psychotherapy and consider the influence of diversity on group dynamics.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 755 Short-Term Psychodynamic Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Focuses on theory and practice of brief dynamic psychotherapy (BDP) with adult individuals. It is based on psychodynamic and developmental theories of personality organization, as well as on theories about the impact of time and time limits on the process of therapy. Topics to be covered include the evolution of brief therapy, the work of major contributors to the field, and consideration of treatment issues such as selection criteria, use of a dynamic focus, and use of transference and confrontation. Other topics include short-term work with more disturbed clients, and cross-cultural issues in brief treatment. Prior course work and clinical experience in longer-term therapy, specifically knowledge about the differential use of self in the treatment relationship and skills in psychosocial assessment, provide the foundation from which we examine the technical shifts that occur when treatment is time-limited.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 760 Bearing Witness: Making Sense of Trauma and Traumatic Stress Responses (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

The objective of this course is to develop in students a fluency of knowledge around trauma theory which will enable them to apply themselves effectively in clinical contexts. Building on the premise that theory is an essential tool in assessment, diagnosis and intervention, a significant proportion of the course will be dedicated to building a foundation of knowledge around the seminal writings on trauma, both historical and contemporary. A core objective of the course is to identify trauma as being central to multiple areas of psychic functioning, and to link it to other bodies of knowledge such as attachment and personality theory as well as to psychoanalytic neurobiology. The course will apply theory to practice in looking through a biopsychosocial lens at the assessment and diagnosis of traumatized individuals. The notion of therapist as witness to an unfolding narrative will provide the fabric to exploring the range of interventions available. These models of intervention will be interrogated, they will be located in the relevant body of theory, and their mechanisms of action will be explored. Finally, the course will visit the concept of trauma as a crisis of meaning, and at the potential for transformation, forgiveness and healing once trauma has been re-membered, repeated and worked through. Teaching methods will include lecture, small group discussions, class presentations and media input.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 776 Clinical Social Work Practice Evaluation (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Research

Fulfills: Research Sequence Elective

Practice evaluation is a core component of social work practice as stated in the NASW Code of Ethics (section 5.02) and in the CSWE EPAS accreditation standards (Competency 9). It is an ethical imperative to evaluate the effectiveness of one’s practice, and to alter practices that are ineffective, to best serve clients. This course will examine two widely used approaches to clinical social work practice evaluation: case studies and single case designs. Problem definitions, research designs, data collection methods including standardized and self-anchored measures, and data analysis procedures will be explored. The merits and limitations of each practice evaluation method will be critically examined and ethical issues investigated. How evaluative procedures, measures and approaches can support diverse clients are examined. Exemplar studies will be used to consider how practice evaluation can simultaneously serve client, administrative and knowledge development purposes.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 777 Introduction to Program Evaluation (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Research

Fulfills: Research Sequence Elective

Evaluation is a valuable skill for social work practice. At the micro-level, the evaluation of individual clinical practice is a vital tool for all clinicians. At the macro-level, the ability to understand, contribute to, and implement evaluations of social sector programs is a hallmark of social work leaders. This course is designed to introduce students to the theory, methods, and practice of program evaluation. There will be an explicit focus on purpose, context, and intended use: What are the most pressing questions about a given program? What do we understand about the underlying mechanisms of an intervention? Whose voices will be heard and highlighted in an evaluation? How are the findings to be used? The course structure will facilitate the systematic examination and exploration of these questions in a social work context, with the goal of improving quality of care at the level of the individual, program, and organization.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 780 Research Practicum (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Research

Fulfills: Research Sequence Elective

The Research Practicum is a two credit (or a single course equivalent) specialization level research elective option intended to allow learning opportunities for students addressing CSWE EPAS and SSW objectives. Practicum learning centers on participation in an ongoing research project developed and led by a Smith College SSW resident faculty member. The faculty member identifies the research question and methods as well as identifying multiple student roles in the project. The practicum is a faculty designed and mentored project; it is not an independent project designed by the student. The faculty member is responsible for completing and documenting appropriate IRB approval where required for research involving human subjects or for use of secondary data involving human subjects. The research practicum requires at least 64 hours of work for credit, with the different tasks and their weighting for grading determined by the faculty advisor and specified in the written research practicum application.

