Mental Health & Social Work Careers

Careers in Social Work

Well, the reason we chose to ask that question is because so often when I come to classes and I ask people, what's your first impression of what a social worker might do, they say, those are the people that take children away from their home. And that's the field where child welfare comes into play, and the truth is that many times people go into the field of social work because they want to make a difference and they've heard those stories, those awful stories, so they go into child welfare so they can make a difference in that area and protect children and help families to enhance the kind of relationships they can have with children. But that is not in the field where most social workers are employed.

So, I think from here I start with telling you about my story, how I became a social worker. I started undergraduate at University of Michigan in their music school. And I quickly learned that I did not have the talent, I did not have the skills, I was not going to be a musician. And that was a letdown for me because the one passion I had was for music, so I really couldn't figure out if I wasn't going to do music, what was I going to do? This was many, many, many years ago so there were no computers, there was no internet, there was no websites. So I went to the library and I found college catalogs, and I looked through all these different college catalogs and I was still wondering is there anything I can do with music? Is there anything that I can do that will still let me, somehow or other, use my music?

And I found a new field and it was called music therapy. And I thought, wow, this is really cool. I can use my music, I don't have to be a real talented performer, because I know I wasn't that, and I can help people. And that was always a really major part of my nature, that I got a lot of joy out of volunteering, out of being a good friend to people, out of helping people in their lives in any ways that I could as a teenager. And so I thought, this sounds like a real good marriage between this part of my personality and this passion that I have for music.

But at this time, the field of music therapy was young, very young. It had started in the 1940s. This was just 30 years later and there was just about five schools across the country that actually offered a program to become a music therapist. So that's what got me to Florida. I ended up at Miami in their music school working on becoming a music therapist. The last part of that degree required a field internship, which is very much the same as the last part of our BSW degree, and which is an integrated part of our MSW program.

Now, in our program you will learn from Professor Simpson how smooth the process is to go into that internship, whether it's the BSW or whether it's the MSW, she has created relationships with hundreds of agencies in the community, and it is a very easy, laid out process for how you get to do that internship when you're in our program. But many years ago as a music therapist with so few programs even across the country, there was not that kind of support. I had to go and find my own way into a program that would allow me to get the experience I needed so I could become a registered music therapy intern. And that led to my moving to Washington, DC, and I did my internship at St.

Elizabeth's Hospital. This is the first federally operated psychiatric institution in our country. St. Elizabeth's Hospital, at its peak, had 8,000 patients. Think about that. A psychiatric setting with 8,000 patients and 4,000 people that were employed there.

So, it was built in 1855 and I came there in the '70s and, at that time, there were still thousands of patients. There was a decline because different changes were happening in the field of psychiatric therapy, but there were still thousands of patients when I began there for my music therapy internship, and there were acres of land with 70 buildings across the hospital. And I was told to go to the different buildings where they housed different populations and to create interventions, and to meet the patients, and to provide music therapy.

So I had not been aware that Walter Freeman, who was known as the father of the lobotomy, had been a director at one time in St. Elizabeth's Hospital, and one of the first places that I went to provide intervention was to the geriatric building. And that was the first time for me that I worked and met people who had lobotomy's performed on them. Lobotomies is when they took an ice pick and put it in the brain to disconnect parts of the brain, because they thought that that would help people get well. It was a real eye- opening experience for me. And so I worked in the geriatric population, and then I went to another building. Lots of buildings where there were just your garden variety of people who had serious mental illnesses. So the population there were indigent people with very severe mental illness.

They had a component there was called John Howard Facility for the Criminally Insane, and I worked with the criminally insane. A few years after I left, John Hinckley, who is known for his attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan because of his obsession with Jody Foster, he was admitted to John Howard, and from what I've heard, he is still there today, and this is 30 years later. So this was where I went to do my music therapy internship.

I was told that I would have the opportunity, in all of these buildings where I was meeting these patients, to attend of the team meetings, the interdisciplinary team meetings in each of these buildings. There were psychiatrists and psychologists and social workers, and then lots of us interns from music, or psychodrama, or dance, but this was my first time of being introduced to people who were social workers. I was not familiar with that profession before I came to St. Elizabeth's. And probably, there were more social workers working at St. Elizabeth's than any other profession at the time that I was there.

And I was intrigued at these leadership meetings where we talked about the different patients that were in those units, by the kind of insight that the social workers offered in those interdisciplinary teams. And so I was then offered the opportunity to work with the social workers. And I joined them and assisted and co-led in some of their groups in these different buildings with these populations, and that's where I really got to know even more about the kind of people that chose that profession and the kind of work that they did. It was amazing. Across the board, these were people who showed the utmost respect for these patients. And think about the kind of patients I'm talking about and how difficult it can be to really, from the heart, be respectful, and compassionate, and wise, and

creative, and knowledgeable. And I saw them do work with these patients that just amazed me.

