Master of Arts in Social Work, Social Policy, and Social Administration

Curriculum

The Crown Family School Master's Program in Social Work, Social Policy, and Social Administration (SW) begins with a first-year Core curriculum that introduces you to the chief methods of social intervention (direct practice, policy, and research), the diversity of human experience, and the fundamentals of human behavior and development. You are then asked to choose between two academic concentrations: Clinical or Social Administration.

The SW Program offers the flexibility to customize your education to your specific career goals. Choose from elective courses within Crown Family School and throughout the University in a wide variety of social work and related fields. Explore opportunities to study abroad. You can also leverage the interdisciplinary strengths of the University of Chicago by combining your AM degree with a Master of Public Policy, an MBA, or a Master of Divinity.

The First Year Core

The Core Curriculum is central to the educational program at the master's level. It brings together all students, whatever their career interests, for a solid introduction to the fundamentals of social policy formulation and program implementation, social research, and direct practice. The Core Curriculum prepares students for generalist practice through mastery of the core competencies of the profession as articulated by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). It places particular emphasis on understanding and working with culturally diverse and economically disadvantaged populations. After completing core studies in the first year, students who choose clinical practice begin their concentration with an established awareness of the broader contexts of individual distress and helping responses, while social administration students enter their concentration with a corresponding understanding of social work intervention at the direct practice level.

Required courses in the first two quarters of the first year provide students with a common foundation of knowledge concerning social welfare issues, human development, direct practice intervention strategies, and social research and practice behaviors related to these areas of knowledge. This foundation provides the background for concentration in advanced practice in clinical work or in social administration. Fieldwork placements in the first year are continuous for three quarters. They provide direct practice experience with distressed people and the institutions established to help them.

Clinical Concentration – Learn the major prevention and treatment approaches of direct clinical practice and engage with real clients through clinical fieldwork in hundreds of agencies and organizations across Chicago.

Two-thirds of our students in the Social Work, Social Policy, and Social Administration (SW) Program enter the clinical concentration, which prepares students for advanced practice with individuals, families, and small groups. The basic principles and values of practical thought serve as an orienting perspective, emphasizing theoretical diversity and comparative approaches to growth and change. Defining features of the program emphasize the use of both scientific and humanistic domains of understanding: the crucial role of the practitioner-client relationship; students' progressive narrative and experiential learning; and the importance of diverse client narratives, empirical findings, and methods. Students consider the strengths and limits of different approaches in light of the values and concerns of the broader social work profession as they develop critically reflective practice.

The program also emphasizes the ways in which social, cultural, political, and economic conditions shape the experience of vulnerability, need, and problems in living, and the role of advocacy as practitioners work to create more humane and responsive organizations and communities. Direct practitioners serve a variety of roles in a wide range of settings, and graduates assume supervisory, management, and consulting responsibilities over the course of their careers.

Social Administration Concentration – Take advanced coursework in the economics, politics, organization, and delivery of social welfare services and participate in administrative fieldwork at government agencies and community development organizations.

The social administration concentration in the Social Work, Social Policy, and Social Administration (SW) program prepares students for professional practice in community, organizational, and governmental settings. Students are prepared for research, management, and advocacy positions in federal, state, county, and municipal government; private non-profit and for-profit organizations; policy research institutes; community-based organizations and action groups; electoral politics at all levels of government; and non-governmental organizations working in a variety of international contexts. The social administration concentration provides students with advanced instruction in analytic and strategic intervention related to the institutional conditions – economic, political, and organizational – that shape social welfare. It enables students to develop practice competencies needed to analyze, research, and advocate for client groups and constituencies, and to plan, implement, and evaluate programs and policies at various levels of intervention.

Programs of Study

Programs of Study are faculty-designed elective sequences that combine carefully selected courses and field placements geared toward a particular area of social work. Each Program of Study has prescribed requirements, either required courses or sets of courses from which you may choose. Importantly, each program combines course work with a related field experience to allow you to connect theoretical learning with the development of competencies in a particular area of practice. About forty percent of our students complete a Program of Study.

Accreditation

The Crown Family School master's program has been continuously accredited by the Council on Social Work Education and its predecessor organizations since 1919. The rigor and quality of a Crown Family School education have earned us a spot among the top graduate schools of social work in the world.

To achieve this program's goals, students develop the following core competencies:

1. Identify as a professional social worker and conduct oneself accordingly.
2. Apply social work ethical principles to guide professional practice.
3. Apply critical thinking to inform and communicate professional judgments.
4. Engage diversity and difference in practice.
5. Advance human rights and social and economic justice.
6. Engage in research-informed practice and practice-informed research.
7. Apply knowledge of human behavior and the social environment.
8. Engage in policy practice to advance social and economic well-being and to deliver effective social work services.
9. Respond to contexts that shape practice.
10. Engage, assess, intervene, and evaluate with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.

To facilitate the development of these core competencies and the knowledge and behavior to practice at an advanced level, the School’s Social Work and Social Welfare (SW) program is organized into a core curriculum and an elective concentration in either clinical practice or social administration. No academic credit is awarded for life or work experience.