school for social work

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Rachael Gardiner ’15 came to Smith after earning a law degree in 2009 with the goal of making a difference in under-resourced communities. She turned to social work when she realized the impact that strong clinical skills could have when combined with social action. “I knew I would be in a community of deeply prepared, passionate clinical social workers who are effecting change at the system level and interpersonally,” Gardiner says. “There is a consciousness and dedica-tion to a clinical approach at Smith that incorporates an anti-oppressive lens. Through the clinical social work role and holding this commitment to antiracism, we can acknowledge the humanity to which we are all entitled.”

Smith is known for its case study approach to teaching and learning. In both the first and second years, students are required to conceptualize and contextualize clinical cases from their own practices, including clinical decisions around intervention, use of self and evaluation of effectiveness. Across the year, students revisit their case material as their knowledge, thinking and practice skills evolve. “These assignments push you to understand, deepen and integrate your work with the client from the points of view of theory and research and how to hold yourself accountable within an anti-racism lens,” Gardiner says. “The depth of reflection and critical thinking you have to put into that is incredible. The case studies were the most challenging and beneficial pieces of work I completed. They forced me to critically examine my own personal development, the way I view the world, and my role in it.”

RACHAEL GARDINER ’15

Clinical social work education with a case-study approach

“ I found people here who are true mentors. They are able to honor and respect and encourage my full identities to come forth. They have helped me to hone my skills. They encourage leadership and taught me how I can effect change in the world.”

ON THE COVER: Rachael Gardiner with mentors (from left): 2015 Sotomayor Fellow Keshia Williams, Instructor Stephen Bradley, Assistant Professor Peggy O’Neill. C

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For nearly 100 years, Smith College School for Social Work has offered graduate stu-dents a concentrated clinical social work curriculum of unparalleled depth and rigor. The unique program structure spans 27 months, providing students with twice the required field hours and yielding extra-ordinarily well-prepared social workers.

For three consecutive summers, 360 students and over 100 faculty members come together for 10 weeks in residence at Smith. Classroom learning, shared meals, lecture attendance, and student activities all offer opportunities for rich interaction among students and faculty. The Smith community also includes alumni, 25 percent of whom participate in School activities. Between summers, students are placed in field internships at top train-ing hospitals and institutions around the country, completing a total of 1,960 hours in two field placements. Our clinical focus, low faculty-to-student ratio, and close advisement program ensure integration

of learning across settings and make our students desirable candidates for the best placements.

At Smith, teaching clinical social work practice begins with an appreciation for the complexity of human behavior and the interplay of psychological, developmental, social and cultural variables. Students learn to approach clinical practice from a range of theories, providing them with strong conceptualization skills. Current research and evidence are introduced to challenge and extend students’ thinking of both the human condition and means of intervention. Our practice courses emphasize the importance of the relation-ship between the social worker and the client, not only in the delivery of services, but as a mechanism to promote healing and growth. Students complete five social welfare policy courses and four research courses to broaden understanding and deepen their skills. Additionally, first-year M.S.W. students conduct a significant

community practice project. Students graduate with the skills to use both theory- and research-based knowledge to address client situations and examine their own uses of self within the clinical role.

Our signature anti-racism commitment means that all learning passes through an anti-racism, anti-oppression lens. We ex-amine social welfare policies, social work research, human development and behav-ior, and clinical practice models within the context of socio-political structures. Anti-racism content is woven through the curriculum, including required courses on racism and sociocultural systems as well as a second-year anti-racism project.

The Smith curriculum uses a case-based pedagogical model. This allows for practical exploration of the fit of theory and research to case material and deepens students’ understanding of complex, com-peting issues that confront social workers every day. Small class sizes and integrative field seminars provide abundant oppor-tunities for personalized attention to help students hone their skills.

Smith consistently attracts resident and adjunct faculty members committed to teaching excellence and student mentoring. Faculty areas of expertise include trauma- informed clinical practice, clinical practice with Veterans and service members, anti- racism and social justice education and practice, couples and family therapy, evidence-based practice, mindfulness and spiritually integrated clinical interventions, narrative and family therapies, psycho-dynamic theory and practice with vulnera-ble and oppressed populations.

LONG-STANDING COMMITMENT TO WORK WITH VETERANSThe School for Social Work was founded in 1918 as a pioneering educational program developed to meet the mental health needs of World War I Veterans returning home. This legacy continues to guide us today. With several Veterans in her family, Kathryn Basham, co-director of the Ph.D. program, has decades of specialization in clinical social work practice with service members, Veterans, and their families. After serving on three congressionally mandated Institute of Medicine research committees, Basham co-authored four texts of public policy recommendations to improve mental health services for Veterans. Basham participated in the Joining Forces initiative sponsored by First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden, an interprofessional collaboration to improve the well-being of military families. She has published and taught extensively in the area of military social work.

