Report of External Review of the School of Social Work, Georgia State University

Report of External Review of the School of Social Work, Georgia State University

January 30, 2006

The External Review Team conducted its review on January 17-18, 2006. In carrying out the review, the team met with the University Provost, Associate Provost for Academic Programs, Associate Provost for Institutional Effectiveness, and the Dean of the College of Health and Human Sciences. We also talked extensively with the School’s Director, program directors, heads of department-affiliated centers, SSW faculty, BSW and MSW students, alumni, and members of the School’s Community Advisory Council.

Strengths and Weaknesses/Issues

1) Quality of instruction, research, and service associated with the program:

Instruction:

Surveys of MSW and BSW students indicate a number of strengths in the instructional program at the School of Social Work. Over 40% of BSW students strongly agreed that their program of study was academically challenging, a rate just slightly lower than that reported by university undergraduate students as a whole. Fifty-two percent strongly agreed that faculty were appropriately prepared for their courses, compared to 40% of all university students.

Thirty-five percent strongly agreed that faculty teaching methods were effective, compared to 25 percent of all university students.

Among MSW students, only 23% found the program academically challenging, compared to an overall university percentage of 38. Over a third strongly agreed that faculty were appropriately prepared for courses, compared to 40 % of all university students. Over 90% felt the effectiveness of faculty teaching methods ranked 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale, compared to 76% of students as a whole. In evaluating these findings, one should note the small number of MSW students (36) completing the survey.

During our meetings with students, both BSW and MSW students made many positive comments about faculty and the quality of instruction. BSW students talked about how much they had learned in the program, which they were particularly aware of once they began their field internships. They commented about the breadth of faculty’s own social work experiences and their willingness to share these experiences with students. They agreed that what they learned was “usable in the community.” All felt that the faculty cared about students, were accessible to them, and had a “passion” for social work.

MSW students echoed many of these assessments of the School’s faculty. The students we met with saw their professors as accessible, but also focused on “helping you grow by yourself.” Most found the courses intellectually challenging, and noted the faculty’s emphasis on critical thinking. One commented on the “phenomenal quality of instruction.” Students enjoy the small class sizes and the “non-competitive” atmosphere. It appeared that classroom discussions about race, ethnicity, and gay/lesbian issues occurred frequently and that there was a stress on openness and revealing one’s own biases. Several noted the usefulness of the research courses. (Five of the 17 MSW students we spoke with were interested in going on for a Ph.D.).

Representatives of the School’s graduates echoed these assessments of instruction. They appreciated the faculty’s community and organization focus. One alumnus noted “I can pick up clinical experience, but the community and organization focus was very important.” As graduates, they found the class group projects useful preparation for their subsequent work, noting particularly the public presentation assignment in the community projects they completed.

Such projects could even lead to a job after graduation.

A general point about the School’s relationship to its student body, both BSW and MSW, is the School’s ability to attract and accommodate strong and sophisticated students with varied backgrounds. The MSW students we talked with came from undergraduate majors and/or degrees in English, Earth Sciences, Business Administration, Engineering, Law, Art, Anthropology, and Psychology. These students are interested in working with communities; taking part in planning activities; and providing services to the homeless, children and families in the child welfare system, those with mental illness, and a wide variety of other groups.

Students and alumni found few weaknesses in the area of instruction. However, some of the BSW students noted difficulties in field work. These included agencies which didn’t “conduct thorough assessments of clients,” the feeling (voiced by one student) that she “knew more than the agency people,” and a situation in which the faculty liaison only made one visit to the agency. Several BSW students said it was “hard to change placements.” [this is not an uncommon issue in Schools of Social Work, however]. Several MSW students talked about the lack of flexibility in terms of timing of classes. One noted that the Downtown campus “can be overwhelming.” Parking is spread out and it takes time to get from class to class, since the social work courses are offered in different buildings. Class room space was not always adequate. However, students also talked about the advantage of being integrated into a larger city and community. One called this “an enormous asset.”

