This article presents an interdisciplinary collaboration to address the needs of older adults at risk of social isolation exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. An intergenerational service-learning program developed by the Pennsylvania Department of Aging was offered to several universities across the state of Pennsylvania. The authors share their…

This article presents the conceptual underpinnings of a homelessness intervention program, accompanied by a social work course, that provide direct services and cause advocacy with and on behalf of people experiencing homelessness. A program goal is to educate students in social work, medicine, law, pharmacy, public health, and nursing?about…

This article explores a course-linked service-learning project that facilitated social-problem focused dialogues between students and men who were incarcerated in a prison. Student reflections were life-changing; listening with both their hearts and minds enhanced student learning, increasing empathy, fueling a sense of advocacy, and fostering a…

Homelessness remains a persistent problem in the United States, calling for continuing engagement to address this issue across the micro-macro social work practice continuum. Social work educators have an imperative to expose the next generation of practitioners to this complex social issue and provide opportunities for students to develop…

Community-partnered research presents unique opportunities for personal and professional development among social work practitioners, researchers, and students. It is a vehicle for promoting social work values, generating and sharing knowledge, and connecting research to practice. Findings from these types of partnerships can be instructive for…

In addition to direct practice skills, social work students need to become familiar and competent with macrolevel approaches to addressing youth and transgender youth homelessness. Service-learning courses provide an effective approach for students to learn the necessary knowledge and skills. In two sections of an upper-division social work…

Experiential learning is invaluable when promoting interdisciplinary approaches to teaching complex issues. This article reports on a five-week collaboration between undergraduate students in social work and landscape architecture courses, project impetus being a common-reading text. Students (n=54) constructed three-dimensional models of…

Universities engage students in traditional service-learning projects that often yield "good feelings", even a savior mentality, but typically leave the root causes of social justice issues unexamined and untouched. In contrast to traditional service-learning, critical service-learning bridges this gap with an explicit focus on justice…

Social workers and attorneys both interact with persons from diverse backgrounds every day, yet although interpersonal skills are an essential focus of social work education, these skills are not addressed in legal education. Interdisciplinary courses in which social workers and lawyers learn interpersonal skills together and have an opportunity…

Interdisciplinary programs in schools of social work are growing in scope and number. This article reports on collaboration between a school of social work and a school of engineering, which is forging a new area of interdisciplinary education. The program engages social work students working alongside engineering students in a team approach to…

This article describes an innovative project that combined service learning and community-based partnerships to teach macro practice skills to social work students and citizenship skills to primary school students. The partners, a small social work program, several primary schools, and an internationally recognized civic engagement program,…

Social work students are typically reluctant to engage in research. The research partnership model takes a service-learning approach, allowing students to work with data from a community agency and resulting in a final paper with all the sections of an empirical journal article. Use of this model in teaching social work research enhances student…

An undergraduate social work program developed a service-learning experience in partnership with a local United Way organization to complete a community needs assessment project. The experience integrated the curricula of a social work research methods course and a generalist-macro practice course with the principles and actions of experiential…

This article describes a case example of a pedagogical approach that successfully integrates teaching technical skills, knowledge, and civic engagement. Students embarked on a semester-long project to assess the complexities of the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit, develop a response to address the concerns of community constituents, and…

Licensed social work practice requires a willingness on the part of the practitioner to adhere to a professional values, knowledge, and skills base as reflected in the National Association of Social Workers' Code of Ethics. Students who understand and aspire to this, and who gain experience interacting with people in a service capacity, will be…