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University of Montana - Missoula

The College of Health Professions and Biomedical Science

Program Description

The School of Social Work began offering a Master of Social Work (MSW) in fall 2002. The MSW program evolved from the school’s nationally recognized undergraduate program and has been developed by a faculty with diverse scholarly interests who have a longstanding commitment to high quality instruction and mentoring. The program recognizes that because of drastic transformations that have occurred in the 21st century, today’s graduate level social worker must not only be effective, but creative and inclusive.

The program’s curriculum is designed to integrate the profession’s commitment to social work practice by:

  1. training students to effectively counsel individuals, families, and small groups;
  2. preparing students to assume positions of leadership as program developers, social service administrators, and community organizers; and
  3. educating students about how structural adjustments (e.g., welfare reform, managed care, privatization) and decreased government investment in human services and education limits equality, generates clashes between new wealth and old poverty, and reinforces historic forms of classism and racism.

As the fourth largest state in the U.S., Montana’s population is relatively small, posing enormous challenges to service delivery systems and socially and politically excludes particular groups (e.g., native people, women and children, low income people) from having a real voice in issues that concern their survival.

Students will have considerable opportunities to examine how recent social, political, and economic transformations impact the welfare of citizens who reside in the plains and rocky mountain region while comparing those similarities to developing countries, as more people experience personal instability due, in part, to diminishing investments in education, employment fluctuations, and a growing resentment toward participating in the political process.