Livingstone College

Department of Social Work

Accredited by the Council on Social Work Education, the Social Work Department offers the Bachelor of Social Work (B.S.W.) Degree. Graduates from the department are prepared for entry-level professional employment in public and private agencies such as child welfare agencies, corrections, schools, hospitals, and service agencies for the elderly and handicapped. Careers also involve work with the developmentally disabled, homeless shelters, and housing programs.

The goals for the program are designed to enable graduates to articulate a practice paradigm that emerges from a commitment to human rights and social, racial, economic, and environmental justice, and individualized strength and collective empowerment. The following goals are rendered from this guiding programmatic commitment.

1. 1. To provide a curriculum that prepares graduates for competent beginning professional generalist social work practice with diverse client systems guided by the values and ethics of the social work profession.

   2. To provide a curriculum that prepares graduates to advance human rights and social, racial, economic, and environmental justice as well as engage in policy practice and prevention activities that are designed to prepare graduates to identify, assess, and develop strategies that will enable them to engage in anti-racist and anti-oppressive social work practice to help change conditions that impede, infringe, and deny clients these justices with the aim to promote healthy physical and mental functioning and socio-economic well-being of diverse client systems.

   3. To provide a curriculum that prepares graduates to engage in practice-informed research and research-informed practice in order to undertake a scientific, analytic evidence-based research approach to practice to enable them to adapt to an ever changing practice environment while being culturally informed and culturally responsive to advance the purposes of social work.

   4. To provide a curriculum that prepares graduates to utilize the generalist intervention model to enable them to effectively engage in culturally responsive practice with diverse individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities while demonstrating cultural humility.

Preparation as a generalist social work practitioner presupposes that basic cognitive learning and an underlying value ethic will make a distinction between the social work student, and the liberal arts graduate. Building on a Liberal Art’s general education base, the Livingstone College’s Social Work Department sees the B.S.W. graduate as one who can perform as a beginning social work practitioner and serve both the domestic and global community. Graduates maintain awareness for lifelong learning, continuing education, or specialist study.

Social Work majors must fulfill the forty-seven (47) general education credit requirements of the College. Majors must also complete forty-two (42) credit requirements for professional foundation courses, fifteen (15) credit requirements in cognate or support courses for the major, nine (9) credit requirements in Social Work elective courses, and nine (9) credit requirements in free electives.

Additionally, Social Work majors must complete six (6) credits in spanish and six (6) credits in college mathematics.

NOTE: To receive credit for required Social Work professional foundation courses, cognate or support courses, foreign language courses, and mathematic courses, the minimum grade of “C” must be earned.

Students who wish to major in Social Work must apply for admission to both the College and the Social Work Program. There are two (2) separate admission requirements as specified in the “Admission Procedure” section of the Social Work Department Student Handbook. Copies of the handbook may be obtained from the Director of the Social Work Department. After admission to the department, students must maintain a 2.0 GPA.

All senior Social Work majors are required to pay a fifty dollar ($50) field instruction fee at the time they register for SWK 460: Field Instruction/Seminar course and must make arrangements for transportation to and from their field placement site prior to the beginning of the course. Students are also required to purchase a Student Liability Insurance Policy from the National Association of Social Workers.

If you would like additional information about the Social Work Department, please contact Dr. Walter L. Ellis at the information below.

Walter L. Ellis, PhD
Dean, Division of Education, Psychology, and Social Work
Professor and Director of Social Work Department

Livingstone College
701 W. Monroe Street
Salisbury, NC 28144
wellis@livingstone.edu
704-216-6218