| Credits: | 3 |
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| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | Special Studies abroad |
| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice (Host) |
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| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Permission of Instructor |
| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice (Host) |
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| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Foundation Essentials Required |
| Course Description: | This course focuses on a holistic approach in promoting the development and deepening of assessment and screening skills and competencies. Conducting brief, evidence-based and evidence-informed assessments and screenings for common health, mental health, substance use and other behavioral health concerns which impact and/or compromise health and well-being will be the focus of this course. Holistic approaches which are developmentally appropriate across the life span and relevant in a variety of settings will be applied. Grounding of the assessment process in person in environment perspective (PIE), strengths-based approaches, the nature of the client/family and social support systems, cultural, spiritual and religious beliefs and other socio-economic resources that impact health and client well-being will be included. Examples of screenings and assessments addressed in this course include a focus on mental health problems; adjustment to illness; risky, harmful or dependent use of a variety of substances (e.g. alcohol, illicit drugs, prescription medications, etc.); cognitive impairment; harm to self or others; abuse, neglect, and domestic violence; and behaviors that compromise health among others. |
| Pathway Requirement For: | Interpersonal Practice in Integrated Health, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse (Host) |
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| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Social Work Practice with Older Adults and Families from a Lifespan Perspective |
| Credits: | 3 |
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| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | This course will apply African-centered values and principles in historical and contemporary context to the implementation of traditional methods in practice with African American individuals, families and communities. The course is bounded by a strengths and resilience framework in which students will 1) obtain an overview of the African worldview and the history, culture, and contributions to world civilization of African-descended people; 2) become familiar with literature that exemplifies the integration of the Afrocentric perspective in practice with African American families; and 3) utilize the case study method to apply knowledge gained. The course will be offered in a seminar format in which students have an active role in structuring their own learning, building on content delivered by guest lecturers and utilizing relevant reading materials, experiential activities and electronic media. |
| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Interpersonal Practice in Integrated Health, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse (Host) |
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| Credits: | 3 |
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| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | This course provides a framework of knowledge, values, skills, and experiences for culturally competent, ethical, and spiritually-sensitive social work practice. This course is focused on providing specialized understanding of spiritual diversity in social work practice along with application of that understanding to people of diverse religious and nonreligious spiritual perspectives and traditions and its relevance to practice, policy and research. This course will promote exploration of values, knowledge and skills to ethically and effectively provide services to clients that take into account diverse expressions of spirituality. The roles of religion and spirituality in supporting or impeding individual strengths and social justice will be considered. The relationship between spirituality concepts pertaining to gender, ethnicity, culture, race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, religious and spiritual beliefs, ability, social class, and age as well as spirituality across the life cycle will be addressed. |
| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Interpersonal Practice in Integrated Health, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse (Host), Social Work Practice with Older Adults and Families from a Lifespan Perspective |
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| Credits: | 3 |
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| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | This course will address the theoretical framework of human loss and grief from a culturally and philosophically diverse perspective. Students will be provided with information about why and how humans grieve and how grieving is affected by type of loss, socioeconomic and cultural factors, individual personality and family functioning. Attention will be focused on life span development and the meaning of death and loss at different ages. Various types of loss will be discussed from an individual, family, and socio/cultural/ecological perspective. The importance of understanding trauma and its relationship to grief and loss will also be addressed. Coping and resiliency in loss will be explored, emphasizing the diversity of human response and focusing on the significance of social groups in integrating loss. The formation and practice of rituals, and diversity in religious and spiritual experience as a component of coping with loss will be discussed. |
| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Interpersonal Practice in Integrated Health, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse (Host), Social Work Practice with Older Adults and Families from a Lifespan Perspective, Welfare of Children & Families |
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| Credits: | 3 |
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| Prerequisites: | Foundation Essentials Required |
