Complete U-M SSW Class Descriptions

This course will examine concepts and techniques for organizing women at the community level. Students will learn about major models and methods of practice, intersectional and analytical skills, and roles of women as organizers and constituents of community organizations. Students will identify forces that facilitate and limit organizing of women in the community and will develop action principles for work with women in the community. Critical value and ethical issues for women and men concerned with women's issues and organizing will be explored, in addition to ways to develop alternative approaches to address these issues.

Students will be expected to have mastered basic skills in a computerized spreadsheet program (MS Excel) before enrolling in this course.

The underlying theme of this course will be how to increase the rationality of the choice process when applied to complex and rapidly changing human service systems. In short, scientific analysis opposed to political analysis or advocacy is emphasized.

See specific Practice Method for a more detailed description

The seminar also serves as a setting for the exploration of general societal concerns from the perspective of Jewish communal interests and traditional values, and for bringing the perspectives and skills that are a part of Social Work study and practice to addressing Jewish communal concerns.

The seminar serves as the intellectual home for the Jewish Communal Leadership Program, providing the forum in which students will grapple with understanding the Jewish community within its broader societal context. It provides a space for students to engage with issues of pluralism ? addressing the place of Jewish community in a diverse society and the challenges of diversity within the Jewish community. The seminar will also provide a setting for students to apply their Judaic training and their practical skills in evaluation, data analysis, and social relationships to developing analytical approaches to current problems that will be presented by communal agencies for the consideration of JCLP students.

Within the seminar, Jewish Communal Leadership students are given opportunities to meet with local, national, and international professional and lay community leaders, to explore the relationship of personal and professional identities, to engage with historic and current approaches to Jewish community challenges, to work collaboratively on soliciting and addressing communal problems gathered from the field, to participate in generating public programming related to Jewish communal issues, to consult with SSW faculty about the application of Social Work approaches to Jewish communal problems, and to gather peer feedback and establish relationships with each other.
The seminar also serves as a setting for considering general societal concerns from the perspective of Jewish communal interests and values, and for bringing the perspectives and skills that are a part of Social Work study and practice to Jewish communal concerns.
Social Work 695 is intended for second- year Jewish Communal Leadership Program students. It provides them with a space to interact with first-year JCLP students and to focus on group projects in response to the needs of relevant Jewish agencies.

This course will use a case-study approach. It will use ethical frameworks from social work, medicine, public health, nursing, psychology and others health-related fields for decision-making, both generally and as applied to specific dilemmas. The course will also include discussion of conflicts between professional ethics codes and federal, state and local laws, regulations and codes (e.g. penal, mental health).

This course will focus on experiential and adventure practice (theories, models, tools and techniques) that social workers may use in their work with individuals, groups, families, organizations and communities. Some particular focus will be given to their use in social work with groups. Students will be introduced to adventure through readings, discussions, guest speakers and experiences. This course is designed to provide the student with a theoretical, philosophical and experiential understanding of adventure and experiential learning and its application to Social Work Practice. Theoretical models of practice arising out of the adventure and experiential fields will be offered and discussed in tandem with current social work theories and models of practice. Evidence-based literature will be reviewed to promote experiential interventions that build on strengths and resources of individuals and their families, and that integrate components of evidence based practice into the experiential methodologies.

Socially just and culturally-competent policies and practice will be highlighted. This course will address how adventure/experiential practice must attend to the key diversity dimensions (including ability, age, class, color, culture, ethnicity, family structure, gender (including gender identity and gender expression), marital status, national origin, race, religion or spirituality, sex, and sexual orientation) as it relates to individuals and their families.

Particular social service sectors will be chosen to illustrate in-depth the relevance of cross national analysis to solving the problems present in these sectors. Students will become knowledgeable about and able to use at least one model of cross-national comparative analysis and apply this to the circumstances of either one country or one area of the world. Students will also become familiar, within a comparative perspective, with the research approaches that have been or may be utilized to further our understanding of the sector.

This course is limited to students who: Have completed a global field placement or a global special studies; those returning from their assignment in the Peace Corps Masters International program; or those completing the Certificate in Global Social Work.