So when I finish that internship, I had an image about the profession of social work and about social workers that was very positive. But I now had my degree as a music therapist, and I was a registered music therapist. So I wanted to get a job in my field. Remember, no internet, no computer, no websites. We were ready to go back to Florida, so I pulled out yellow pages. Do y'all know what the yellow pages are? Yellow pages from all the different cities up and down Florida to look up different facilities that might be able to utilize a music therapist to work with their patients.

I typed 100 letters that I sent to all these different places throughout Florida. Do you think I got a job as a music therapist? Anybody? No, I did not get a job as a music therapist. So after several months, I got a job that was supposed to be for a BSW, for a student who had a bachelor's in social work. They could not find a student that had graduated that has a BSW for this position, which is what they wanted, but they hired me instead. And in this position, the person who trained me was a BSW. The person who was the director of the agency was an MSW. And I went to people's homes, because that's oftentimes what social workers do. In our understanding of the power of the environment that affects people, we're often right in there in that environment where our patients live, and where they work, and where they attend different aspects of their lives, work, and so forth.

And I would go to the homes where families had had children that were born with developmental disabilities, and they had children who were from infancy to age five. I would go to the homes, and I would get to know the families. And I would help them to make a loving and positive connection with these children, and I would help them to learn ways that they could support their children in developing different kinds of skills, and I would provide them with information about resources. And it was a really meaningful work experience for me, but what I realized was that I wasn't trained as a social worker, and I knew that I could do a much better job if I really had the education that social workers had.

So we were moving back to Michigan and I applied to go to school for my MSW degree, and I got that degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. That program had three different paths for becoming an MSW. And you'll find if you look at different schools, even now, that MSW programs are very diverse in how they train people because there are so many different ways that people end up working as a professional social worker.

So at Wayne State they had an administrative path, they had a community organizing path, and then they had the clinical social work path. And at USF, we have only the clinical social work path, and that is the path that I chose for my degree at Wayne State. they had two different field placements that you would have in the two years while you're getting your degree. We have two years to get the degree, but we have one placement that you do the whole time. So in my experience, one year I was in the school system learning

how to be a social worker in the schools, and the other year I was in a family service agency learning how to do social work in the family service.

They also had an opportunity where you could go into the hospital during the summer and be a part of an interdisciplinary team with physical therapy, occupational therapy, pharmacy. And I wanted to know more about medical social work, and so I took part in that experience. Some of you may be aware that at USF we have a place that's called The Bridge Clinic. It's a clinic on our university where, as an interdisciplinary team run by the medical students, involving our social work students and PT and some other programs, we are able to provide services directly to under-served populations in our area. And so this was kind of a similar experience that I had, just to be exposed a little bit to what medical social workers did.

When I graduated, I was employed easily, and that's been true with this degree throughout my professional career. I've never had a problem being able to find the work that I wanted to find with this degree. And that's pretty exciting especially since I never could become a music therapist. It's like OK, I made one good choice here with my education that's really been a right match for me and career.

And my first job was in a place that was in a rural community called Romulus. And it was in an old house that was called the Romulus Help Center, and that's what we tried to do, we just tried to help everybody. The director was an MSW, my supervisor was and MSW, there was me, and there was a BSW. It was just us to serve this community. And one day a week, they had to go to the high school where I could talk with any teen that was troubled that wanted to have some support. I also did home visits, because there were people in that community that didn't have the mobility or the transportation or there were things that were happening in their home that made it impossible or very difficult for them to be able to leave their home, and so I went to them.

And I also did a lot of work in the center itself. In this facility, we were partially funded by substance abuse agencies, so I also worked with involuntary patients. And these are the patients who were in prison, or they were given probation and as part of their being released from prison, or as part of their probation, they were required to see me. So that was a whole other realm of working with people in a different way than I would work with the people who were coming because they really wanted the help that we could provide.

I stayed there for a couple years, and then I began working in community mental health. I mentioned that at St. Elizabeth's the population started to decline from that peak at 8,000. And although there were still thousands when I left, over the years there became less and less and less and the land got smaller and smaller while the government preyed at other things. And right now, there's actually Homeland Security is where St. Elizabeth's once was, and there's just a little tiny area that's still St. Elizabeth's. And part of the reason that that happened was that the field of mental health began to question if these large institutions were the right way for patients with mental health problems, mental illness, to

get the treatment that they needed. And they decided that it was better to be community- based.

So here I was, about eight years or so later, working in a community mental health setting. And what I saw was that there was a lot of poor planning that happens around the services that get provided for people that have mental illness. That just because they didn't think that large, where people live for years and years, those people that I worked with lobotomy's have been there for 50 years and never had a visitor. So they thought that's a pretty horrible thing, but now if you see a lot of people that are homeless and they're on the streets, those were some of the people that would have at least gotten care in some of these bigger facilities if they still existed.

