Social Problems and Social Work Today

SW400, Section 001

This course is considered an advanced, undergraduate elective which is designed to familiarize students with the profession of social work and also to recruit undergraduate students into the school's MSW program. The particular social problems selected for discussion will change from year to year depending on faculty and student interest and the contemporary context. The opening sessions of the course will briefly overview the social context for the kinds of roles, interventions, and fields of service that the profession generally operates from, before exploring in depth the professions response to each selected social problem. Important professional themes like: multicultural sensitivity to various diversity dimensions such as 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; empowerment; prevention; and value based intervention will also be reviewed in this course. Note: this course is distinguished from a more traditional course on social problems since it focuses specifically on a limited number of selected social problems and probes social work's professional involvement in preventing and assuaging each problem.

Course Codes