Our department brings together the fields of Sociology and Social Work, both of which are concerned with social issues facing our communities and the world. We aim to educate students to critically analyze our society, the problems we face in our communities, and build interventions to address them. We combine the two specialties in our department to enrich our students training. In our sociology courses, students learn about the broader social conditions affecting our communities and lives and the critical theories needed to analyze our social problems. This knowledge from Sociology directly helps students in their interventions in Social Work at the community level. Through this inter-disciplinary approach, we are building links that provide students with a vision of how a community looks and how they can intervene.
Our department emphasizes practical field experience. As part of their training, students are required to work 850 hours in the field with different community organizations. Through this process, students make the links between theory and practice, so that they understand what social workers do in the field, and how this is reflected in theory. We also encourage our students to do research and publish with the guidance of our faculty.