So at the time that I was hired for the community mental health, they were closing down all of those large facilities and we were trying to service some of those people who were mentally ill that were in the community and could find us, but we also serviced people of all levels of troubles. We saw people who just had different stresses in their life and needed a little bit of extra support, we saw people who had marital problems, mild depression, major depression, panic disorders, anxiety, all of the spectrum of different kinds of mental health issues is what I worked with for about five years.

And then, I was hired by a hospital. And although it was a big medical hospital, they had four units that were for psychiatric patients, and one of them was to specialize with eating disorders. I was hired to be the specialist with the eating disorder population. One of the things that became really clear to me in that position was that there's a lot of people who really respect social workers. And in this position I really felt the validation of my degree and my experience.

So in the eating disorder unit at this hospital, we had an interdisciplinary teams with the psychiatrists, the psychologists, recreational therapists, not musical therapists, recreational therapists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, nurses. And I was the leader in terms of bringing in all the information about the patient's family, because besides the psychiatrist, I was the only one that had the opportunity to meet with the family, as well as with the patient. And that's because social work is about taking it all in. It's not about isolated individual people, but it's about people in the context of their environment, and family is so much a big part of most of our environment. And so, on that team meeting, each time we met I brought in psychosocial information so that everybody would understand the context that brought this patient into our unit.

I got pregnant and I stayed home for awhile, and while I was home I worked in private practice and I worked for an EAP. And an EAP is an employee assistance program. And that's where some of the big corporations in Detroit, the automobile corporations, and IBM, and things like that, they send their employees for some counseling. Brief counseling, 10 session counseling. So while I was doing private practice with more longer relationships, I was also doing a EAP with shorter, and that's one thing that is very exciting about being a social worker in the clinical field is that there are so many different ways that you can be a social worker and learn and grow and keep changing and evolving

and getting better at how you help people. And so I really enjoyed that opportunity to be able to do different kinds of work with the different people that came to my office.

Around that time, my husband was working and somebody came into the business that he was working in and they asked for him by name. He came to meet with them and they put a gun to his head. They asked him to go to the vault and give them the money, and then they took all of the people that were working in the business and they had them lie down on the floor and take their clothes off. And they all thought that they were going to be killed. They did not get killed, but they also never found the person that asked my husband by name him to come, and my husband developed post-traumatic stress disorder. So first hand, I became aware of the impact of that kind of experience, and my husband was never able to return to his work. So fortunately, during all the years that he had been in this particular business, he was developing alternate [INAUDIBLE] and had actually acquired another degree, and he began to explore possibilities of a new career in Florida.

So we left Michigan and moved here where he was able to work again and able to, over time, have those symptoms dissipate from that horrific experience. And I became employed, again, very easily and very readily, in Florida at Jewish Family Services. And one thing was in Michigan, we didn't have licensure, we had a certification that I held, an ACSW, but in Florida, it was important to get licensure at this point in time. And so I had the education, I had the experience, I had the supervision, I just needed to take the exam. So I took the exam, got licensed, and worked for eight years at Jewish Family Services, and I had another one of those experiences of realizing the value of this particular degree, because I was the only professional that they had in the Jewish Family Services counseling area that they could get reimbursed for Medicare.

As a master's level professional social worker in the state of Florida, we were able to get reimbursed for Medicare. And I don't know if it's still true that other master's levels don't have that privilege, but at the time that I worked there, that's something that they really valued about my being able to do that. And I worked with Holocaust victims, I worked with the elderly that were more spry and more autonomous than the ones that I certainly had worked with at St. Elizabeth's. And I worked with families and adults of all ages also, providing all kinds of support in whatever kinds of problems that brought them in for counseling. Oftentimes it was transitions. It might have been a divorce, it might have been a death of somebody, it might have been that kind of depression that was caused by some kind of experience that they had that was fairly easy to resolve in terms of working in the relationship with them.

So I had 25 or so year career in clinical social work. And I thought to myself, I've done a lot of fabulous things with this degree, and every position that I've held has had meaning for me, has had great rewards for me. I've always been really happy with this career. And I wonder if there's something else I can do with this degree and some other kinds of skills and some other ways that I can develop myself. I decided to leave Jewish Family Services and 10 years ago I was hired here to be the advisor for the School of Social Work. And so I have been here for about 10 years, and it has been such a pleasure for me to be able to share my experiences and to support people who have thought, hmm, I'm not

sure what social work is, I'm not sure if that's what I want to do, and I've had the chance to be able to discuss that with them. And for some of them, it is the right path, and I've been able to then guide them through for them to get a BSW degree or an MSW degree and to go forward and be able to have a magnificent career as a professional social worker. And that's my story.

