MSW Curriculum

MSW Concentration Areas

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Clinical Practice

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

Core courses for the Clinical Practice concentration include:

  • Advanced Social Work Practice with Individuals
  • Advanced Social Work Practice with Families
  • Assessment & Pschopathology
  • Advanced Policy Analysis
  • Evaluation of Clinical Social Work Interventions

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

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

  • Social Work Assessment with Communities and Organizations
  • Advanced Policy Analysis
  • Evaluation of Practice with Organizations and Groups

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