Alumni noted that it would have been helpful if classes had been offered at night. They would have liked more flexibility in terms of electives. They also felt that while some courses were challenging, others could have been more so. They would have liked to have been exposed to more content on diversity. All the alumni we talked with agreed that the program could have been “more radical” in terms of social activism. Examples included an exchange program with Africa or Mexico and an “anti-oppression class.” Some of the alumni said they had been able to have social action opportunities, such as working with the Atlanta Living Wage project.

Research:

The School’s Self Study Report notes that all tenured and tenure track faculty are engaged in scholarship and have active research agendas. Faculty have published in important social work and related journals, including Families in Society, Research on Social Work Practice, the Journal of Community Practice, the Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Child Welfare, Health and Social Work , the Journal of Social Work Education, and in specialized journals such as the Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Family Relations, the Journal of Allied Professions, the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, the Cornell Law Review, and Social Development Issues.

However, the School’s record on publications in peer-reviewed journals is uneven. Many of these publications are in the smaller, specialized journals; more balance of journal outlets (i.e. increased publication rates in the major journals) would be good for the School’s impact on the profession. In addition, the general rate of yearly publications is low for many of the faculty. Of the 11 full-time tenured or tenure-eligible faculty, only one faculty member has regularly published one or more refereed journal articles a year from 2001-2005. A more typical pattern is a spurt of publications in the several years before going up for tenure, and following the granting of tenure, small numbers of publications in some years and no publications in others. This may seem like “bean-counting,” but peer assessments of a School of Social Work’s scholarly publications record generally depends on the regular and visible output of their faculty. The fact that the School uses the University’s choice of peers for their own comparisons complicates the matter further; the School’s publishing rate might look more reasonable if compared to that of similar Schools of Social Work.

This is not to say that faculty do not have active research agendas. Most of the School’s faculty, as well as the Director, have been very successful in obtaining external grants and contracts for research and service. This is one of the school’s strongest achievements. During the review period, the faculty received about $3 million in external money. This is a very impressive amount for a relatively small faculty, all of whom also have teaching obligations. Half of these resources were for training, service, and program assessment and development in the important areas of child welfare, substance abuse, gerontology, and utilization of the Earned Income Tax Credit. As the School’s Self Study notes, the average amount of external funding secured by tenure/tenure track faculty during the review period was approximately $90,000. In 2005, four faculty members brought in $100,000 or more in external funds (with a range of $100,000 to $655,000).

Service:

The School of Social Work faculty members’ service is closely tied to their research (including grants and contracts) and their teaching. This service includes memberships in School, College, and University committees in the areas of curriculum, women’s and minority issues, university and faculty governance, student services, library services, admissions, strategic planning, student and faculty appeals, and budget issues.

The School is notable in its faculty and administrators’ involvement in service to the community.

As already noted, the school’s research agenda includes active work with community agencies. For example, the School recently received a $1.5 million grant to partner with other social work educational programs and organizations across the state to provide professional development opportunities to experienced workers in the state Division of Family and Children Services. Faculty currently hold or have held leadership positions in community and professional organizations such as the National Center on Human Rights Education, Atlanta; the United Way; the Georgia Chapter of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children; the Georgia Department of Human Resources Child Welfare Advisory Committee; the Barton Child Law and Policy Clinic (Emory University School of Law); the Korean American Scholarship Foundation, Southeast Region; the Statewide Probate Court Visitor Program Planning Committee; Georgia’s Welfare Reform Advisory Council; the Governor’s Council on Maternal and Infant Health; and the Multi-County Public Defenders Office.

Faculty and administrators are also active in service to the profession. They belong to a wide range of state and national professional organizations, including the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and its state chapter, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), the Society for Psychologists in Substance Abuse, and the Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals.

A difficulty related to faculty service is that a small faculty that is committed to small classes, excellence in teaching, maintenance of scholarly research, and development of externally-funded research and human services programs does not have enough hours in the day to do it all!

School Administration:

We would like to include this as an additional category in the list of the School’s strengths. The School has enjoyed excellent leadership under the directorship of Dr. Jim Wolk. Dr. Wolk has exhibited significant skill in motivating faculty; building trust across disciplines and within the community; using the talents of faculty, staff, and students; and engendering enthusiasm, a sense of community, and a real commitment to the ideas, especially regarding community outreach and partnerships, that this School of Social Work represents.

