A minor in social work equips you with the skills to understand human behavior, support individuals and communities and advocate for social justice—no matter your major. The program includes elective options that let you focus on the areas that interest you most. It’s a valuable complement to careers in healthcare, education, business, criminal justice and more.
Equivalent courses may be waived in the SHU MSW Program, if accepted, with a B or better (except for SW 101)
Emphasis is on human diversity. This course is designed to give students an understanding of the conditions that lead to minority emergence and the consequence of minority status; it fosters acceptance of diversity, cultural pluralism, and social change.
Explores the profession of social work as a career choice. Focuses on generalist social work practice as a societal response to social problems with an orientation to professional knowledge, skills, values, and ethics.
Provides a framework for understanding how diversity and inclusion shape the human experience, especially through consideration of cultural and constructed social and political norms. This course is a prerequisites for SW 278 and SW 279.
Examines the history and formulation of social welfare policy in the United States, with a focus on structural and politicized inequities in cultural and institutional elements of society. This course is a prerequisite to SW 266 and a corequisite to SW 275 and SW 276.
Prerequisite: Take SW-101
Examines structural theories and post-modern lenses critical to understanding human development, with emphasis on life stages, human diversity, and biopsychosocial, socioeconomic, spiritual, cultural, and systemic influences. This course is a prerequisite to SW 268 and a corequisite to SW 275, SW 276
Prerequisite: Take PS-110 SW-101
This course examines science as a process to understand basic biological concepts of cells, genetics, evolution, and ecology. Students will examine current biological research and how that impacts their lives and the future of humankind. Three hours of lecture per week. Non-science majors. A prerequisite to SW 267.
Focuses on human physiology and the role humans play in the health and maintenance of their bodies. Topics include human organization, processing and transporting, integration and coordination, and reproduction. Three hours of lecture per week. Non-science majors. A prerequisite to SW 267.
Provides an introduction to the American political system, beginning with constitutional foundations, then examining how major political institutions actually function. The course explores politics through analysis of parties, interest groups, voting behavior, and the different ways citizens have participated in and shaped American democratic life.
Introduction to psychology as the science of behavior, focusing on the physiological, cognitive, learning, sociocultural, and psychodynamic bases of behavior.
Students are taught how to investigate social issues as sociologists do-by tracing the troubles of men and women back to broader social forces and problems. The relevance of sociology is demonstrated through examples of applied sociology and through the students' use of social theory and methods to address social problems.
Major socioeconomic developments in twenty-first-century capitalism (e.g., consumer culture, global labor market, media empires) are studied. The persistence of inequality and poverty, fragmentation of family and community, unhealthy constructions of self image, and other social problems are explained in terms of these developments.
Equivalent courses may be waived in the SHU MSW Program, if accepted, with a B or better (expect for SW140)
This course will introduce students to current and historical issues and controversies of human rights and social justice through case studies, lectures, and group work.
Students learn how to design, conduct, and report the results of social research. Attention is given to experimental and evaluation research, field research, unstructured exploratory interviewing, content analysis, analysis of published statistical data, survey research, conceptualization and operationalization of variables, analysis of data, the writing of research reports, and the logic of cause and effect in research. The course also includes learning how to use the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software to analyze quantitative data. A prerequisite to SO 384
Prerequisite: Take SO 110 and 3 credits 200 or 300 SO courses
The effects and characteristics of family violence from the legal, medical, and social perspectives. Incidence and preconditions of child abuse, spousal abuse, and elder abuse are studied.
Examines social welfare services and delivery systems, including critical frameworks and theories necessary to understand welfare in the U.S. and abroad and the relationship between welfare and social work practice. This course is a corequisite for SW 278 and SW 279
Prerequisite: Take SW-265
Addresses contexts of human behavior across the life course, including extended family, groups, communities, and sociopolitical participation and influences on human development and the human condition. This course is a corequisite to SW 278 and SW 279.
Prerequisite: Take SW-267
