Class Descriptions

SW653

Skills and Strategy for Community Change (Urban Planning)

Grading Method:
Graded
Credits:
3 Credit Hours
Prerequisites:
Foundation Essentials Required
Pathway Requirement For:
Community Change (Host)
Description:
This course will engage students in learning core cross-cutting skills needed for engaging in community change. It will use a framework of “Scan” – “Plan” – “Do” – “Review” to help organize skills. Learning to infuse cross-cutting principles including critical Praxis. Scan: Assessment and Scanning Skills (individual to community) Illustrative skills may include: social identity assessments, individual skills assessments, story of self/personal motivational assessments, community power mapping, asset/strength assessments, organizational/community scans, and neighborhood mapping Plan: Planning Skills Illustrative skills may include: participatory community planning, strategy charts, implementation of planning steps, logic charts and theory of change Do: Action Skills Illustrative skills may include: one-on-ones (formal and informal), facilitating participatory meetings, coalition-building techniques and considerations, policy advocacy, program development, intergroup facilitation, and community mobilization Review: Community reflection and Evaluation Skills Illustrative skills may include: critical reflection, program/organizational evaluation, monitoring, campaign analysis, and participatory evaluation
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SW654

Advancing Community Change Project Workshop

Grading Method:
Graded
Credits:
3 Credit Hours
Prerequisites:
None
Pathway Elective For:
Community Change (Host)
Description:
This course will support community change students to promote and advance transdisciplinary projects aimed at change- in the school of social work, in field placements, on-campus, or in the community. The course will operate in a lab/workshop type format and use student-led projects to drive class content, discussion, and skills. Students will learn to employ community change models in their projects, as well as learn the process for innovating design-thinking approaches in the development of projects. The class will be highly participatory and focus on peer-learning, critical reflection, and peer consultation.
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SW655

Neighborhood Planning (Urban Planning)

Credits:
3 Credit Hours
Prerequisites:
None
Pathway Elective For:
Community Change (Host)
Description:
The course focuses on concepts and issues that characterize community planning for neighborhoods and explores interdisciplinary approaches to neighborhood analysis and intervention. The initiatives of community development corporations, city agencies, and the federal government are examined through lectures, readings, and guest speakers. The central questions the course examines are: Why do neighborhoods experience prosperity and decline? Which approaches (e.g. economic development, urban design, social service delivery, housing rehabilitation, community organizing and empowerment) are likely to be most effective in revitalizing neighborhoods? How do we assess existing approaches to neighborhood revitalization? Emphasis is placed on discovering appropriate information sources, learning to ask relevant planning questions, and formulating program alternatives and recommendations.
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SW656

Youth Empowerment and Organizing

Grading Method:
Graded
Credits:
3 Credit Hours
Prerequisites:
None
Pathway Elective For:
Community Change (Host), Children, Youth, and Families
Description:
This course examines strategies for engaging and empowering young people, with emphasis on approaches in racially segregated and economically disinvested areas. It considers core concepts of youth empowerment at the individual, organizational, and community levels; models and methods of practice; age-appropriate and culturally-responsive approaches; roles of young people and adult allies; and perspectives on practice in a diverse democracy. The course will draw upon best practices from grassroots organizing, civic engagement, youth development, and child welfare.
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SW657

Multicultural, Multilingual and Global Organizing

Grading Method:
Graded
Credits:
3 Credit Hours
Prerequisites:
None
Pathway Elective For:
Community Change (Host), Global Social Work Practice
Description:
This course will examine organizing in multicultural, multilingual and global contexts. The course will examine the process of promoting intergroup relations and social development and the skills needed to facilitate change across settings. In particular, students will explore the roles of power, privilege, oppression, and social identities in organizing for change in diverse communities and coalitions, and across cultural and global contexts. Students will also examine contemporary and historic efforts to engage in multicultural, multilingual coalitions and multi-national and global change efforts, including climate justice and racial justice.
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SW658

Feminist and Critical Intersectionality Approaches to Community Change

Grading Method:
Graded
Credits:
3 Credit Hours
Prerequisites:
None
Pathway Elective For:
Community Change (Host)
Description:
This course will examine feminist and critical intersectionality theories as an approach and framework for community change. It will emphasize understanding the role of power embedded in structures, how power manifests in privilege and oppression and in social patterns of inequality. Students will engage in learning frameworks identifying and analyzing injustice through a feminist and critical intersectional lens as well as developing skills to utilizing these frameworks in community change practice. Students will also use this lens to explore examples of feminist and critical intersectional change efforts in the US and globally.
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SW659

