Social Work Practice on Campus: Developing Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Field Practicums

Overview: Field professional staff and faculty will share their experiences of creating BSW and MSW field opportunities on their campus. Presenters will discuss how placements were developed and enhanced. They will share their experiences of creation and implementation of innovative, interdisciplinary partnerships, campus wide and share student experiences.Proposal text: As our college embarked on the ambitious journey to launch an MSW program in the fall of 2015, we faced the typical challenges of creating a graduate program, as well as some specific to our location. In our region, where many highly reputable MSW programs already existed and saturated the field, most field placements were hesitant to take a risk on our program in its infancy. As the famous proverb says, necessity is the mother of invention, so we got creative and began examining potential opportunities within our institution.
At the start of this endeavor in 2014, we began by collaboratively meeting with multiple interdisciplinary teams on campus and evaluating what needs they had in their particular areas of focus, with diverse student populations. Throughout this assessment we discussed ways in which, with the collective support of social work supervisors, we could assist with program implementation to expand services at no cost to the units and within our areas of expertise. Collaborating with other disciplines across the college in order to develop social work field placements was a ‘hard sell’ at first, but the impact of our students’ work spread, and we began to have various college administrators pursue us for student interns. Through these collaborations, we have effectively expanded services with the use of Social Work students completing interventions and practice. Our students now serve the college in various ways. We have non-traditional student practicums in the EOF department, the Center for Student Involvement (CSI), The Women’s Center and LGBTQ Services, The Office of Violence Prevention (OVP), Residence Life, The Office of Specialized Services (OSS), The Career Center, Office of Student Success, with the Chief Planning Officer and The Office of Institutional Advancement, The Office of Equity and Diversity, The Upward Bound Program, as well as the school's center for international education. Additionally we helped students create and now provide all of the services from our on-campus food pantry and clothing closet. Students are also placed in more traditional/clinical social work roles on campus with The Counseling Center, working directly with students dealing with mental health concerns and a specialized program that serves undergraduate students with neuro-diverse needs, who are mainly diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum. Within these departments our students have effectively created first generation support services, expansive services to support students with spectrum disorders, are serving as intake and discharge coordinators, and are currently working on best practices for Gender Inclusive Housing. Our MSW students have effectively implemented social work practice into our college community which has in turn widened the social work perspective into program implementation, serving to advocate for social justice and has increased diversity in departments in which staffing patterns did not provide. Further, this has allowed our students to see program development from the macro lens in the assessment and implementation process, through to the lens of direct practice with students as their clients, making for a well-rounded field practicum to connect their classroom learning to field practice.