In-depth, powerful, uniqueSMITH’S FOCUS ON CLINICAL SOCIAL WORK

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Tomás Alvarez III ’06 is leveraging the educa-tion he got at Smith College School for Social Work to transform the lives of young men and women of color in the Bay Area of California. As the founder and chief executive officer of Beats Rhymes and Life, Incorporated, an award-winning nonprofit (www.brl-inc.org), Alvarez is committed to the positive develop-ment of socially marginalized youth who are untouched by more traditional therapeutic means. Well aware of the mental and behav-ioral health disparities faced by young people of color, Alvarez set about to reimagine what mental health services could look like.

“I felt compelled to create an alternative to traditional talk therapy,” says Alvarez, who

began to conceptualize his innovative clinical approach in his first Smith field placement at Berkeley High School in California in 2004. Alvarez observed that youths were looking to hip hop as an outlet for help and healing. Armed with strong clinical skills, Alvarez devel-oped Hip Hop Therapy, a model that combines community-defined strategies with proven therapeutic techniques. Since then, he and his team have operated more than 35 Hip Hop Therapy programs in five cities, impacting the lives of more than one thousand youths.

In the hip hop model, a clinical social worker collaborates with a teaching artist and trained peer mentors to engage youths in a powerful, therapeutic group process; young

people learn to address ongoing mental health issues in their lives and re-author their stories from a place of dignity and power. “The conversations I had at Smith were a catalyst for this ground-breaking work,” Alvarez says. “Smith empowered me to ponder what I could do as a change maker to disrupt and transform the system.”

Alvarez is an Ashoka Fellow, recognized for the power of his work. NBC Latino has identified him as one of the top 20 innovators in the country.

TOMÁS ALVAREZ III ’06

Innovative clinical practice transforms Bay Area youth

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In 1995, the School for Social Work faculty made a formal commitment to work toward becoming an anti-racism organization. In the 20 years since, this pledge has yielded important changes to infrastructure and process that distinguish Smith, even within a profession dedicated to social justice. These initiatives include:

n a monthly meeting of faculty and administrators dedicated to faculty development on the issues of race and racism and integration of anti-racism in curriculum and organizational processes.

n the Marta Sotomayor Fellow, who serves as an ombuds person around issues of institutional racism and oppression and their manifestations within the educational process.

n a weekly Pedagogy and Diversity teaching group, co-facilitated by the Sotomayor Fellow, in which instructors critically examine and address issues of power, privilege, and oppression that emerge in the classroom.

n the Anti-Racism Consultation Committee, composed of students and faculty, which offers support when structural racism manifests in community process.

n the Anti-Racism Task Force, which takes action on anti-racism initiatives in the School, the College, or the community.

n an independent anti-racism project required of all second-year M.S.W. students.

The anti-racism commitment is highly visible within curriculum and classroom discussions, providing both context and substance of the workings of the M.S.W. program. “Being able to articulate where they sit on the topic of race and racism is crucial to students’ future clinical practice,” says Associate Professor Yoosun Park, the designer of the School’s required course on racism. “It allows them to have a more complex understanding of the client systems they serve, the societies in which they live, and the differences they can make.” Smith students graduate with a deep understanding of how structural oppression and racism manifest in social processes and personal lives, and how they impact clinical practice and delivery of services. Most importantly, they enter their professional careers with a strong commitment to the roles they can play in the disruption of racism across systems.

Our anti-racism commitmentUNIQUE STRUCTURE GIVES RISE TO POWERFUL PROCESS

HANNAH POCOCK ’15

Learning to disrupt racism

Hannah Pocock ’15 chairs our Anti-Racism Task Force, composed of faculty and students. “I got involved because I was intrigued by the possibility of faculty, administrators, students, and alumni coming together to think about the production and impact of racism, how it affects all of us. The task force is a unique vehicle for making change,” Pocock says. “At Smith, I’ve come into contact with a lot of people who inspire me and have pushed my own thinking about anti-racism work and my analysis of race and racism. I respect the ways that Smith seeks to hold a living, breathing commitment to dismantle racism.”

Pocock’s first-year field placement was at Polaris, an organization in Washington, D.C., focused on preventing human trafficking. She says it was the perfect location for her to challenge herself to approach her clinical work through an anti-racism lens. “I found it was important to hold a critical analysis around structural racism and oppression in working with survivors of trafficking,” she says. “My clients had experienced not only interpersonal trauma, but systemic marginalization based on race, gender identity, class, and other social identities.”