2) Centrality of the Programs to the University: Alignment with and contributions to achieving the mission and goals of Georgia State University

We agree with the faculty of the School of Social Work’s assessment that their degree programs are consistent with the mission and goals of Georgia State University. The School demonstrates a particularly good fit with the University’s mission of being engaged with the larger community. The School of Social Work is an excellent example of a program actively connected with the City of Atlanta’s health, mental health, substance abuse, child welfare, and other human service agencies and organizations at the private and public levels. The numerous service activities

undertaken by students and faculty help sustain university/community linkages. The School’s community forums help bring visibility to the university.

Georgia State University strives to provide access to quality education for diverse groups of students. This is a major thrust of the School of Social Work as well, and it has led to a student body diverse in race, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, income level, and educational background. The University also stresses disciplinary and interdisciplinary programs, an emphasis which is mirrored in the interdisciplinary nature of the social work profession (which draws on insights from sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, nursing, and other fields). Social work education as offered at the Georgia State School of Social Work mirrors this interdisciplinary approach. The School has faculty and students whose backgrounds include training and expertise in a variety of fields of inquiry. In addition, the School has indicated an interest in taking part in a future interdisciplinary doctoral program, and it has research and other ties with various educational units in the University.

The University is also committed to preparing graduate students who are proficient in their discipline as trained and talented professionals who have interpersonal and leadership skills. Our conversations with MSW students, alumni, and community representatives gave ample evidence of the presence of these skills among current students and MSW graduates. The successful re-affirmation of the MSW program by CSWE is also a testimony to the School’s preparation of skilled professionals at the master’s level. There is a need in the community for increased training of Master’s level social workers as there are many people working in community child welfare and social services who need an opportunity to further their education. Both the MSW and Advanced Standing programs make that opportunity a possibility.

3) Viability of programs: Degree to which the programs are viable with respect to enrollments, graduates, and continuing availability of resources to support them.

The School of Social Work established its BSW program in 1979 and the program was initially accredited by CSWE in1981. The MSW program was established in 1998 and admitted into candidacy by CSWE in the same year. The MSW program includes a small Advanced Standing program, through which students with a BSW from an accredited school of social work can enter in the second year of the Master’s program. In Spring, 2002, the Master’s program received initial and retroactive accreditation to the Fall of 1998.

The BSW program is the largest undergraduate social work program in the state. It admitted its biggest class, 78 students, in Fall 2005. The program has very little attrition. About a third of BSW students receive funds for their educational and field work expenses through a training contract with the child protective services program in the state Division of Family and Children Services. The School averages a $1 million a year contract to provide education to students who plan to work in the Division after graduation.

Both the BSW program and the more recent MSW program have been supported in part by the large amount of external grants and contracts (averaging $1 million a year) that the faulty has brought in from 2002 to the present. To cite the School’s program review self-study report, “all of the resources allocated to the School [by the University] have resulted in the expected

outcomes. Moreover, those dollars have been essentially leveraged through faculty accomplishments to earn additional dollars for the university through external funding...” (p. 11).

The School has adequate faculty to support the current number of students in the BSW and MSW programs. The fact that the MSW program has only one concentration, Community Partnerships,

makes it possible to offer a smaller number of required courses than programs with several concentrations.

However, the External Review team feels that while the number of faculty is adequate for the two programs in their current size, the number of staff is not. (See later sections on resources).

4) Strategic focus: Rationales for the choice of subject areas and degree levels in terms of the programs’ distinctiveness, demands for graduates, and contributions in the context of the university’s reach into local, state, national, and international communities.

Georgia has relatively few accredited social work programs, which is problematic in terms of the size of the state and particularly the size of the city of Atlanta. As we have already noted, the School’s BSW program is the largest in the state of Georgia. Students receiving their MSW from the University of Georgia may or may not take jobs in Atlanta, and they will not bring the particular urban social work/community-based experiences that graduates of Georgia State will have acquired. Georgia State’s focus on an urban, community-based program is particularly well-suited to social work in Atlanta, although graduates of the BSW and MSW programs should have little difficulty finding jobs in other urban communities across the country.