Hi, I'm Teri Simpson and I am a social worker. And Dr. Cooperman, at her request, we've been asked to tell our stories of how we became social workers. Mine is not quite as cerebral and planned as Amy's, things just kind of happened to me. I, unlike you, did not go-- most of you-- did not go to college until I was 38. Well, I started nurse's training. I had a year of nurses training right out of high school, saw my first autopsy, went home and told my dad, I don't think this is for me, dad. So I went off and had a very successful, or moderately successful, career in sales, which I still use in social work, by the way. So my husband died while he was in the military, and so at 38 I went to get my bachelor's degree.

So I came here to USF and I was getting a degree in Psychology because those are the kind of books I read for entertainment. And so I came to USF, but while I was here I volunteered for Hospice. So I'd had several losses in my life and I thought, OK, I've gotten counseling and I've survived these. I'm tough, I'm strong, I want to help other people. So you'll find that a typical response to people enrolling in the social work department.

As I volunteered for them for four years, I went to the woman who had the job I wanted at hospice and I said, I want your job. So what kind of master's degree do I need? And she said, I only hire MSW. And I said, MSWs? And like Amy said, I thought in the little black and white movies that a social worker was a mean person who took the kids away from a poorly understood parent. So I said, OK, I'll think about that, and she said, take an intro class. So it was my last semester getting my bachelor's, and so I took an intro class. And it was sitting in Professor [? Tilden's ?] Intro to Social Work that the light came on for me and said, oh my gosh, I'm a social worker. This is who I am. And now I found a path for me.

So there weren't any openings at Hospice when I got my bachelor's, so I looked around for other jobs and there was one in the paper to become a caseworker at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Tampa Bay. I thought, well, I'll just go for the interview and see how I like that. And so I went down there, and because I had worked with patients with AIDS, and this was 1993 and there were very few people that were willing to do that right then, they had just gotten a grant to provide Big Brothers and Big Sisters to children who had AIDS, were HIV infected, or were affected by the AIDS, so their parents, one of their parents, had it. And so it seemed like it was a light shining for me, like I said, not real cerebral, just kind of led me down that path, at least until hospice had an opening. I ended up staying there 16 years.

So while I was there, I entered the part time program in the MSW, still with my eye on hospice. And while I was there, I rose through the ranks and I did my internship in our

own, first I did my first part at Memorial Hospital in a day treatment program for people with dual diagnosis. So that was very interesting. But I was offered a promotion at my job, at Big Brothers, if I would do my counseling internship with them and also serve as a regional director. So I did that and I did in-home family counseling with girls, teenage girls. Tough population, let me tell you, but very, very rewarding.

So I did that and when I got my masters, then, I used the theories and principles and values that I had learned in my MSW program to complete my work at Big Brothers Big Sisters, to design policies that were social work friendly, and people friendly, and client friendly. And so that's how I use my MSW. As Amy was explaining, the various ways you can use a master's in social work, I ran an agency there, and left as a Senior Vice President after 16 years. And I came here to do this job as director of field education for the School of Social Work, which I like very much, and still continue to use my social work values, and teach them.

OK so that was our recent graduating class. These are BSW class, I think, from a year ago, two years ago. OK, so those are our BSWs, see those happy little social workers. OK I'm ready for the next one.

OK so you are interested in working directly with people to improve the quality of life. And so, these are the populations that we work with. The typical populations, children, teenagers, adults, and the elderly, so everybody. OK, ready. And so what is social work? Social work is distinguished from other human service professions by the focus on the person, as well as their environment. So you all function within systems, right? Your a son or a daughter, your an aunt, an uncle, a student, you're a citizen, you're a variety of things, and so we always have to look at how this system is affecting the individual, and how the individual is impacting their system.

Social workers are also advocates. Oh my, you'll hear that value, ethics, advocate. You'll hear that over and over again in the social work profession, because we're looking for social justice. We want all people to have equal access to services. We also address a broad range of biopsychosocial problem areas. So we provide counseling to individuals, families, couples, and groups.

So the social work program is a study designed to respond to the identified needs in the region. So, right now we have a huge interest in veterans and military. People value our veterans, which is a change in posture and feelings from years ago. And so we have a very strong interest in social workers who want to work in the VA or work with military families, but social workers adjust to those changes. It's built upon the core information basic to social work practice, and it's followed by advanced scholarly study in preparation for clinical work.

So USF's a program in social work, Master's in Social Work, is a clinical program. So as Amy was telling you earlier, there are varied programs. There are some that follow administrative track. In the state of Florida, if you want to be licensed, it's a clinical license. And so this prepares you for your licensure. OK, that's good.

