The BSW and MSW Programs of WNMU are strong programs that prepare graduates to take their places in the ranks of professional social workers.

School of Social Work Mission Statement 

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.

School of Social Work Goals 

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.

School of Social Work BSW Mission Statement 

The Mission of the WNMU BSW program is to prepare students for culturally competent generalist practice, utilizing a person and environment construct, a global perspective, respect for human diversity, and knowledge based on scientific inquiry, to promote the following:

a) social and economic justice;

b) human and community well-being, preventing, where possible, conditions that limit human rights;

c) the elimination of poverty; and

d) the enhancement of the quality of life for all persons.

School of Social Work MSW Mission Statement

Grounded in a global perspective and respect for human diversity, the WNMU MSW Program equips graduate students for advanced generalist practice through scientific inquiry, self-reflection, and guided practice experiences. Through this program, students cultivate the knowledge, skills, values, cognitive and affective processes, and cultural humility required to improve the well-being and quality of life for all individuals as champions of social, racial, economic, and environmental justice.

The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) is a nonprofit national association representing more than 2,500 individual members, as well as graduate and undergraduate programs of professional social work education. Founded in 1952, this partnership of educational and professional institutions, social welfare agencies, and private citizens is recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation as the sole accrediting agency for social work education in this country.

Looking for a little more info in one concise location? Try this resource.  Or read this one – it provides a really good flavor of social work today.

Western New Mexico University School of Social Work is accredited by the Council on Social Work Education’s Board of Accreditation.