Winter

SOCW 793 Senior Integrative Seminar (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Integrative topics not included in the regular curriculum, but within the HBSE sequence and reserved for final summer MSW students. Specific title and description information will be posted in the registration portal for the term offered.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 795 Policy Rotating Topic Elective (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Policy

Fulfills: Policy Sequence Elective

Topics not included in the regular curriculum, but within the policy sequence. Specific title and description information will be posted in the registration portal for the term offered.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 796 Practice Rotating Topic Elective (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Practice

Fulfills: Practice Sequence Elective

Topics not included in the regular curriculum, but within the practice sequence. Specific title and description information will be posted in the registration portal for the term offered.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 797 Human Behavior in Social Environments Rotating Topics Elective (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Fulfills: HBSE Sequence Elective

Topics not included in the regular curriculum, but within the HBSE sequence. Specific title and description information will be posted in the registration portal for the term offered.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 798 Research Rotating Topics Elective (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: Research

Fulfills: Research Sequence Elective

Topics not included in the regular curriculum, but within the research sequence. Specific title and description information will be posted in the registration portal for the term offered.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Variable

SOCW 801 Clinical Practice I (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

Clinical Practice I examines the seminal contributions of drive theory and ego psychology to psychodynamic clinical practice. While much modified and expanded in both theory and practice, the concepts in these early models continue to shape much of clinical psychodynamic practice today. Indeed, the core ideas of Freud’s drive theory and of the early ego psychological theorists laid down principles that today are so embedded in practice that they often are not recognized as the original ideas they were at their inception. By following the development of these practice principles from their beginnings, the clinician gain breadth of application in contemporary work. At the same time, the critiques that modify and/or extend these original concepts in new ways to embrace a wider and more complex view of person-in-situation give the clinician solid grounding. This course addresses both the original conceptualizations and the ways in which new discoveries and expanded socio-political-cultural perspectives have altered applications.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 802 Clinical Practice II (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

Building on the Advanced Psychological Theory II course, the Advanced Clinical Practice II course will review and critique differential approaches in treating clients with early developmental impingements and injuries that shape both internal and interpersonal relationships, or object relations. It focuses on the contributions that object relations theory and self-psychology, as articulated by Ferenczi, Balint, Klein, Winnicott, Fairbairn, Kohut, and their followers, have made to treatment theory and technique. We will emphasize the role of the clinician in establishing compensatory reparative therapeutic relationships specifically designed to facilitate development and self-cohesion within a social context and a racial justice/anti-racism perspective. Consideration will be given to the role of intersectionality including issues of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, ability, age, religion/spirituality, immigration status, and language of origin. Attention is also paid to the influences of trauma and substance use/misuse in clinical social work practice. Complex biopsychosocial-spiritual/structural assessments are introduced to provide a scaffolding for treatment plans, crafted in both agency-based and theoretical-languages. The conscious use of self provides the underpinning for clinical case discussions that address clinical issues and ethical dilemmas regarding effective interventions and enactments. In addition, consideration will be given to research methodology that examines clinical processes.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 805 Intersectionality: Clinical Social Work with Historically Marginalized Populations (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This course examines the formation of an effective working alliance with persons who are members of groups who have experienced oppression resulting from their demographic differences e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, social class and/or sexual orientation among others. Through the analysis of critical race theory and intersectionality, students will come to understand the reasoning for this emphasis. The course begins with an analysis of racism from structural, social, psychological and applied perspectives. The impact of clinical processes (e.g., intersubjectivity, transference and counter-transference, the use of defenses) on the formation of the working alliance with such clients will also be examined. Using case material from their own practice, fellows will have the opportunity to reassess the impact of their clinical interventions with members from these population groups using a variety of perspectives.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 810 Clinical Theories I (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This course explores seminal theories that have informed psychodynamic thinking ever since they were first articulated. These theories introduced models of inner lives that develop in sequence, encoding patterns of self-experience and of interpersonal relating, across the life span, with earlier internalized experience informing subsequent developmental stages. The specific contents of each individual’s internal narrative and relational patterns are shaped by earliest intimate relationships, including the way that relationship is shaped by the caretakers’ own narratives, and increasing exposure to wider and wider relational configurations, including how those configurations convey socio-political assumptions and practices. While this first course is steeped in the language of psychodynamics that is being first expressed in these theories, it does include the beginning shift from the singular deterministic intrapsychic dynamics of drive theory to the more interpersonally and socially determined dynamics of ego psychology.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 811 Clinical Theories II (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This course will explore those psychological theories which help illuminate the inner and interpersonal lives of individuals. Object relations theories serve as a central paradigm in contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. Early beginning in the Hungarian School featuring Ferenczi and Balint followed by the emergence of the Middle School in Great Britain that includes Klein, Winnicott, and Fairbairn. Self psychology emerged at a parallel time in the United States as Kohut developed his influential model focused on the tripolar self as structure with narcissism as a separate line of development. Using object relations theories and self-psychology, students examine how theories are transformed by the internal and external critiques which revise them. These developmental theories are taught in their historical and sociocultural contexts, with attention paid to their strengths and biases especially they relate to populations marginalized by poverty and oppression based on diverse social identities. The following themes are addressed: (1) focus of theory; (2) nature of individual; (3) structural constructs; (4) developmental constructs; (5) nature of resilience, problems and conditions; (6) nature of change (7) treatment goals; (8) treatment principles and interventions; (9) nature of therapeutic relationship/alliance; and (10) applicability with populations served. The influences of postmodernism and social theories are considered on psychoanalytic theorizing.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 820 Introduction to Quantitative Research Methods (3 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