The Master's in Social Work program, we have a full time program. And so that's two years, unless you have a BSW, and if you already have a BSW, you get advanced standing, so you get to skip a semester and-- kind of equates to a semester, but for the full time program it's two years and you'll go into your field placement in the first semester. So that's my job, and that's why I believe I was hired by USF because of my community relationships and the people that I know over the years, because I can form those relationships. Social work is really actually a small community, believe it or not, in this big Tampa Bay Area.

We also have a part time program. The part time program is eight semesters, including summers. That's the one I told you that I went through. So those students start in the field in their second semester and they go to school in the evening. They typically do their field placement part of the time during the day, during the week, and then part of the time in the evening or the weekend, because they're very dedicated, very hard working, want that master's degree really bad, so they do whatever they need to do to get that done.

We do individual family and group work, so at some point in your experience, in your field placement, you would do counseling with that that population. And so, when we make a partnership, an affiliation, with an agency they agree that if they take a student, they will provide those experiences for our students.

We are a values and ethics driven profession, and so we live by the National Association of Social Works Standards and Ethics. The master's degree is 900 hours in a field placement. So the Counsel on Social Work Education, which is our accrediting body, has called the field experience the signature pedagogy. Does anybody know what that means? Pedagogy. That means that's where the real learning takes place. So you may have a whole curriculum of classes, but this is your signature pedagogy is your field experience. Where you bring in the knowledge that you got in the classroom into practice and see it in real life at an agency or hospital. I can't read that last one, oh, yes, and it fulfills academic requirement for licensure.

OK, where do social workers work? You did very well when you answered that question about child welfare, because typically most people will tell you that's what social workers do, they work with children in the foster care system. And indeed, they do. And in fact, I don't know if you heard that the legislature passed a law that will be enacted in, I think, a couple years that requires that every child protection team that takes a child out of the home, has someone with a social work degree on that team. So they have to be in the home, they have to be with the team as they remove a child. That's very significant for our profession.

So we do do that, yes. And we do, and you know what else we do? We work with families to keep their kids out of foster care. So if they've been identified as a threat, we'll do in-home family counseling. We'll bring them to whatever our agency is and do groups with them, parenting groups. Help them so their children don't have to enter the foster care system.

They work in hospitals, that's for sure. 42% of my students, my interns, right now are in a hospital setting or a clinical mental health setting. So I have students in All Children's, students in St. Joseph's Children's, Women's, [INAUDIBLE]. So they go there, they're learning to do medical social work, and they'll be there for two years or four semesters.

I do have, also, I wanted to make sure I told you this. Right now, there is a federal law that requires that all dialysis unit have a licensed clinical social worker on the premises. So many of our students are in dialysis center. And do you know that only 10% of people receiving dialysis are on a waiting list for a new kidney? Only 10% that qualify. So you know that 90%? They know this is their life. So they deal with depression, and angst of having this situation, and also their family sitting in the waiting room, and how their lives are changed. So our students are helping them with that.

We also have that Northside, MHC, big community mental health centers here. We have some of our students, actually, in private practice, learning cognitive behavioral therapy in a large practice. So as long as a practice can offer our students a large variety of things like individual, group, family, counseling, then we'll consider them as a possible affiliated partner.

We also have about 10% of our students right now are doing school social work. So they want to work with kids, so this is a great opportunity for them. They're learning what it's really like there. Only about 10% of our students are actually in child welfare agencies right now. I expect that will increase because of the new legislation. We have about 10% of our students working in substance abuse field. So they're working with people with drug and alcohol and other addictions. We have about 12% of our students right now are either at a VA or in a military setting.

We also have people in aging population, we baby boomers, we're going to need some social workers pretty soon, so we need to get them trained. And it's also a big area of interest and one of our better paying areas. Forensic social work, so when we have students in the public defender's office doing mitigation interview, and doing counseling with the prisoners, and then going before the judge and helping them in the sentencing process. We have our students working with victims of trauma. And so you'll see, trauma informed care is a big part of our educational process. Development disabilities, so those are kind of a wide range.

OK, that's our curriculum. I know it's small, hard to read, and looks overwhelming. But actually, it's quite doable. I know because I did it. And so you'll see there's a lot of focus on field instruction there. You'll have that every semester, and that's where you come to your seminar and you discuss what's happening in your field placement. So we get everyone's input. And so we're all about diversity, justice, social welfare, and also your clinical practice skills.

OK this is our mission statement, which we took great pains to write. The mission of the School of Social Work is to prepare graduates to achieve excellence as leaders in social work practice, research, and education at local, national, and global levels. The school, in

partnership with the university and the community, educates graduates to embrace the spectrum of social work knowledge, values, ethics, and skills to promote social and economic justice for diverse, vulnerable, and under-served populations.

So if I'm interviewing you for a field placement and you come and you tell me, I only want to work with middle-class people, I'm going to say what attracted you to social work? We're looking for oppressed populations. We're looking to help people that have been under-served and perhaps, have had a direct result of that on their life experiences.

