To get an add code to any of the courses below, please submit your request here.
Soc W 537: Critical Empowerment Practice with Youth (SLN: 20093) 3 credits
Thursdays, 11:30-2:20pm
Description: SOCW 537 is an advanced lecture-seminar that focuses on critical approaches to youth-community empowerment practice. The course critically explores and examines strategies for engaging, partnering with and empowering youth, young people. Core concepts of youth empowerment at the individual, organizational, and community levels; models and methods of practice; age-appropriate and culturally-competent approaches; roles of young people and adult allies; and perspectives on practice in a diverse democracy are considered. Further, the course explores multiple cultural and political understandings of youth—including those that distort and enhance adolescent life and the ways in which these understandings are shaped by the intersection of institutions, policies, practices within neighborhoods and communities. To that end, we will examine the forms of marginalization, exploitation and alienation by media and institutions within the dominant culture, and highlight ways in which youth are active agents in families, in communities, and in the realm of policy.
Soc W 571: Assessment of Mental Disorders (SLN:20101) 3 credits
Asynchronous with scheduled optional live meetings
Description: Provides basic knowledge and skills to assess mental disorders and improve critical thinking concerning assessment and diagnosis. Emphasizes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) for its system of symptom description and classification. Examines challenges of methodological implications of mental health assessment across race, gender, and ethnicity.
Soc W 574: Collaborative Community-Based Program Evaluation (SLN: 20103) 3 credits
Thursdays 8:30-11:20am
Description: Social work program developers, managers and coordinators require key information to determine if a program is performing as intended. They must know how to measure, collect, analyze, and provide information on program and agency performance in culturally responsive and equitable ways. They must be able to develop community and client-centered feedback systems that enhance and support agency performance and serve the needs of the learning organization.
Evaluation as a set of practices and skills is an applied area of the social sciences that requires grounding in a number of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. In diverse communities, central to these practices and skills are responsiveness to community / consumer voice and awareness of the cultural context in which research is conducted. It also necessitates a clear formulation of questions to be answered, an awareness of stakeholders to be considered, and a plan for how data will be disseminated. In short, evaluation needs to adhere to ethics and standards of good research and simultaneously be as practical, useful, and accessible as possible. The general focus of this course is to increase critical thinking towards research grounded in anti-oppressive theory and practices, awareness of self in social work and relational practice, and understanding of the nuances of the science and art of evaluation.
Soc W 576: Context of Disability and Anti-Ableist Practice (SLN: 20105) 3 credits
Fridays, 11:30-2:20pm
Description: This course is designed to deepen your understanding of disability and its relevance to social work. We will discuss disability’s recent socio-political history, models of disability, and current policy issues at the national, state, and local level. Emphasis will be placed on how those policies and their implications for practice affect peoples’ daily lives. This course will engage a broad range of topics that are foundational to social work practice with people with disabilities, including activism for policy change, person-centered practice, employment, housing and home and community based services, institutional and sexual violence, education and transition to adulthood. We will discuss the disability rights framework as well as a disability justice framework and learn from a diverse group of visiting practitioners, scholars, and advocates about the connections between current policy issues and social services in practice. This course will facilitate critical reflection on your own professional stance in relation to these contemporary issues and trends.
Soc W 596B Motivational Interviewing with Teens (SLN: 20110) 3 credits
Thursdays, 6-8:50pm
Description: Are you more likely to do something if someone else tells you to? Or if it’s your own idea? Developmentally, many teens want to make a change when they think it’s important—and it’s their idea. A core principle of Motivational Interviewing (MI) is that individuals are more likely to accept and act on opinions that they voice themselves. This course will help you sharpen your skills in communicating with adolescence to help them give voice to their own motivation for change. The course will focus on key elements of MI developed by Miller and Rollnick (2015). Here’s how they define MI “Motivational Interviewing is a collaborative, goal-oriented style of communication with particular attention to the language of change. It is designed to strengthen personal motivation for and commitment to a specific goal by eliciting and exploring the person’s own reasons for change within an atmosphere of acceptance and compassion.” It probably looks pretty easy….but it takes practice. This virtual course will also provide practice opportunities for conducting virtual relationship building opportunities. This interactive and practice oriented course will explore using MI in different context with adolescence (virtual, school, treatment, groups) including using MI in an SBIRT context (Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment). Come prepared to practice and sharpen your skills.
Soc W 596E: Socionomy: A Social Justice Approach to Psychodrama (SLN: 20113) 3 credits
Friday, Jan 22 @ 2:30-5:20PM & Sat, Jan 23 @ 9:30-4:20
Friday, Feb 19 @ 2:30-5:20PM & Sat, Feb 20 @ 9:30-4:20
Description: This course is designed to introduce students to the philosophy and methodology of Socionomy (including: sociometry, psychodrama, sociodrama, sociatry, and group psychotherapy) in the context of social justice theory and practice. Students will learn socionomic assessment, sociodynamics, contracting, and intervention. Empirical support as well as ethical and professional issues in the appropriate use of these methods will be discussed. Students will have the opportunity to experience and learn about the roles of group member, auxiliary ego, protagonist, and director. The course will be primarily experiential. We will explore the bridge between personal narratives, creativity, and the power of community in the work of social change. Completion of this course does not certify participants as practitioners, experts or trainers in this modality. Certification as a Practitioner in Psychodrama is only granted through the Board of Examiners in Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy: http://psychodramacertification.org.