| Course Description: | This course will provide a macro lens to assess and engage with various social services, policies, and programs that provide developmental, preventive, protective, and rehabilitative services for children, youth, and families. Students will be introduced to major policies and macro-level issues within the education, child welfare, and juvenile justice systems. The racial and economic achievement and discipline gaps will be explored within the context of schools. Students will examine historical child welfare policy development, explore strengths, limitations, and outcomes, paying particular attention to systemic gaps in service delivery, the over-representation of children of color, the differential response of family serving systems based upon social identify differences, the structural exclusion of the voice of marginalized communities, and deficits of cultural and linguistic competence. The course will develop socially just and culturally-competent policies and practices by delving into the competing tensions of child-protection/family-preservation and quality/quantity of services, and analyze evidence-based change interventions that build on strengths and resources of children and their families at all levels of intervention while considering the diversity of families including race, ethnicity, culture, class, sexual orientation, gender expression, religion, ability and other social identities. Students will learn about disproportionate minority contact and the impact of incarceration on youth as well as interconnections between the three systems. This course will also examine efforts to engage communities in the policy and service delivery process through a variety of mechanisms including community partnerships, coalitions, and systems of care. Students will be sensitized to the roles of power and privilege of professionals, and gain insights about how similarities and differences between themselves and client communities affect mezzo and macro policy development and implementation for children, youth, and families. |
| Pathway Requirement For: | Welfare of Children & Families (Host) |
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| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Interpersonal Practice in Integrated Health, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse, Policy & Political Social Work |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Foundation Essentials required |
| Course Description: | This course will introduce students to a set of analytic tools and skills for critical policy thinking, reading, and writing. Analytic tools introduced in this class include frameworks for policy analysis and using feminist, intersectional, and critical race lenses for policy analysis. The impact of race, gender, and class on policy development and enactment are emphasized throughout the course as well as an exploration of global approaches to policy analysis. This course will enhance critical writing skills and teach concise and persuasive writing methods, issue framing, and legislative literacy for effective policy writing. Students will learn qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods frequently used for policy analysis. Students will also be introduced to policy document writing, including policy briefs, memos, factsheets, op-eds, and public comments. Finally, students will learn how to locate, read, and translate policy for community consumption. |
| Pathway Requirement For: | Policy & Political Social Work (Host) |
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| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Management & Leadership, Program Evaluation and Applied Research |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Foundation Essentials Required |
| Course 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 |
| Pathway Requirement For: | Community Change (Host) |
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| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course 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. |
| Pathway Elective For: | Community Change (Host), Global Social Work Practice, Welfare of Children & Families |
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| Credits: | 3 |
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| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course 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. |
| Pathway Elective For: | Community Change (Host), Global Social Work Practice |
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| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course 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 tasks 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. |
| Pathway Elective For: | Community Change, Global Social Work Practice, Management & Leadership (Host), Policy & Political Social Work, Program Evaluation and Applied Research |
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| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course 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 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. |
| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Management & Leadership (Host), Policy & Political Social Work, Program Evaluation and Applied Research |
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| Credits: | 3 |
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| Prerequisites: | Foundation Essentials required |
| Course 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. |
| Pathway Requirement For: | Management & Leadership (Host) |
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| 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, Welfare of Children & Families |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | Social impact organizations secure resources through a variety of methods, including fees, grants, contracts, financial gifts, in-kind (non-cash) contributions, and investments. This course involves assessing an agency’s resource mix and developing tactics and strategies to sustain or expand its revenue streams. Students will explore the range of possible income sources that organizations can allocate to advance social justice by expanding and improving services, empowering groups, reaching populations in need, improving social conditions or anticipating and responding to new challenges. The implications of using alternative approaches of income generation and of changing the income mix will be analyzed in terms of mission accomplishment, program viability, adherence to ethics and values, and organizational sustainability. Skill development will be emphasized in areas such as grant seeking, proposal writing, donor development, direct solicitation of gifts, service contracting, and strategically communicating mission. Students will learn how to identify prospective funding sources, build relationships with potential donors, funders and collaborators, write, package and submit grant proposals, and communicate strategically. This course will also address emerging and changing trends in philanthropy. |