That's our faculty and our staff. I also wanted to tell you one thing I didn't tell you earlier is you will find our students in agencies. The COO of the United Way of the sun coast, one of the largest in the state of Florida, is an MSW. I, of course, was an MSW. We have all around the city, the three county area, you will find people in leadership in agencies, nonprofit agencies, that have master's degrees in social work.

And I think you want to know about the salaries, right? [INAUDIBLE] hear it, yeah. Well you know, we're not famous for making a lot of money, right? You've heard that. But I want to tell you that, I explained to our students that if you take private practice out of this mix for now, because that can either be very lucrative, or not so lucrative depending on your clientele and your situation. So, right at the top tier, coming right out of your MSW is a veterans, Veterans Association, the health administration. And they pay $47,000 a year to a brand new MSW. Now, after you're there for two years, for those two years they're going to provide you supervision toward your licensure, which has a great monetary value. And then, when you get your license, you automatically go to $52,000. Now that's not even any step increases, so that's pretty good for right out of a master's degree.

Right under that is nephrology social work. So they're social workers that work in the dialysis units. They make they make pretty good money, too. So they're probably around $40,000 starting out. And then right under there are the school social workers. And of course, at the bottom, the job that tears your guts out but you love it anyway, is child welfare. So they are the least paid, but they get their rewards in other places.

OK, so what makes a good social worker? Compassion, and empathy. When I am doing an orientation for our brand new social workers, just accept it, I tell them you are probably the one in your family, in your social group, at your school that everybody went to when they had a problem. You're the good listener, you're the empathetic ear, you're the compassionate person. And that seems to be who we draw. For most of our students, that's innate. I believe that social workers are born and they come to classes to get the education they need to do the work that they want to do. You need dedication and you need passion and drive, because sometimes you have to have the drive for your clients who don't have it right now, so you have to have it for them.

You need critical thinking skills. You need to step back and look at the whole situation, because typically your clients are in a situation where they can't do that. So you have to be able to critically look at it. You have to be able to analyze what you've done, to be

open to that, to critique yourself, as well, and learn from your own critiques. And you have to be flexible. Oh my, you have to be flexible. Because you may go into a job thinking you're doing one thing and then, no, you didn't get any of that stuff on your to-do list done, because this came up and it needed your attention. That's typical social work for us. You have to be flexible, especially when you're in an agency where things are happening all the time. You will never be bored, I promise you that. To me, that's the worst job you can is a job that you're bored in. You will never be bored as a social worker.

And you need to be a lifelong learner. As I told you, we're adjusting now to the needs of the community and the VA, certainly, learning how to help our vets with PTSD and other issues that are facing them is huge. The Polytrauma unit over there, where the guys have pictures of themselves on their doors how they looked when they first went in the military, because they're afraid you won't recognize. They want you to know that I'm still that person. That is really a hard place for our students to go. But you know, the ones that go there feel so rewarded when they leave. To help their families with that adjustment and to help the vet, as well.

They will come to me, we have about an hour interview, they've submitted an application where they list about five things that they're interested in. Some of them come to me and they're all over the place. They just want it all. I want to do this, I want to do that. But what I do is I help them narrow it down, and then we will, based on that information, then I'll select a field placement for them. And they will go and interview and make sure it's a good fit for them, and the agency also that they feel that the student's going to be a good fit for them.

So they stay in the same place for the whole time?

Yes, the goal is that you'll stay in the same placement all four semesters, and I'll tell you why. The feeling of the people at the School of Social Work is that the longer you're there, the more they learn who you are, the more they invest in you, the deeper and richer experiences they're going to entrust in you. So if I move a student the semester that they go into their family counseling, and they have to find a family to do counseling with, and the agency doesn't really know who they are yet, it's very difficult for them to entrust one of their families. And so it seems to work very well for us. There are instances where I do change placements for students. Oh, I was wrong. This really isn't for me. I'm not, I'm really-- like I did for nurses training. Whew, that's not for me. So they come to me and they say, oh, you know what, I was wrong. Or their field instructor at the agency leaves, so they have we have to have an MSW there with two years experience. So if that person leaves and there's no MSW, no one else can supervise our students because their education has to be protected.

So I can speak a little bit to the difference between psychology and social work, OK. One difference is your educational path. To do everything that you would want to do in psychology, a PhD Is pretty much a requirement, and at USF and in many places, it's a research-based school experience. And even more so than that, I think when we think

about the differences in people who work in counseling fields, you have psychiatrists who are able to provide medication and prescriptions because they're physicians. You have psychologists who their expertise is in testing, and that's why the research piece is so important. And they're the only ones that really have what they need to have educational wise to do diagnostic kinds of testing.

