SWKM 6645 - Organizational Development and Change

Credits: 3

Prerequisite(s): A block of 30 foundation credits, SWKM5475 and SWKM6400 or completion of all foundation coursework

Description: Applying leadership and clinical skills, students will develop strategies to effect change in multiple settings. Students will increase their capacity to use their voice in multiple systems: supervisory relationships, team meetings, intra and interdepartmental organizational settings and with community stakeholders. Students will learn skills related to mindful reflections and non-judgmental engagement when sharing their truth about their intersectional experiences. Students will explore how power, privilege, and oppression are present in peer, supervisory and managerial relationships, teams, organizations, systems, and institutions. Students will learn to disrupt these systems through doing role plays with cases depicting situations they have been exposed to involving micro-aggressions, implicit biases, ethical dilemmas, organizational hierarchies and constraints, and differential styles of communication and leadership. By the end of this course, students will learn how to apply their clinical knowledge and skills to assess the larger context, identify and strategize on opportunities for sharing their perspectives and to engage with systemic challenges. Students will increase their capacity to hold multiple truths while advocating for their client’s needs and fostering their own resilience and well-being amidst the challenges of social work practice in community and agency-base contexts.