Health Professionals work in ever-changing environments where they must be prepared for anything to happen. Their work requires technical skills as well as the ability to improvise. For this reason, hands-on learning is essential to learning for these careers.
At NKU, we value the advantage of experience. Our programs require clinical field experience so that students can learn by actually working in their prospective fields. Field experience begins in the first semester and continue throughout the program as students grow and learn.
Welcome to NKU’s BSW Field Placement webpage. Field education has been designated by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) as the signature pedagogy in social work education. “Signature pedagogy represents the central form of instruction and learning in which a profession socializes its students to perform the role of practitioner. Professionals have pedagogical norms with which they connect and integrate theory and practice. In social work, the signature pedagogy is field education. The intent of field education is to connect the theoretical and conceptual contribution of the classroom with the practical world of the practice setting. It is a basic precept of social work education that the two interrelated components of curriculum—classroom and field—are of equal importance within the curriculum, and each contributes to the development of the requisite competencies of professional practice. Field education is systematically designed, supervised, coordinated, and evaluated based on criteria by which students demonstrate the achievement of program competencies” (CSWE 2015).
Students in the NKU BSW program complete 400 hours in the field of social work. The NKU BSW program has relationships with over 100 agencies in the Northern Kentucky greater Cincinnati metropolitan area. These agencies range from hospice to police social work. Feel free to take a look at the field manual and let us know what questions you may have.
Dr. Tara McLendon BSW Field Director, may be reached at mclendont1@nku.edu.
Students in the NKU MSW program complete either 600 (Advanced Standing Program) & 900 (Standard Program) hours in the field of social work. The NKU MSW program has relationships with over 250 agencies in the Northern Kentucky greater Cincinnati metropolitan area. These agencies range from hospice to police social work. Feel free to take a look at the field manual and let us know what questions you may have.
Kelly Fallon, MSW Field Director, may be reached at fallonk2@nku.edu.
Current MSW field experience students may access the InPlace Field Experience program software by clicking on this link:
