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How can saving wildebeest in Kenya and pandas in China promote human health? How does learning about postwar trauma and international trade policies improve human services in the United States? And what does all this have to do with social work?
Plenty, it turns out. Just ask students at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work (GSSW), where global practice is a rapidly growing specialty and learning takes place thousands of miles beyond the classroom.
“Today, no country operates in a bubble, especially when it comes to environmental concerns that impact human lives,” explains adjunct professor Sarah Bexell, PhD, GSSW Research Scholar-in-Residence. “As the fight for global health reaches a tipping point, critical partnerships are developing between social workers and conservationists.”
In recent years, GSSW courses and internships have taken students literally around the world. In Kenya, students helped introduce brick-making machines that provide communities with a source of livelihood that is more sustainable than trapping endangered animals for food. In China, home to some of the world’s most severe biodiversity declines, students learn about environmental and social challenges that have worldwide economic and human impact.
In addition to examining environmental issues, social work students travel to Bosnia, where they observe firsthand how survivors of war and genocide are rebuilding their lives.
Other students spend time in Mexico, improving their Spanish language skills, experiencing the culture and learning why international trade policies have increased many people’s desire to emigrate. “These activities help students understand and work more effectively with the fastest-growing immigrant group in the United States,” says clinical assistant professor Stephen von Merz, MSW, LCSW, director of GSSW’s Certificate in Social Work with Latinos/as.
Through international experiences like these, tomorrow’s social workers are developing global perspectives and learning to better serve others, both here and abroad.
Learn more online at
www.du.edu/socialwork, or call 303-871-2841.
www.du.edu/socialwork, or call 303-871-2841.
