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Volume 4, Number 2 Spring 1999 |
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Millie Charles: Believing in the Mission Millie M. Charles, born on July 25, 1923, is dean of the School of Social Work at Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO). Charles has participated in movements for civil rights and social justice throughout her life. Charles served as a national leader in the development of professional baccalaureate social work education, and she founded the School of Social Work at SUNO, a historically black university, as a resource for professional education and community activism. In this oral narrative, Charles describes her career as a mission for social change. BPD is Launched: A History of the Association of Baccalaureate Social WorkProgram Directors The Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Directors (BPD), which presented its fifteenth annual conference in Philadelphia in October 1997, has a long history, extending long before the first conference, held at a convent in Nazareth, Kentucky, in 1983. The organization was formed in the mid-1970s in order to represent the interests and enhance recognition of undergraduate work education and practice. As undergraduate programs grew in number and influence, BPD grew as well and came to be recognized as the voice of undergraduate education within the social work profession. The following history places the formation of BPD in the context of earlier efforts to speak for undergraduate education and highlights the association's flexibility of structure, emphasis on interaction with other organizations, and diversity in leadership and membership. Preparing for the 21 st Century: Building Our Strengths (The 1998 Ron Federico Memorial Lecture) Assessing Student Values in an Era of Change Although ours is a "value-laden" profession, it is often difficult to know when students have acquired appropriate values. This study reports on an effort designed to measure beginning BSW students' perceived ethical conflicts, to examine their values relative to third and fourth year students and employed social workers, and to determine if beginning students' values change during an introduction to social work course. Assertiveness and Field Education: An Exploratory Study This study examines the effect of field instruction on assertiveness and tests the effectiveness of an assertiveness training program that was delivered concurrently with field education. Undergraduate field interns (N=27) were pre-post tested with the Assertiveness Self-Report Inventory during the first and last weeks of field education. Approximately half of the interns (n=13) received assertiveness training during the university-based field instruction seminar. Surprisingly, assertiveness scores did not change statistically from pretest to posttest, and the assertiveness training program failed to raise assertiveness. Those counterintuitive findings are explored, and implications for social work education and practice are discussed. The Strengths Perspective: A First Step in Empowerment This paper presents a strategy for introducing empowerment approaches to undergraduate students in social work. At the same time, it incorporates a focus on developing student skills in the practice relationship. An emphasis on a strengths-based assessment model as an empowering practice intervention helps students to understand the relationship between individual strengths and a collective empowerment lens. The overall quality of the client/worker relationship uses an interactive, experiential exercise format that engages students both in process and content. Instructional goals and a subjective learning evaluation process are discussed. Bridging New Heights: Creating Linkages Between Community Colleges and Baccalaureate Programs The community college has long been a point of entry to undergraduate education for many students. This article highlights the role of the Baccalaureate Social Work Program (BSW) in creating linkages between the Human Service Education Program and the community college and the social work professional. The focus of the discussion centers on the BSW-Human Service Program efforts to collaborate and build a bridge that may be spanned by students. Barriers to student retention, curricular issues and strategies for developing relationships between Human Service and BSW programs are issues for consideration by all program faculty. Developing a Speaker Panel Program to Provide Curriculum Content on Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual People in Baccalaureate Social Work Education Speaker panel programs are used as an educational intervention in which gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) people share their personal stories and participate in a question-answer session with the audience. These panels have been proven to be effective in reducing homophobic attitudes in university and community settings and can be utilized as an educational tool in social work education. This paper will discuss the development and uses of an innovative videotape and manual designed to train GLB students and their allies to serve as speakers on these panels. The production of the videotape and training manual are discussed, including practical information on the design and implementation of a speaker panel program. The Implications of BSW Students' Experiences with Danger in the Field Practicum BSW students from eight social work programs were surveyed to determine the extent to which they had encountered danger in the field practicum. Approximately one-fifth of the respondents reported at least one incident in which they had been verbally or physically assaulted. An experience with danger had only a limited influence on students' career attitudes; however, their attitudes were influenced by their evaluations of how well their agency and school handled the incident. Particularly noteworthy were the findings that students who entered the field with heightened concerns for their safety as well as those who had been involved in riskier practice activities in the placement expressed greater discomfort about their future careers in social work, regardless of whether they had actually been assaulted.
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