The School of Social Work established three major programs this semester, all to take effect next fall.The 73-year-old school will implement an undergraduate social work minor, a graduate gerontology certificate and a child welfare graduate certificate program was approved for funding in November. Before the new minor program, the University offered only master’s and doctoral programs in social work, and Southern University offered the corresponding major program through a no longer active legal agreement, Social Work Dean Christian Molidor told The Daily Reveille on Sept. 21. The minor will consist of four courses and require 18 credit hours, and it will require both existing faculty and new hires. The program will house up to 35 students, Molidor said.”The minor here is for the purpose of giving students a deep and thoughtful knowledge of what social work is as a field,” Molidor said.But Molidor said the real purpose of the program is simple — to make participants “a thousand times a better person.”The minor works best with education or psychology majors, but it is offered to students pursuing any field of study, he said in the Sept. 21 article.Graduate students in the school will have the opportunity for an additional gerontology certification attached to their degree with the intensive program that includes in-depth courses, a research project and a one-year field internship starting next fall.Instead of taking electives outside the school, graduate students have the option of bundling gerontology classes to count for both electives and the certificate.The internship is a year-long rotation involving about 10 of 19 possible sites and various social work arenas. “The market for working with our older adults is absolutely booming,” Molidor said, as the Baby Boomers generation is reaching its elder years.Molidor has been at the University for three years and was selected along with 12 professors to participate in the New York Academy of Medicine’s 2009 Leadership in Aging Academy. He said two University social work graduate students are Hartford Scholars on Aging, and they will help establish the program.The certificate program’s capacity is about 10 to 12 students.The new child welfare certificate also houses about 10 to 12 students and features a rotation-style internship and the opportunity to bundle electives, Molidor said.He said the new certificate will operate in two ways — to train welfare workers around the state and to develop student social workers within the school. He said child welfare is the most challenging sphere of social work because it is so emotionally trying. “The emotional scars that you have as a student — it’s reallydramatic and so ugly,” Molidor said. “But that’s what social work is about.” Molidor said child welfare duties include dealing with abused children, helping them adjust to new, safer homes, helping foster families adjust to abused children and working with abused children’s parents to stop mistreatment in the future.”Our clients — they need it more that anybody else,” he said.He said scholarships are offered for both graduate certificates. The school also recently launched its new Web site.
 
 
 
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