Overview

The School of Social Welfare provides a learning environment for individuals who wish to deepen and extend their knowledge and experience in bringing about social change. The School provides a place for the development of committed, analytical, and knowledgeable students who wish to undertake the difficult task of improving service delivery systems by attention to institutional structures.

Our mission statement provides a focus and compass for curriculum and program planning. It is the challenge and struggle to make this mission statement come alive—albeit incomplete and imperfectly—that makes the school an exciting place.  It invigorates both faculty and students knowing that we are preserving and carrying forward the social reform philosophy upon which professional social work was founded, and which is vital to its future.  We seek to help students build upon their sense of personal and social responsibility, taking the perspective of others seriously, grounding their actions in ethical considerations, and encouraging their ability to contribute to society.

We understand that to achieve these goals, we must create academic initiatives that engage our students and foster their understanding of the inherently complex issues of structural reform. We therefore prepare social work students to intervene directly with individuals and families, as well as with larger systems. Practice is undertaken from a strengths perspective and model of empowerment, development, and enhancement, rather than from that of deficit models.

The graduate program prepares students for advanced social work practice and is fully accredited by the Council on Social Work Education. 

It provides students with the needed theoretical and practice expertise to function with maximum competence at different administrative or policy levels in social welfare fields and/or in the provision of direct services to individuals, families, groups, and communities. The school provides opportunities for study and practice that utilize the wealth of interdisciplinary resources available in the Health Sciences Center, the University, and community agencies throughout the New York metropolitan area.
 

MSW Program Mission Statement

The mission of the Master of Social Work (MSW) Program, which is rooted in the mission of the School of Social Welfare at Stony Brook University and social work’s professional purpose and values, is to provide a graduate level learning environment for individuals who wish to deepen and extend their knowledge and experience in advancing health and wellbeing and facilitating social change by preparing them for advanced social work practice. The Program provides a place for students who wish to undertake the challenges of the enhancement of quality of life for all people, locally and globally. The Program seeks to guide students to build upon their sense of personal and social responsibility in the quest for social, racial, economic, and environmental justice, through utilizing skills and knowledge based on scientific inquiry and grounded in integrity and professional ethics.

The Program integrates students into the profession of social work, its purposes and values, through a competency-based curriculum that teaches the strengths-perspective, systemic thinking, a person-in-environment framework, advocacy, and the value of scientific inquiry as means of promoting individual and social change. The Program employs a variety of pedagogical approaches across the MSW curriculum including an intensive experiential learning component via practicum placements in social work practice settings. Students are prepared for advanced social work practice competence and leadership with individuals, families, groups, organizations, communities and governments utilizing local, regional and global perspectives. The program applies a social work framework that reflects the values of service, dignity and worth of people, and the importance of human relationships.

The MSW Program is committed to helping students contribute to the creation of conditions that facilitate the realization of human rights by learning to recognize that structural inequality exists in multiple intersecting forms of discrimination based on class, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, age and ability, among others. The Program seeks to promote human and community well-being by recognizing and responding to trauma; fostering human relationships that are grounded in social justice and human dignity. The Program further builds skills and knowledge for transforming existing structures to reflect values that affirm human rights and respect for human diversity; it teaches strategies for influencing social, economic and political systems to eliminate poverty and equitably distribute resources and power.

Program Goals

The goals of the MSW program are to:

1. Prepare advanced generalist practitioners who demonstrate ability to use their knowledge, values, and skills to work at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels of practice within local, national and global contexts;

2. Educate graduates to utilize social justice and human rights frameworks in their work and to embrace social action practice;

3. Inspire graduates who lead efforts to improve health and wellness in the lives of all people and to create a more just and life-affirming society;

4. Promote the ability of graduates to engage in critical, self-reflective and ethical practice;

5. Develop practitioners who utilize strengths-based, person-in-environment and empowerment approaches in all their work that are informed by a respect for human dignity, diversity, and inclusiveness; and

6. Educate practitioners who are able to engage in research-informed practice models and who are able to contribute to the creation of knowledge in the field of Social Work by engaging in practice-informed research processes

The goals for our MSW program are clearly derived from our mission statement, and reflect the values, emphases, and perspectives articulated there. The first goal purposefully aligns with our stated premise to educate for all systems levels of practice in local, national, and global contexts. The second goal emphasizes the importance of social justice and human rights frameworks in our graduates’ ability to embrace social action. The third goal is an expression of our commitment to leadership in improving health and wellness for both individuals and in the society—this affirms our commitment to social and environmental justice as well as a reflection of our location within a health sciences infrastructure. Our fourth goal reflects the importance of social workers practicing ethically and from a value base. Our fifth goal expresses a commitment to compel graduates to use frameworks that are informed by human dignity, diversity and inclusiveness. Our sixth goal commits us to educate practitioners who seek and utilize knowledge in their work at all levels.