Quantitative research utilizes numerical data to describe a phenomenon, identify patterns or relationships between variables, or make predictions that may be generalized to the larger population. This course is an introduction to quantitative research methods. Students in this course will develop an understanding of the ethical, theoretical, practical, and social justice issues that inform the development and implementation of a quantitative research study. Discussion of course reading will focus on the choices researchers made when designing a study and their implications for social work policy and practice.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 821 Introduction to Quantitative Data Analysis (3 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

In anticipation of future work using quantitative data, students will learn how to generate and interpret basic descriptive and inferential statistics commonly used in social science research. For descriptive statistics, concepts to be covered include an understanding of variance, different ways to illustrate how data is distributed (histograms, charts, boxplots, graphs, etc.), correlations, reliability and validity. To understand inferential statistics, we will review hypothesis testing, probability, and tests of significance (confidence intervals, tests of difference, and analysis of variance). For optimal learning, students will be acquainted with the various available statistical software programs for analyzing quantitative data and will gain valuable experience working with and managing data. Course assignments will require students to communicate results of their analyses in writing, through the use of tables and data visualization, understanding and following APA7 reporting guidelines.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 823 Qualitative Research and Inquiry I – Premises and Methods Overview (3 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

What we label as qualitative research is a diverse family of loosely related approaches that vary in purposes, epistemologies or worldviews, and specific methods. Qualitative research and inquiry may seek to be scientific or not, and may draw on Indigenous or western perspectives of knowledge. It generally aims to understand meaning making and processes among people in specific social groups. This course, the first of a sequence of four courses, will first critically examine what is knowledge and how it is located and linked to cultures. The importance of self-awareness and reflexivity regarding one’s own culture, biases, and perspectives is emphasized. The course will then shift to an overview of six types of qualitative research approaches widely found in the social work literature. The six approaches are 1) content analysis, 2) template analyses, 3) grounded theory, 4) participatory action research, 5) Indigenous and decolonizing methods and 6) immersion approaches. These methods illustrate key differences in research purposes, epistemologies, ethics, and methods. Criteria for assessing the quality of qualitative research are introduced.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 824 Qualitative Research and Inquiry II – Content Analysis and Thematic Analyses (3 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This second course on qualitative research will begin by examining content analysis in which qualitative coding of existing texts is analyzed using various methods (e.g., statistical, interpretive). Thematic analysis that applies qualitative coding to a variety of texts, often based on semi-structured interviews is explored. Issues of deductively shaping research questions, sampling, coding, and writing up results are addressed. Ethical issues are also identified and examined. Research quality criteria are critically examined using published reports.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 828 Metaperspectives on Clinical Social Work: Paradigms for Social Work Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This course will examine the construction and production of social work’s professional knowledge base and its implications for clinical social work practice. Various ontological and epistemological perspectives will be presented and examined, to explore how they affect the nature of the clinical social work encounter and treatment process. Relations of power, including domination, subjugation, marginalization and oppression will be explored in relation to, and through, specific epistemologies, to then reflect on clinical social work practice. This course is designed as a seminar course. Students will apply course readings during class discussions to examine how the various conceptual paradigms manifest in their professional work. Brief lectures will be provided to facilitate direct integration of conceptual content; however, the aim of the course is to engage in active discussion, critical analysis and self-reflection.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 830 Clinical Internship in Casework & Research (15 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

