Department of Social Work

Margaret Tynan, Ph.D., Chair

Office: Demergasso-Bava Hall — DBH 122
Phone: (209) 667-3091

Professors: Floyd, Garcia, Marques, Tynan
Associate Professor: Tibrewal
Assistant Professors: Leyva, Ringstad

Learning Objectives

FOUNDATION

Graduate social workers who:

Apply critical thinking skills to professional social work practice.
Understand and are guided by the values and ethics of the profession.
Demonstrate the ability to practice without discrimination and with respect, knowledge, and skills related to diverse client populations.
Understand and work to expose paradigms of oppression and discrimination and those mechanisms and structures that serve those paradigms.
Advocate for social justice.
Understand the history of social work profession and utilize this knowledge as a context for understanding and addressing current practice issues.
Engage clients to assess and intervene at all system levels using a generalist perspective that incorporates client strengths.
Apply theoretical frameworks supported by research to understand individual development and behavior across the life span, between individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
Analyze, formulate, and influence social policies and understand the integral relationship between policy and practice.
Use research to inform and continually update practice.
Carry out critical self-analysis and self-evaluation.
Use supervision, consultation, and continuing education to strengthen practice.
Understand and operate within organizational structures and service delivery systems and seek necessary change.

ADVANCED

Graduate social workers who:

Understand and apply mechanisms and structures that promote paradigms of social and economic justice and liberation.
Demonstrate a spirit of inquiry that is characterized by curiosity and motivation to learn about others whose lives are different from one’s own and the strengths utilized by those individuals and groups.
Understand and utilize an integrative practice approach aimed at promoting social justice that:
- Focuses on power and privilege related to social identity and the meaning of difference.
- Emphasizes self-awareness, particularly in regard to the effects of one’s biases on interaction with others, and awareness of and willingness to work with the consequences of those effects on such interactions.
- Focuses on the development and use of a perspective that recognizes the formative role of institutional and organizational policies and practices both in creating fundamental change and imposing obstacles.
- Utilizes advocacy as a means to create change.