Prevention and Intervention Strategies with Racial Microaggressions

Grading Method:
S/U
Credits:
1 Credit Hour
Prerequisites:
None
Pathway Elective For:
Interpersonal Practice in Integrated Health, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse (Host)
Description:
This course explores racial microaggressions among African Americans. Racial microaggressions, their impacts on clients, and strategies for prevention and intervention will be examined. The course focuses on conceptualizing the construct and identifying examples of microaggressions that may occur in the lives of clients and practitioners. Although microaggressions can be directed toward gender, religion, sexual orientation, and other marginalized identities, this course focuses on the experience of racial microaggressions among African Americans. You will learn strategies and techniques to recognize when microaggressions occur and various approaches for intervening on an interpersonal and macro level. Attention will be given to the cultural context in how racial microaggressions are experienced and dilemmas about how to respond. The effect of power differentials on the interpretation of racial microaggressions will be examined. Using an African-centered perspective, the course will be knowledge-, skills-, and values-based. You will practice alternative methods of intervening when in the presence of racial microaggressions.
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SW660

Project and Program Design and Implementation

Grading Method:
Graded
Credits:
3 Credit Hours
Prerequisites:
None
Pathway Elective For:
Community Change, Global Social Work Practice, Management & Leadership (Host), Policy & Political Social Work, Program Evaluation and Applied Research
Description:
Traditional project management tools enable social workers to conceive, plan, design, implement, manage, assess, and change projects effectively. Whereas projects are time-bound and discrete, programs are an ongoing collection of projects that can be managed together. Managing programs and projects in an inclusive and socially just manner necessarily requires engaging all people involved or affected by a project in meaningful and deliberate ways. Students will weave technical—and technological—tools together with inclusive structures in order to include and engage all stakeholders in the success of projects and programs. Technical skills developed in this course involve selecting and implementing tools to strategically design and manage projects in rapidly changing environments, as well as maximizing inclusion and equity with diverse populations. Management is a set of well-known processes, like planning, budgeting, structuring jobs, staffing jobs, measuring performance and problem-solving. This course will concentrate on single service projects as planned systems of action that engage the perspectives of clients, program and project staff, directors and managers, as well as the full organization. This course will prepare students to assist in tasks common to all phases of project development and assume independent responsibility for performing some of these tasks (e.g., documenting program plans, developing initial budgets, program process analysis, and scheduling change). Specific attention will be given to issues in program design and development and the differential impacts on social identity groups that traditionally have been marginalized.
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SW661

Budgeting and Fiscal Management

Grading Method:
Graded
Credits:
3 Credit Hours
Prerequisites:
None
Pathway Elective For:
Management & Leadership (Host), Policy & Political Social Work, Program Evaluation and Applied Research
Description:
This course will present the fundamental knowledge and skills needed to develop and manage the budget and finances of a social impact organization and its programs. Students will learn to use the techniques necessary to: 1) Plan, develop, display, revise, monitor, and evaluate a program budget using different kinds of budget formats; 2) Evaluate past financial performance; 3) Evaluate and propose financial changes for the future; 4) Monitor and evaluate the cost-efficiency and cost-effectiveness of social impact programs and organizations. The course will include exercises to develop and manage a budget for a program in an organization, along with a review of relevant policies and procedures in these organizations. Students will learn to understand cost analysis, and calculate income and expense estimates. The pros and cons of using various types of budgets will be compared. Students will receive an introduction to the process of overall organizational financial planning and auditing, including such topics as the role of boards of directors and consultants in financial management, planning, and evaluation. Calculation of indirect (overhead) costs, allocation methods, and issues of continuation funding will be discussed. Students will learn to develop an annual budget. Development of a budget will include estimating and allocating all costs, including that of personnel, which is the major expense in human service programs. Students will learn how basic financial transactions are reported through standard accounting procedures, how revenues and expenses are monitored and how all the finances of the agency are consolidated into typical financial statements. Additional topics are introduced to highlight contemporary issues affecting financial stability and sustainability.
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SW662

Frameworks for Understanding Social Impact Organizations

Grading Method:
Graded
Credits:
3 Credit Hours
Prerequisites:
Foundation Essentials required
Pathway Requirement For:
Management & Leadership (Host)
Pathway Elective For:
Community Change, Global Social Work Practice, Policy & Political Social Work, Program Evaluation and Applied Research, Social Work Practice with Older Adults and Families from a Lifespan Perspective, Children, Youth, and Families
Description:
This course will provide an overview of traditional and contemporary organizational theories and strategic frameworks relevant to understanding social impact organizations. A wide range of topics will be covered including but not limited to: organizational survival and adaptation to environmental changes, power asymmetry/dynamics between service providers and clients, staff and client diversity and inclusion, and informal strategies that providers develop to legitimize their practices while satisfying multiple stakeholders’ expectations. Using multiple theories and perspectives, students will develop a conceptual framework for recognizing how various environmental-, organizational-, and individual-level attributes shape social impact organizational behaviors and service provider’s practices. The framework will help students to reflect on organizational experiences and critically analyze institutionalized assumptions and beliefs that reside within social impact organizations. Using the conceptual basis acquired from this course, students will be asked to analyze a social impact organization and recommend strategies to improve organizational functioning.
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