And with social work, what we call the terminal degree is the master's degree. And what that means is that yes, we have a PhD, but in order to do almost anything that you would want to do in our field, the master's degree will open the door for you. If you want to be a tenured professor in a school of social work, then you need a PhD But other than that, the master's degree prepares you for any of the different kinds of work in the profession that you might want to do. So that's kind of a difference with that.

There are some similarities between how the BSW and the MSW degrees are, both in terms of the flow of curriculum and in terms of admissions. So for both of our degrees, there are certain criteria that have to be managed, minimum criteria. With the BSW degree, you have to have a minimum of 2.75 to be eligible for our program. With the MSW program, like most of the programs at a graduate level, you have to have a minimum 3.0 GPA when you're graduating. And that 3.0 is taken from your last 60 credit hours. So if you've had problems your first couple years adjusting and being a student, but you're able to pull it together in your last couple years. You are able to really shine out and show what kind of academic student you are, that works. As long as you have a 3.0 with the last 60 credit hours, you're eligible for the MSW program.

With the BSW degree and the MSW degree, it's a very lock step, structured, sequenced program. So you might have noticed it looks so overwhelming, the brochure part that listed all those courses-- you don't have to think about it. The reason you don't have to think about it is, if you're admitted, we got it all planned for you. You're admitted, we tell you what to take, you have to take it at the time that we offer it, and you go through the program, which is very exciting for our students, in a cohort model. Whether it's the BSW or the MSW, the people that you're-- I think something shut off. Should I keep going?

OK, so the people that you're admitted with into the program that you're going to graduate with, you go through each semester together as a group of students. You might have a couple sections, but you really get to know your fellow students and you get to do group work together, you study together, you go through the program together because every class you take is pretty much laid out for you. It has to be completed successfully before you can enter the next semester of classes and follow through with the program. So that is true for both the BSW and the MSW. The downside of that is if you're working full-time days, then you're not able to do either of our daytime, full-time MSW program. And the only program we offer for the undergrad is a full time undergraduate program. So there is some level of flexibility with the BSW program when you're at the very end with that field, but in order to go through these programs, you need to be able to make school your focus and your commitment so that whatever days that we tell you you need to be here, you can do that.

For the BSW program, you come to classes a maximum of three days per week until you hit that last semester when you have the internship, which is pretty much Monday through Thursday, and you're on campus on Fridays. With the MSW program, you come two days per week to campus 8:00 to 5:00, and then the other three days, 20 hours or 2 and 1/2 days out of those three days, you're at that field work. And so there's a lot of similarities in terms of structure that's really important to know up front because it really does require you to put this as your priority in order to get these degrees.

The part time program, and Teri mentioned that earlier, that has more flexibility but not so, because most of the people in there are working full time during the days. So it's flexible in the fact that it's nighttime, primarily, with those daytime that you fit in, or at least four of the hours that you fit in weekly for the field placement. But again, even our part-time program, students are taking pretty much three evenings a week, and they have to take those courses as we schedule them, those evenings in order to move into the next semester and so forth. So all of our programs are sequenced and that's just part of how these degrees are able to be made available to you. Anything else about the curriculum?

GRE.

GRE. We do not require a GRE for our MSW program. In the past, we did. And research has been done that shows that, at least for social work, there really isn't a correlation between how well you do in a GRE and how well you do in the master's program in social work. So we don't require a GRE but 3.0 is the minimum GPA. It doesn't automatically mean that you're admitted to the program. And our application is really holistic, and that's true for both the BSW and the MSW. We are looking for you to show that you've have some investment in helping people. So in your references, one has to be from a supervisor in some kind of a human services area. So if this is a field that you think you may want to go towards, start to get some volunteer work. Doesn't have to be a paid position where you have a supervisor, even a volunteer situation that you've done with some consistency where that supervisor's gotten to know you and can complete that recommendation for you. That works for us.

Another reference will come from a professor. And then with a third reference, it could be another professor or somebody where you've worked that isn't human service oriented. So we have those three references as part of the application for the MSW, a resume that you provide, and then there's two essays. We call one an essay, but it's really a personal statement. So we really want you to do some thinking if this is the right area for you, because it isn't for everybody. And that's why we're here and we're so happy to have the opportunity, because some of you may be still floundering and when you hear this, you go, that is a match. Like for both Teri and I, we recognized that was a match.

But for many of you, you know that there's something else out there, or it's not going to be this. And so we want people to have some definition within themselves that this is the right path. And so one of those essays is your personal statement to share that with us, so that we get to know you and we know that about you. And the other is a critical thinking essay and, as Teri mentioned, we know that being able to critically look at issues and

being able to back up why you would handle them a certain way, is an important mindset to have in our field.