The clinical internship affords the opportunity to study and apply advanced practice methods to a range of clients, and to study clinical theories and processes in depth. Ideally, fellows also gain experience in clinical teaching and contribute to theory development.

Winter

SOCW 832 Supervision, Faculty Field Advising and Consultation in Social Work Education (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This course invites SSW doctoral students to consider the roles of the supervisor, consultant, and advisor in Clinical Social Work practice (knowledge, skills, and values) across the continuum of professional development and practice. Fellows will examine their multicultural/intercultural development to appreciate how their competency in this area of development informs their supervisory and clinical relationships. Fellows will be encouraged to consider differential supervisory styles that are theoretically informed by the various psychodynamic perspectives and by the developmental needs of supervisees. Similarities and differences in the expectations of settings where clinical social work teaching and practice occurs, whether academic or agency based will be explored. Discussions and role plays of clinical supervision, faculty academic and field advising and consultation will be a regular part of class interactions to promote greater understanding of educational assessment and evaluation of teaching/learning needs, and the use of self in these contexts.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 836 Neurobiology of Behavior: Essentials for Social Work (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This course will provide an overview of the neurobiology of behaviors that are essential for clinical social work. It will begin with an examination of the significance of neuroscience to the central concerns of social work. It will offer foundations in basic neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neurodevelopment. It will apply these foundations to understand psychoactive medications, drugs of abuse, and the neurobiological basis of addiction. The course will then examine the psychobiology of stress and its connection to issues such as racism, income inequality, and both physical and mental health. The second half of the course will consider the important influence of relationships on neurobiological functioning. First, we will learn about how attachment and mentalization shapes the developing nervous system. Finally, we will learn how to leverage our clinical relationships to restore healthy functioning to disordered nervous systems.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 837 Contemporary Trauma Theory and Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This five-week intensive course will cover the basic tenets of trauma theory and its application in clinical settings. The course will offer a historical and political context for clinical theory and address the developmental lines of current trauma theory. Integrating research on the physiology of trauma with attachment theory, developmental psychology, and the trauma literature, the course will build an integrated model of trauma treatment with a focus on relational models of treatment. As part of the relational focus, there will be significant attention paid to the person of the therapist within the therapeutic relationship, especially on the constructs of countertransference and vicarious traumatization.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 843 Relational Theory in Practice: Roots & Emergence of a Dialogue that led to a “Turn” in Psychodynamic (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

