BSW480 Generalist Field Experience I with Seminar (200 hours) (3 cr.)

Prerequisite(s): BSW310  
Students in the generalist curriculum serve and learn for a total of 400 hours over two consecutive semesters, in an assigned supervised professional practice setting to acquire a broad understanding of the field of social work, to recognize and use generalist principles and concepts, and to assess and then select intervention methods to meet individual, group, family, and community needs. The concurrent integrative field seminar uses an appreciative inquiry approach to focus on generalist social work practice, emphasizing issues diversity, ethics, social advocacy, and social, economic, and environmental justice. The seminar integrates theory and evidence-based practice knowledge with students’ first-hand application of knowledge and skills as they encounter social work roles, values, and ethics in the field.

Upon completion of this course, students are expected to be able to do the following:

1. Adapt oral, written, and nonverbal communication for clarity across diverse language, literacy, and speech contexts.
2. Model professional conduct, engage in ethical social work practice and demonstrate the dispositions of acceptance, curiosity, empathy, optimism, and positive regard consistently in verbal and nonverbal communication with diverse client systems.
3. Demonstrate initiative to acquire from clients, colleagues, and community partners an appreciative working knowledge of the history and culture of the host agency and of the clients and communities it serves.
4. Identify and articulate mezzo and macro influences and factors related to social, economic, and environmental justice, including the host agency’s intervention strategies, through the person-in-environment (PIE) approach or ecological systems to case analyses.
5. Generate a meaningful research question about social work practice situated within a problem statement and a summary of research frameworks relevant to the host agency and its constituencies.
6. Recommend advocacy opportunities based on a systematic scan [or SWOT analysis] of active policy issues at the organization, community, state, and federal levels that could affect the host agency and its constituencies.
7. Use biopsychosocial spiritual framework to constructively engage client systems in gathering information, interpreting facts or patterns, and making decisions about services and service providers in relation to identified needs or goals.
8. Exhibit empathy and persistence to establish and sustain trust with individuals, families, groups, communities, and organizations during the assessment process.
9. Develop tolerance for ambiguity in the process of change and intervention.
10. Apply intervention tasks and roles that fully span, and respect the limits of, (the scope of practice that corresponds to) the placement role in the host agency.