The candidate statement must be submitted with the application for admission and must
be uploaded to the relevant section of the online application. Please provide a three
page, double spaced statement with proper APA citation that addresses the following:
- Discuss your professional goals related to our MSW clinical program and further connect
your professional goals with a social justice issue that you are passionate about.
- Provide a cogent assessment of your intellectual and professional capacity to complete
the MSW program with examples of a time you faced a professional failure and how you
overcame it and a time you had a professional success and the steps you took for the
success.
- After reviewing the NASW Core Values, what core value have you demonstrated in the
past and what core value (s) would you like to develop in the MSW program.
The primary mission of the social work profession is to enhance human wellbeing and
help meet the basic human needs of all people, with particular attention to the needs
and empowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty. A
historic and defining feature of social work is the profession’s focus on individual
wellbeing in a social context and the wellbeing of society. Fundamental to social
work is attention to the environmental forces that create, contribute to, and address
problems in living.
Social workers promote social justice and social change with and on behalf of clients.
“Clients” is used inclusively to refer to individuals, families, groups, organizations,
and communities. Social workers are sensitive to cultural and ethnic diversity and
strive to end discrimination, oppression, poverty, and other forms of social injustice.
These activities may be in the form of direct practice, community organizing, supervision,
consultation administration, advocacy, social and political action, policy development
and implementation, education, and research and evaluation. Social workers seek to
enhance the capacity of people to address their own needs. Social workers also seek
to promote the responsiveness of organizations, communities, and other social institutions
to individuals’ needs and social problems.
The mission of the social work profession is rooted in a set of core values. These
core values, embraced by social workers throughout the profession’s history, are the
foundation of social work’s unique purpose and perspective:
- Service
- Social justice
- Dignity and worth of the person
- Importance of human relationships
- Integrity
- Competence
This constellation of core values reflects what is unique to the social work profession.
Core values, and the principles that flow from them, must be balanced within the context
and complexity of the human experience.