Relational Theory integrates and further develops many aspects of Object Relations and Interpersonal Traditions, referencing much of Ferenczi’s early writings. This “Relational turn” includes extensive reflection and writing about clinical process and work. The writing and dialogues that began more than forty years ago have evolved into new ways of thinking about the clinical dyad, the nature of therapeutic action and the importance of cultural and social forces to personal, interpersonal and clinical dynamics.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 847 Qualitative Research and Inquiry III – Grounded Theory, Participatory Action Research and Mixed Methods Research (3 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This third course in qualitative research first examines grounded theory, an inductive approach to describing populations and developing new concepts and theory. Shaping research questions where participants are assumed to be more knowledgeable than is the researcher, three purposefully iterative forms of sampling, three iterative methods of data analysis and writing up results are each explored. Ethical issues and challenges are identified and examined. Second, participatory action research (PAR) is examined. PAR seeks to empower participants in generating research questions and methods to best meet local knowledge needs. PAR applies aspects of other qualitative approaches and methods, all shaped to engage and empower local participants. Ethical issues are identified and examined, along with the challenges for researchers who must share key choices with participants. Research quality criteria are critically examined using published reports and different settings.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 848 Qualitative Inquiry: Photovoice, Autoethnography and Performance Inquiry (3 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This fourth course in qualitative research first examines qualitative research synthesis – methods to combine the findings of multiple studies to expand their reach and impact. Next, qualitative inquiry – which may or may not seek to be scientific – is addressed. Emphasis is on immediacy, verisimilitude, and reporting personal experiences in their social contexts. Photovoice, which links qualitative inquiry and PAR, puts cameras in the hands of participants who document their own lives and add short captions. The idea is to give voice and to empower participants, and to share their often unknown experiences with the public. Aesthetic and persuasive aspects matter more the ‘science’ or ‘objectivity’. Autoethnography seeks to present one’s inner life directly – writing about the self – but always located in social context. Again, literary and aesthetic concerns may be more important to effective and persuasive work than is method. Performance inquiry is a general term for reports that expand how we share our own lives – often to emphasize both our differences and our shared needs and attributes. Performances may be in text, or embodied and enacted. Methods to affirm diverse voices are detailed. Ethical issues are identified and examined, along with the challenges for researchers. Inquiry/research quality criteria are critically examined using published reports.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 852 The “Relational Turn” in Psychoanalysis: Emergence & Evolving Concepts in Social & Cultural Context (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This course will explore the origins, emergence and developments of Relational Theory and practice, including its key concepts and their implications for clinical work in social and cultural context(s). We will begin with an overview of the emergence of contemporary Relational Theory and its antecedents in Object Relations and Interpersonal Theories (Ferenczi, Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Sullivan). We will then consider early papers and ideas that were written in the 80’s and 90’s, contributing to a shift in the conceptualization of the clinical dyad and a different perspective on clinical work. With these origins of Relational constructs as a base, we will step back and reflect on the larger context of philosophical and social thinking in which this dialogue of ideas has emerged (e.g., social constructivism and new views on the self in relational and embedded in social context, feminism and more). These changes in our philosophical and social understandings, as well as social actions and movements, have shaped Relational Theory as it continues to evolve. The core constructs of contemporary Relational theory will be explored, including: new ways of viewing transference and countertransference, mutuality and asymmetry in the clinical dyad, understandings of enactment and emergent experience, the analyst’s use of self, disclosure and restraint, possibilities for considering the self as multiple, shifting ideas about therapeutic action and change, as well as reflections on work with trauma from a Relational perspective. We will discuss how these and other constructs have evolved in dialogues between voices in what is now a Relational tradition. While the importance of our social embeddedness and the consideration of difference in clinical work will be discussed throughout our study of Relational theory and practice, several sessions will focus on the space that has opened for writing and dialogue that deconstructs and focuses on gender, race, class, intersectionality and social justice in both work with individuals and in our larger social worlds. We will conclude with readings and discussion of recent critiques of Relational theory and practice, keeping an open mind and posing questions about what’s next or how the work and ideas can continue to evolve.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 855 Health Disparities: Policies and Their Impact on Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

Health and behavioral health disparities are a difference in outcomes between populations. The social determinants of health constitute the social and structural factors that drive the health status of individuals and communities. Social determinants such as structural racism and economic inequality have a documented relationship to health disparities. This course will prepare leaders in clinical social work practice to begin to address inequities in health and behavioral health care. Students will first explore how health disparities are defined and measured. They will examine conceptual frameworks that identify factors contributing to health and behavioral health disparities in the clinical context. The course will then explore structural interventions designed to ameliorate such disparities, centering those that have been designed and implemented by communities of color. Finally, students will be asked to identify a disparity in their own clinical context and propose a structural intervention to address it.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 857 Research Focused Seminar I (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This seminar will provide dedicated time to work on the written comprehensive exam. This process will entail regular meetings with the seminar instructor as well as with the faculty advisor to develop the topic and structure of the comprehensive exam. Students will be expected to gather during the first and final weeks of the term in a seminar style to present their topics and progress.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 858 Intermediate Quantitative Data Analysis I (3 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

