MSW students survive first graduate class and now ready to move on

     Sept. 4, 2008 - There was a sense of relief Thursday for a large group of MSW students as they wrapped up their first graduate class.

      The course is an immersion class to ensure students who don’t have a social work background understand the “big picture,” explained Associate Professor Lisa McGuire, one of four instructors who taught the class.

     The class is a foundation course and provides an overview of social work, including the definition, scope, history, ethics and values of the profession.

      “We saw the need (for the class) because we saw so many people coming into the Master’s program without an undergraduate degree in social work,” McGuire said. Often, students knew something about one issue, say welfare or mental health, but they didn’t realize social work was “this profession,” she explained. The class is designed to give them a broad understanding of the profession.

 “Now they are ready to jump into their next classes. They’ve gotten some feedback and they know they are are in the right place academically. But they also understand what social work is,” McGuire said.

      McGuire was joined by assistant professors Khadija Khaja and Kathy Lay and Sherry Gass, the MSW Student Services Coordinator, in teaching the class.

      The last class was marked by a display of poster boards detailing the lives of prominent social workers.

     Three MSW students, Jessica Lothrop, Scott Seibert and Beth Gaylord were typical of the students the class was designed to help. None of them came from a BSW program. Lothrop studied psychology at Ball State University, while Seibert had a theology background at the University of Dayton. Gaylord studied English at Xavier University.

      Not only did the class help understand the history and roots of social work, it made them familiar with the terms of social work and the different jobs it entails, Gaylord explained.

     “It was intense, lots of paper writing and reading,” Seibert said. But the workload made him and the two others realize that they can handle graduate level classes.

     “They threw me in the pool and I didn’t sink,” Gaylord said.

Dr. David Westhuis, executive director of the MSW program, talks with students at last class of MSW immersion class