August 03, 2007
Bowling
Green, Ky. - Western Kentucky University is bringing its nationally-accredited Master of Social Work program to the Paducah area.
In response to a demonstrated need among students, social service agencies and other human service institutions in far western Kentucky, the WKU program is expanding to offer two MSW program options in Paducah. The first option is a three-year, part-time program designed for students with social work degrees acquired more than seven years ago or with degrees in areas other than social work. The second option is a two-year, part-time program for students who have completed a social work degree within the past seven years.
WKU’s MSW program began with a feasibility study in 2001 and blossomed into a fully-accredited Master of Social Work program in June 2006. The MSW program mission is “to educate and prepare students for professional social work practice to meet the needs of increasingly diverse rural populations,” said MSW Program Director Janice Chadha.
While the skills required for advanced social work practice are common across all geographical regions, it is the way that social workers use these skills that is different, she said. Practioners in rural areas must possess up-to-date knowledge on a wider range of individual and social problems and occupy a wider range of social work roles on a daily basis than their urban counterparts who typically have more specialized practices.
Committed to student-centered teaching and research, the WKU MSW program faculty strives to ensure the quality of the profession and address the workforce needs of agencies working with the region’s families and communities, while also being accessible to students who frequently have families and full-time jobs, Dr. Chadha said. Both the course scheduling structure and the option of approved worksite field placements are intended to make the challenge of completing an MSW degree at WKU more manageable, she added.
The first group of Paducah students will begin the three-year, part-time program this fall semester in classrooms at Four Rivers Behavioral Health in downtown Paducah. This first student group is made up of working professionals not only from Paducah and other western Kentucky communities, but from western Tennessee as well. It is envisioned that these programs will offer MSW education for the greater regional area including western Kentucky and Tennessee, southern Illinois, and southeast Missouri.
Applications are now being accepted for both the two- and three-year Paducah programs beginning in the fall of 2008. WKU plans to further expand the MSW program in 2009 by offering these same options in Owensboro.
For more information about the programs, contact Dr. Suzie Cashwell, MSW cohort studies coordinator, at (270) 799-8977 or suzie.cashwell@wku.edu. More information is also available at www.wku.edu/Dept/Academic/chhs/socialwork/msw.htm.
More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.
For more information, contact Suzie Cashwell, MSW Cohort Studies Coordinator, at (270)745-2929; Lori Nicholas, MSW Cohort Studies Field Liaison, at (270) 799-7705; or Eileen Arnold, MSW Admissions Coordinator, at (270)745-2676.
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