The primary goals of this course are to develop a solid understanding of generalized linear regression models and how to apply them for social work research. The course builds on an introductory level of statistical knowledge (correlation, bivariate tests of group differences) and extends this knowledge into a simple linear regression model framework including evaluating assumptions of regression models. The latter part of the term extends to multivariable regression models, including confounding, moderators and interaction terms. A focus throughout will be on communicating the regression results in writing, tables, and data visualization and in APA style. There will be regular application of these concepts with real social work data using statistical software, including principles of data cleaning and documentation.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 859 Intermediate Quantitative Data Analysis II (3 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

The primary goals of this course are to extend the generalized model to non-linear relationships. The course will investigate transformations of independent and dependent variables, including the logistic transformation. Binary and categorical dependent variables will be modeled with simple and multiple logistic regression; students will develop understanding of odds, odds ratios, and probabilities and how to interpret each. A focus throughout will be on communicating the regression results in writing, tables, and data visualization and in APA style. There will be regular application of these concepts with real social work data using statistical software, including principles of data cleaning and documentation.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 860 Clinical Internship in Casework & Research (15 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

Winter

SOCW 864 Perspectives on Teaching & Learning in Social Work Education (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

While this seminar is a unique course, it is both a companion to and extension of SSW 873. In 873, students examined the current context of social work education and explored pedagogical theories, practices and strategies with an emphasis on clinical teaching and learning. In this course, students will have the opportunity to reflect individually and collectively on key aspects of their own pedagogical practice while teaching a course in the MSW program and meeting regularly with a teaching mentor. Course content includes: thoughtful consideration of how to open a course to set an identified tone and establish desired expectations for an equitable learning community; examination of the role of power, race and racism in the classroom; review of lesson planning with an eye toward strong learning objectives and engagement strategies; giving and receiving high quality feedback; navigating boundaries and teaching dilemmas in the classroom and continuing to develop one’s evolving teaching identity. There are three assignments in this course – details described in the Assignments section below.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 865 Senior Seminar in Clinical Social Work Theory and Practice: Uses of Self in Intersubjective Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This practice seminar examines contemporary issues in clinical social work practice by considering dilemmas faced by advanced clinical practitioners and scholars. Topics addressed during case presentations will include an intersubjective perspective on: 1) trauma and vicarious traumatization; 2) race, ethnicity and gender; the establishment and maintenance of boundaries and the impact of boundary violations; 3) becoming aware of, using and learning from enactments; research on practice; and, managed care and its management.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 867 Research Focused Seminar II (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 868 The Science of Clinical Practice for Social Workers (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This seminar provides social work graduate students with ample grounding in the nature, history, evolution, and current status of the adult clinical intervention field from empirical, theoretical, and practice-based perspectives. As the title indicates, the seminar will emphasize science-informed clinical practices and principles of therapeutic change, with a review of research on, and controversies about, empirically supported treatments, evidence-based practice, and practice-based evidence. In doing so, prominent clinical research methods will be highlighted. The seminar will also address issues related to the dissemination of and training on effective therapeutic practices, and it will infuse ethical, social justice, and multicultural considerations related to clinical intervention.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 870 Dissertation Design Seminar (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This seminar acquaints students with the characteristics of dissertation research through assigned readings, review of dissertation proposals, and dissertation presentations. Conceptual and methodological issues encountered in developing research projects are explored. Specifics of planning and completing a dissertation are addressed. Students will also examine their evolution as scholars through the dissertation process. This seminar fosters individual progress toward developing a dissertation proposal by providing individual consultation, peer review, and discussion of the design efforts of each class member.The course goals will be achieved through course readings, seminar discussions, presentations of completed dissertations, student group presentations of previously accepted dissertation proposals, and student presentations of individual dissertation proposals.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 873 Perspectives of Social Work Education: Focus on Andragogy (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

In this seminar, students will have opportunities to examine some of the issues involved in teaching theory and practice to social work students and professional social workers. Course materials cover a range of topics including perspectives on the setting in which teaching occurs, trauma informed education, teaching diverse groups, critically reflective teaching, theories of adult learning, supporting learning differences, universal design for learners, curriculum design, and anti-oppression pedagogy. Students will reflect upon the course content and their own teaching style to develop a philosophy of teaching.