| Pathway Elective For: | Community Change, Global Social Work Practice, Management & Leadership (Host), Policy & Political Social Work, Program Evaluation and Applied Research |
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| Credits: | 3 |
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| Prerequisites: | Foundation Essentials Required |
| Course Description: | This course is designed as an introduction to the process of qualitative inquiry with a particular focus on the challenges of engaging in anti-oppressive, socially just, culturally sensitive, and decolonizing research activities. It will introduce students to the philosophical underpinnings of qualitative inquiry as well as expose them to basic issues in designing and implementing qualitative research projects. Students enrolled in the Evaluation and Research Pathway must select from one of two required foundational courses before completing their specialized electives in methodologies and methods. This course will meet that foundational requirement. |
| Pathway Requirement For: | Program Evaluation and Applied Research (Host) |
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| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Policy & Political Social Work |
| Credits: | 3 |
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| Prerequisites: | Foundation Essentials Required |
| Course Description: | This course is designed to advance the foundational ideas of quantitative research in social work and the social sciences, with a particular focus on applied quantitative research dedicated to the study of social problems and the development of social interventions at the macro, meso and micro levels. The course will deepen students’ understanding of such issues as sample selection, measurement, and questionnaire design, research design, and basic analytic approaches. Students enrolled in the Evaluation and Research Pathway must select from one of two required foundational courses before completing their specialized electives in methodologies and methods. This course will meet that foundational requirement. |
| Pathway Requirement For: | Program Evaluation and Applied Research (Host) |
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| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Policy & Political Social Work |
| Credits: | 3 |
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| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | In an era of evidence based practice, community workers, advocates, and evaluators will likely find that they need to interpret and visualize data from a wide variety of sources. Understanding, interpreting and visualizing data (including some basic coding) can make the difference in successfully or unsuccessfully advocating for communities, clients or programs, and for understanding the impact of programs on clients. Increasingly, data relevant to community, participant and client well-being are available from a broad range of sources, whether those be databases of volunteers and donors, the Census, the World Bank, in addition to many others. This course will be focused on the acquisition of concrete applicable skills and strategies for interpreting and visualizing community data, including learning in R, Tableau and QGIS. Some learning of basic coding in R will be involved in this course. |
| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Management & Leadership, Policy & Political Social Work, Program Evaluation and Applied Research (Host) |
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| Credits: | 3 |
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| Prerequisites: | Foundation Essentials Required |
| Course Description: | Social problems affecting individuals, families, groups, communities, and nations are globally interconnected. This course is designed to introduce students to an understanding of power in the global context and to help students develop a critical and reflexive understanding of how such power informs social work practice, utilizing decolonizing and social justice-oriented perspectives (e.g., feminist, participatory, liberatory/emancipatory). Students will gain an analytic de-centering framework for critical understanding and assessment of pressing social problems (e.g., human trafficking, climate change, and environmental disasters) and models of social interventions across global contexts. Students will learn to develop research- and policy-related questions and procedures that may address these pressing social problems. In exploring these themes, we will review underpinning theories and practice in global social work, such as: colonization, international aid and development, and democratization. |
| Pathway Requirement For: | Global Social Work Practice (Host) |
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| Pathway Elective For: | Community Change |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Foundation Essentials Required |
| Course Description: | This course is designed to prepare social work students for effective and ethical professional practice in global social work contexts. This course works from a framework that acknowledges that global issues and practice are not bound by physical borders. Global contexts within the USA and abroad will be explored. These contexts will be within and across different cultural, geopolitical, socio-economic, organizational, and interpersonal settings. Ongoing development of critical consciousness is the core of this course. Throughout the course, students will critically and reflexively examine the impact of their positionalities, privilege, values, assumptions, prejudice, and biases. Specific attention will be placed on analyzing types, levels, and sources of power and mechanisms of oppression to assist students in addressing global inequalities. They will use such expanding/increasing critical understanding and insights to more effectively work including advocacy and developing allyship in diverse global contexts. |
| Pathway Requirement For: | Global Social Work Practice (Host) |
|---|---|