And for all graduate schools at USF, we have the graduate application, which is separate from the School of Social Work application. And so both of them have to be completed. And for those of you who might be already juniors, already seniors, there are deadlines. And February 15th is the deadline to apply for fall of the same year. So we're already finished with the receiving of our applications for our fall admissions. So every year for that full time program, February 15th the application has to be in and ready with all of those materials to be admitted for fall.

I think that's-

We want to open it up, see if you have questions, yeah?

So, the social workers that work with the school and the children at home, do they closely work together, I guess?

Social workers in the school system and social workers, if they have a common family? So the question is, if you have a family who's being seen in the school and that same family may be in another system where they're providing help, is there some collaboration? Absolutely.

Yes.

Absolutely, that whole interdisciplinary, and even within the same discipline but in systems. That's another thing about the coolness of our cohort model is that when you graduate, you've met a lot of people who are then going to work with you in different agencies throughout your community and with the same families and be able to collaborate and work together.

Good question.

So you told us about the program and your stories, and stuff, but I'm still a little confused what a social worker is? So, are you guys some sort of therapist or psychologist, kind of, for families?

Well--

A social worker is all those things.

But with different degrees. I mean everybody has a different degree and a different focus. So as a social worker, we're going to work with people and our special population is going to be people who are vulnerable. So there are going to be people who may be vulnerable because of their age, or because of their stage of life, or because of the condition in their neighborhood, their in poverty, and we're going to help them to have a

better quality of life in whatever way we can through some kind of counseling type of thing, or linking to services. Does that help?

Yeah. So you talk about how these people are under served, and stuff, so are you guys talking about the government, or how are you guys--

It depends on where we work. If you work for an agency that's funded by the government you can, or a nonprofit, or private, I mean, you might want to speak--

And if you have a license, you're a third party payee and as Amy said, you can open your own practice and you can bill Medicare, Medicaid, or--

Blue Cross Blue Shield.

In fact, the majority of the people who come and interview with me say, in five years, I want to be in private practice. We know that the reality is that in three years our graduates are supervising someone. So they may be doing clinical practice and supervising other clinicians, or they may be in an agency. But typically they go into a leadership role pretty quickly. So in the matter of fact, most private therapists will tell you that the best way to a private practice is through the agency. So cut your teeth here and learn, and learn to be a good clinician, and then you'll be perfect for private practice.

And I think one of the hard parts about understanding what a social worker is, is because we're all over the place doing different things. And I think that's part of probably why it's hard to say, well, what is a social worker. Well we do so many different things that you can't just pin us down, you know. I wanted to add, because you asked me to and I forgot, that along with our MSW degree, we have one dual degree. So we have one degree that goes along, if you're interested in it, it's an MSW MPH degree. A Master's Degree in Social Work and a Master's Degree in Public Health. And so, what makes it a dual degree is that there are a few courses and a few parts of the curriculum that can substitute for each other, and so instead of going the two full years for the MSW and the two full years that it would take to get an MPH, it's maybe more around three years to get both of those degrees.

And there's two concentrations for the public health degree that are possible with our dual degree. One is in mental health and substance abuse, that's one concentration, and the other is in maternal and child health. And so that's another opportunity where we are the clinical degree and they are more of a macro administrative-oriented degree. But you can, if you have an interest in both and you think that you want to be able to be hired in different kinds of roles, that degree prepares you for the different aspects of both macro and micro practice. Other questions? Yeah.

Do you have any course prerequisites that you need to take before you apply for the master's degree?

Master's degree, we have what we call liberal arts perspective, and as USF students, you definitely have a liberal arts. The only thing that could be missing is if some of you have taken for your life sciences anthropological, biology, or something else, you need to have an actual straight human biology, such as AMP or Intro to Biology for Non-science majors, BFC 105, or human biology. Those are the only three at USF that count towards, really, the life sciences.

If you came from HCC or if you came from some of the other community colleges, you may have taken a human sexuality course, you may have taken a reproduction and inheritance course, you may have taken something else that will count. So that would be something that I could talk with you about. But other than that, you've got a the liberal arts perspective way over the top. Yes.

Is it competitive to get in the program?

Competitive, well I think we have to define what that means. I think pretty much, all graduate programs have some limitations in terms of how many numbers of people that they admit. Does everybody get admitted that applies? Definitely not. I would say that the last admissions cycle before the one for this fall, probably one out of every three applicants were admitted, and I was aware that we were told that it's more between one out of every two or three for this cycle, so it varies. And it's really about that composite of experience related to social work, as well as those strong grades and your writing skills and your references. All of that together are being looked at by the faculty. Other questions?

I'm sure you'll hang around for a few minutes--

We'd be happy to. We also brought some pamphlets about the MSW program and our cards, so you can always contact us at another point if you come up with something or want to talk more with us. And as the advisor, I advise for all perspective MSW students, as well as the BSW program. Thank you.