Master of Social Work (MSW) Program

Institution:

The University of Texas at San Antonio

State:

Texas

Academic Level:

Graduate

Issue Area:

Academic Program

Program Focus:

Discipline/Subject

Website:

https://hcap.utsa.edu/social-work/

Key Personnel:

Amy Chanmugam

Contact Info:

Amy.Chanmugam@UTSA.edu

Overview

The MSW program’s mission is to serve as a catalyst for transformative, culturally competent social work through research, education, and service within a local-global context. Program goals include:

Transformative social work: prepare social workers to be critically self-reflective, creative, flexible, open to possibilities, innovative and collaborative in order to engage in social work practice that catalyzes positive change for individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
Culturally competent practice: develop social workers specialized in culturally competent practice with diverse populations within a local-global context.

Program Description

Students learn to tackle society’s most challenging problems through intervention with individuals, groups, families, organizations, communities, and/or through addressing policy. The program design supports career development of first-generation, returning students, students working full-time, and curriculum emphasizes material relevant to Latino/a communities. Every student completes two 450-hour practicums, and students contribute 60,000+ service hours annually through community practicums. In 2017, the program organized the 2nd Binational Conference on Social Work, Human Rights, and Migration (co-hosted with RENIESTS –La Red Nacional de Instituciones de Educación Superior en Trabajo Social).

Outcome

Average time-to-degree was 2.8 years for Latino/a MSW students, 3.0 for all MSW students (2018–2019).
In terms of social work competencies assessed by 3 reporters per student, the program shared the percent of students who met all competency benchmarks during the evaluation held prior to graduation. For academic years 2018-2020 percentages rates were 90% and above across all of the 9 competency areas.
Additionally, the rates increased across all 9 areas with ‘Engage in Policy Practice’ and ‘Intervene with Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations, & Communities’ being among the areas seeing the biggest increases.

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