The BA in Social Work is a two-year (four semesters) cohorted program designed for full-time study. Students are admitted during the fall semester only. As a cohort group, students typically begin and end the program at the same time. Students are expected to complete their BASW degree in two years.

Program Learning Outcomes

• Education: Learn from and apply the rigorous SFSU social work education that achieves the nine Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) curricular competencies at the baccalaureate (BASW) level. Utilize education and research to inform and effectively engage in practice at micro (individuals, families, and groups), mezzo (organizations, institutions, and communities) and macro (societies and international arenas) levels.
• Application: Use knowledge and skills to affect all practice areas (direct and indirect). Know and understand multiple forms of power, and their forms, uses, and implications. Be skilled at giving, engaging and sharing power and instilling shared, delegated, and/or “other person” responsibilities in decision making and problem-solving.
• Diverse Learners: Expect, accept, and appreciate human differences in all areas, including diversity of ethnicities, cultures, values, backgrounds, learning styles, problem-solving approaches, and more. Promote diversity to enrich environments, thought processes, experiences, and more.
• Collaboration and Participation: Respect, value, and honor one another’s personal and professional experiences, knowledge, skills, and values. Seek, receive, and utilize inputs from diverse persons, groups, and communities and make diversity- sensitive and appropriate decisions. Engage and utilize the voices of many through participatory means.
• Ethical Foundations and Leadership: Engage in professional practices that are ethically sound and appropriate, consistent with the National Association of Social Workers’ (NASW) Code of Ethics. Create ideas and action plans from research and interdisciplinary knowledge; instill visions among team members; and enact innovative actions having substantial impact on individuals, groups, organizations, communities, and societies.
• Progressive Development: Expand and enhance cognitive and affective abilities through continuous development of knowledge, values, skills, and practices. Utilize research to develop best practices to improve human conditions and generate research agendas through practice experiences.
• Advocacy and Activism for Progressive Change: Know multiple forms and purposes of advocacy, and engage in change plans and efforts to achieve progressive change at micro, mezzo, and macro levels. Utilize evidence to set agendas, establish goals, create action plans, and move forward with efforts to enhance human conditions, including political, economic, legal, social, cultural, and physical environments.
• Equity and Social Justice: Identify, understand, and evaluate multiple forms of justice (e.g., social, economic, environmental, political, and legal justice) and rights (human and civil). Promote and achieve fairness, equality, and human/civil rights.
• Professional Versatility: Be equipped to work in a variety of settings, in a range of fields and forms of practice, and with diverse persons from multiple backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, nationalities, ages, genders, experiences, abilities, orientations, classes, religions, and more. Be effective in systems processes through engagement, assessment, intervention, evaluation, and self-awareness.
• Cultural Humility: Appreciate the fact that cultures and values evolve and change, and that one never “arrives” with respect to knowledge, skills, and practices related to diversity. Identify and analyze the intersectionality of forces that impinge on lives.