In her second placement, Pocock stayed in D.C. but moved to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where she worked with active-duty service members dealing with a range of acute mental health issues. “Working with these service members complicated my understanding of the structures of inequality that impact all of us, and the way these structures influence people’s options and outcomes,” Pocock says. “Learning how to have conversations with clients and coworkers about the mechanisms and effects of oppression—to try to disrupt that systemic impact—is such an important part of being a good clinical social worker.”

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16 0affiliated training sites

in 16 states

By the Numbers Smith College School for Social Work

1,220 alumni actively

participated with a School event in

the past year

360M.S.W. and Ph.D. students

with a passion for social justice

16full-time faculty;

12 tenured

120students in an incoming class

28%students of color

30HOME STATES

(in the United States

and Canada)

REPRESENTED

BY STUDENTS

4 : 1Student

to Faculty Ratio 4,922

TIGHTLY BONDED ALUMNI LIVING

IN 17 COUNTRIES

310-week sessions

of intensive on-campus

classroom study

14POLICY ELECTIVES

11affiliated VA hospitals

and active duty medical centers

1,960field placement hours required

Typical foundational

practice class size:

18students

2015 TUITIONPER 12-MONTH

PERIOD

M.S.W.: $23,645

PH.D.: $27,815

ARIANNE NAPIER ’15

A deep kind of learning

When asked about her experience in the M.S.W. program, Arianne Napier ’15 says, “The words that come to mind are ‘being humbled’ and ‘gratitude.’ I don’t want to be cliché, but I have been transformed through this program. My lens on indi-viduals, families, and communities is more compassionate, and my ability to be empathetic has grown beyond what I thought I could achieve.” Arianne came to Smith after working as a rape crisis advocate to learn how to work more effectively with people. “I have learned that social work is not simply about helping. It is about joining with individuals and their families and working alongside them in their communities,” she says.

For Arianne, the field placements were the richest part of her Smith experience. She provided crisis work in short-term psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral interventions. Her first-year placement was at Harlem Village Academy in New York City, working with middle-school children. Her second placement was in palliative care services at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “Through my field placements, I have been pushed to think systemically, to think inter-personally and to critically analyze the ways that structured oppression is impacting lives, how to use theories of human development to inform clinical intervention and how to think critically about how these things fit together,” she says.

“In our case learning, we learned to conceptualize who the client is as a person, drawing upon theory and research and our clinical knowledge based on working with them,” Arianne says. “We think about what they need in terms of services but also from us as their social workers. I was asked to reflect on who I am in the helping relationship, what it means for me from my social identities to be working with this client. Smith has given me knowledge of theory, research and an analysis of structural oppression and, most importantly, the ability to think critically about how these things fit with the client and their situation. It’s a deep kind of learning.”

Looking aheadLEADING THROUGH SMITH’S CLINICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE

In fall 2015, Smith College School for Social Work’s Clinical Research Institute will undergo a significant reorganization with a focus on clinical research training and a competitive small grants program.

Dr. Marsha Kline Pruett, Maconda Brown O’Connor Professor, will serve as the director of the Institute, funded through a generous gift of the Brown Foundation. Kline Pruett, a clinical and commu-nity psychologist, is an established researcher focusing on issues of family relationships, transitions, and interactions between families and the primary systems of which they are a part.

The Institute has the goal of being a leader in developing and disseminating research that supports excellence in clinical social work practice. It will launch a competitive small research grants program for social work researchers, as well as provide faculty research training and support within the School. “It’s an exciting time of growth,” Kline Pruett says. “The Institute provides an important way for us to center social work issues in clinical practice and encourage knowledge-generation in this area.”

Smith College School for Social Work, Lilly Hall, Northampton, MA 01063413-585-7950 www.smith.edu/ssw sswdean@smith.edu

SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK FACULTY

Kathryn Basham, Ph.D.

Joan Berzoff, Ed.D.

Joanne Corbin, Ph.D.

Rory Crath, Ph.D.

Jim Drisko, Ph.D.

Joyce Everett, Ph.D.

Annemarie Gockel, Ph.D.

Hannah Karpman, Ph.D.

Dennis Miehls, Ph.D.

Josh Miller, Ph.D.

Catherine Nye, Ph.D.

Peggy O’Neill, Ph.D.

Yoosun Park, Ph.D.

Marsha Kline Pruett, Ph.D.

Phebe Sessions, Ph.D.

Maria Torres, Ph.D.

Marianne Yoshioka, Ph.D.

Meet our assistant professors! From left, Maria Torres, Ph.D., Hannah Karpman, Ph.D., Peggy O’Neill, Ph.D., and Rory Crath, Ph.D.

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