The WNMU Social Work Program prepares and empowers students for culturally responsive and sustaining generalist (MSW advanced generalist) practice that promotes social, racial, economic, and environmental justice.
The Goals of the Social Work Program at Western New Mexico University are to:
1. Prepare students for effective, professional, advanced generalist social work policy practice and anti-racist and anti-oppressive practice with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
2. Prepare students for lifelong learning, including graduate education and awareness of their responsibility to continue their professional growth and development.
3. Prepare students by incorporating the liberal arts perspective in the program’s pedagogy, which emphasizes development of critical thinking skills and a liberal arts perspective and incorporates a broad range of interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills.
4. Prepare students to conduct themselves ethically and engage in ethical decision making in order to ensure human rights and social, racial, economic, and environmental justice.
5. Prepare students to engage in research-informed practice and practice-informed research to assess, intervene, and evaluate.
6. Prepare students to engage in equitable and inclusive practice with diverse populations.
7. Prepare students to integrate technological advancement in their practice.
8. Prepare students for self-reflective practice by teaching the skills of self-reflection, self- evaluation, self-care, and self-correction for effective practice at multiple system levels.