| Pathway Elective For: | Community Change |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | This course focuses on immigration - one of the most volatile and hotly debated issues of our time. How we respond to the myriad questions about immigration and immigrants and the problems generated by public policy responses to various kinds of immigration will determine how our society and economy will look and function in the future. Students will gain historical, structural and critical analyses of theories and debates related to immigration and forced migration, such as: political economy perspectives about the supply and demand of migrant labor; identity, culture and intersectionality based on Critical Latinx Theory; the challenges of ‘integration’; and tensions between citizenship rights activism versus No Borders activism. Students will understand policies and systems that both facilitate and delimit social work practice with immigrants and refugees, including the family, child welfare, refugee resettlement, asylum, health and mental health, community and legal systems. This course imparts and aspires for social work practice with immigrants and refugees that is forward-looking, transformative and just. |
| Pathway Elective For: | Community Change, Global Social Work Practice (Host), Policy & Political Social Work |
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| Credits: | 3 |
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| Prerequisites: | Foundation Essentials Required |
| Course Description: | This methods course focuses on intervention with older people at the micro level. This content will be integrated with intervention strategies directed toward aging adults, including evidence-based interventions and practices. Major areas to be discussed are: coping with age related changes, caregiving demands, legal and financial planning, elder abuse, sexuality and intimacy, and loss and grief. This course will also address the diverse dimensions including: ability, age, class, color, culture, ethnicity, family structure, gender, marital status, national origin, race, religion or spirituality, and sexual orientation. The IP intervention will focus on intake, screening, initial evaluation, treatment and termination issues involved in working with older clients and their families. Such skills as reaching out, engaging reluctant or impaired elders, and successful termination of intervention will be covered. Various psychiatric disorders more typically diagnosed among the elderly will be discussed and intervention strategies identified. |
| Pathway Requirement For: | Social Work Practice with Older Adults and Families from a Lifespan Perspective (Host) |
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| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Interpersonal Practice in Integrated Health, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | The course will explore the influence of religion and spirituality on mental health. Topics covered will include research on spirituality and religion and their interface, as well as the demographic correlates (e.g., age, gender, race) of religious participation. With regards to mental health, the course will examine several issues including: 1) religion and its relation to psychological well being, depression, and anxiety disorders such as OCD, 2) religious coping strategies, 3) the use of clergy for mental health problems, and 4) religion and substance abuse.The use of religion and religious frameworks in interpersonal practice including palliative care will also be examined. |
| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Interpersonal Practice in Integrated Health, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse (Host), Social Work Practice with Older Adults and Families from a Lifespan Perspective |
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| Credits: | 1 |
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| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | Latinx constitute the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. The United States Latinx population is immensely diverse, with members originating from over twenty countries. Latinx sub-populations tend to reside in different areas of the United States, have different cultural practices/norms, immigration experiences, and varying levels of economic attainment. These sources of internal variation are important, as they have implications for many social outcomes and social work practice with Latinx families. This mini course focuses on the theoretical, empirical and practice literature on Latinx families in the United States. The mini course will allow for students to become familiar with demographic trends, health disparities, acculturation and acculturative stress, and the current debates surrounding the immigrant health paradox. Additionally, this mini course will cover key methodological approaches aimed at engaging Latinx families in mental health and health care services, as well as barriers and facilitators to mental health and health care utilization. Furthermore, the course focuses on the clinical aspects of working with Latinx families, including but not limited to, culturally congruent assessment, and prevention and treatment models. Students in this course will acquire a general understanding of (1) the demographic, social and political background of Latinx families in the United States, (2) key theoretical frameworks to consider (e.g., acculturative stress) when working with Latinx families, (3) culturally congruent assessment, prevention and treatment approaches for health and well-being, and (3) acquire a general understanding of clinical aspects when working with Latinx families in the United States. |
| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Interpersonal Practice in Integrated Health, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse (Host) |
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| Credits: | 3 |
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| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | This course will examine the correlates and consequences of child maltreatment, as well as the social, environmental, and cultural buffers and mitigating factors that lessen risk and promote protection/ resilience in maltreated children and adolescents. Students will learn about the public health model of child abuse prevention and examine a range of strategies that extend from this model. Throughout the course, students will critically review programs and practices in primary and secondary prevention and consider how they align with core values of the social work profession. Students will also consider how social workers can become more integrally involved in advancing local, national, and international efforts to promote the well-being of maltreated children across the lifecourse. |
| Pathway Elective For: | Global Social Work Practice, Welfare of Children & Families (Host) |
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University of Michigan
School of Social Work
1080 South University Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106