Summer 1 - SSW

SOCW 877 Research Focused Seminar III (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This seminar will provide dedicated time to develop the dissertation proposal. This process will entail regular meetings with the seminar instructor and faculty advisor to develop the topic and structure of the dissertation proposal. By the end of this seminar, students should each have a more written background of their topic and framework, a developed set of research questions and hypotheses, and a detailed plan for data collection and analysis. This should culminate in a concisely written and well-argued draft of a dissertation proposal (~10 pages in length) and a slide deck for a 15 minute presentation of the proposal. Students will be expected to gather during the first and final weeks of the term in a proseminar style to present their topics and progress.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 878 Capstone Course: Integrating Psychoanalytic Theory, Research and Clinical Practice (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This course will focus on the integration of psychoanalytic theory, research, and practice within a socio historical context. The course addresses the paradigm shift in psychoanalytic theory and practice from Freud’s metapsychology to contemporary clinical work. Attention is given to understanding the complex use of self in clinical practice with diverse clients. Students will critically examine the way in which intersectional identities are subjectively and relationally experienced in the world, including the ways in which clinicians and clients unconsciously enact interlocking oppressions. The course will also address the prevailing assumptions about power, privilege and various forms of oppression in the theories that underlie our practice as well as the benefits and limits of evidence-based research when working with psychoanalytic constructs such as subjectivity and intersectionality.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 879 Advanced Quantitative Data Analysis (3 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

Eligibility: PhD Students

This course is the final in the four-course quantitative analysis sequence and will continue to build and refine quantitative analytical thinking, computational skills, and communication expertise commonly used in clinical social work research. This course in particular will introduce students to more advanced quantitative approaches common in clinical social work research that build from but extend students’ repertoire beyond linear and logistic regression models.The primary goals of this course are to understand how to employ regression models with either more complicated data structures or more complicated research questions where generalized linear models are no longer sufficient. The course builds on the introductory and intermediate level of statistical knowledge and extends this knowledge to scenarios where the assumptions of generalized linear models are violated (e.g., dyadic data on couples or provider-client where the individuals in the data are no longer independent of each other) or when the goal is to assess more complex relationships between variables are of interest (e.g., whether a third variable mediates, or explains part of, the relationship between a dependent and independent variable). These statistical models are common in applied social work research, particularly to investigate complex family systems, interdependencies between couples/dyads, to test theories that articulate how multi-step processes where one thing leads to another (and another). Similar to previous courses, a focus throughout will be on communicating the regression results in writing, tables, and data visualization and in APA style. There will also be regular application of these concepts with real social work data using statistical software, including principles of data cleaning and documentation.

Summer 2 - SSW

SOCW 890 Research Internship (2 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

The research internship is a half-day 32-week internship. Research advisers works closely with students to develop and implement the research internship.Students can choose from three options:Affiliate with an ongoing funded research project relevant to social work. Collaborate with a Smith College School for Social Work faculty member on the faculty member's existing research project. Propose a student-generated project to be supervised by a qualified faculty member. A written proposal of the intended research internship and a written summary and reflection of its outcome are both required components of the successful completion of this requirement.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Winter

SOCW 899 Dissertation (4 Quarter Hours)

Coordinating Sequence: School for Social Work Doctoral

The dissertation is a required independent scholarly research project in which students must examine a topic relevant to clinical social work. By completing the dissertation, each fellow demonstrates the capacity to contribute to the development and dissemination of knowledge for the profession. The dissertation is the hallmark of all doctoral-level study and represents the achievement of a high level of professional performance as a practitioner/researcher. Students are expected to work closely with their dissertation committee chair and members to complete this project.

Summer 1 - SSW, Summer 2 - SSW, Winter

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Course Catalog 2023-2024

School for Social Work

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