Students graduating from the Boston College School of Social Work this spring will be the first to have completed a new curriculum recently developed to better prepare students for work in the professional world. Changes to the curriculum include the addition of four new concentrations and a lessening of the gap between macro and clinical fields of study. In response to these changes, a group ostudents, spearheaded by GSSW student Erin Hoffman, administered a well-discussed survey intended to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the Graduate School of Social Work curriculum. The survey was presented at the Feb. 15 Dean's Forum earlier this year.
Though all GSSW students received both paper and electronic copies of the survey, the number of respondents to the survey totaled only 77, or about 16 percent of the school's student population.
Results of the survey shed a very revealing light on student satisfaction with the School of Social Work, uncovering a variety of issues that students have had with the new curriculum and with the program in general.
The survey, which covered student experience and satisfaction with core coursework, concentration coursework, faculty, advisement, administration, and field placement, yielded less-than-perfect results. In fact, the top three words used by respondents to describe their GSSW experience were "disappointing," "challenging," and "frustrating."
Coursework was ranked on a scale of one to five, with one being very dissatisfied and five being very satisfied. Overall satisfaction with the program garnered only a 3.48 ranking. The administration earned a low score of 3.29, while faculty received the highest; a 4.11. According to the survey, "the GSSW student body reasonably expects a response by way of an 'Action Plan' for each of these domains, in order of priority based on lowest to highest scores."
Authors of the survey emphasized that student involvement in the improvement process is imperative.
Dean of GSSW Alberto Godenzi, couldn't agree more.
"There's never enough student participation. I understand that from my own time when I was a student. We have something really interesting here. We have an executive board, which has very strong student participation, and any major decision about policies in the school has to be approved by this executive board. That's a feature that I'm not aware any other school of social work has in this country," said Godenzi.
Some of the students' chief concerns, according to the survey, include over-large classes, outdated texts, lack of academic rigor, too little financial aid, lack of diversity, restrictive concentrations that do little to prepare students for professional work, and too-few course offerings.
The first of these, too-large classes and old textbooks, are matters of money. The administration does not deny that these issues must be addressed.
"They mentioned [in the survey] that they'd love to have smaller classes. I told them that this is something we work very hard on, and that's part of our strategic plan, to have no class greater than 20. If we get the resources, we will do this. We have increased the number of classes in specific sections, especially statistics research, but we don't have enough resources. We would love to go bigger. Some of their concerns are our concerns," said Godenzi.
A lack of resources also contributes indirectly to complaints concerning academic rigor.
"We would love to have more courses per concentration, but I don't have enough resources to do that. So it's a matter of money, and we are strongly engaged in fundraising for the school and for concentrations so we can offer more of those courses and more of those electives" said Godenzi.
The next of these issues, a lack of diversity, is a problem within both the student population and the curriculum.
The survey complains of "a lack of diversity among staff, faculty, and student populations," as well as a host of issues with the required diversity course within the curriculum.
The issue of race, it turns out, is one that pervades schools of social work across the country.
"I was stunned when I came here; it looks like the BC School of Social Work has been quite successful compared to local competitors in bringing in a relatively good percentage of AHANA students.
"About 20 percent of our student body are AHANA, compared to local competitors like BU, which has 7 or 8 percent. That's good, but we wanted to make an effort to specifically reach out to minority students or students who don't have financial means to come to BC, so one of the things we wanted to do and were successful in doing was trying to bring in more financial aid.
"For the past six years we have increased financial aid, almost doubled or tripled it, which has allowed us to really reach out specifically to students who we felt we want to bring in as many as we can.
"Our plan is to get to 30 percent of AHANA students within the next 4 to 5 years, and I think they're making progress in that regard," said Godenzi.
Steps taken toward increasing diversity include a full-day diversity retreat, a diversity lecture series, and a diversity committee.
These steps do not, however, address the diversity core requirement, which students claim is superficial and basic, reinforces stereotypes instead of focusing on issues prevalent in a multi-cultural society, and does not include a social justice component, only a how-to approach for working with different populations.
In the survey's clinical response section, one student said, "A single course on diversity first semester is a decent start but is a long way from being an adequate 'commitment to diversity.' I worry that rushing through descriptions of different social and ethnic groups only adds to stereotyping and lumping people together."
The negative findings of the survey are not, however, pervasive throughout the entire school.
"The results [of the survey] were honest, and they are important, and we will certainly take them seriously, but they are not exactly matching up with some of the other reports and feedback we are getting from the larger student body," said Godenzi.
He then said that a group of students, when asked about their general experience at the GSSW, responded that it was "disappointing" and "frustrating."
"The things I'd love to see is that they're challenged, they're stimulated, and they get great jobs when they leave. If they're frustrated and disappointed, I have to look what I can do about it," said Godenzi. He noted the overall success of the changes, saying that this opinion represents only about 7 percent of GSSW students.
After conducting his 18-month effort, he said that he feels strongly about the transformations and has received positive reactions from employers, who have said that the students are "amazing," and from students, who said they have found jobs that they "really loved."
"It may seem that we are not on the same page," said Godenzi, "But I think we are on the same page on many things. The problem is sometimes that resources are not available. We would love to give students a larger menu of courses … As compared to the former curriculum, we have added flexibility, but it's not enough, and I understand that."
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