Student Services
Advisement
Advisement – Working with your Advisor and the Social Work Advisory Team (SWAT)
The Director of the Undergraduate Program will oversee the academic success of all students. Upon entrance into the program, each student will be assigned a primary advisor, but will have the option to work directly with the Director, if they choose. The Director of the Undergraduate Program shall be the primary advisor to all international students and those holding any form of visa. Academic advisors will collaborate with students and work with them to create a course of study that is meaningful and inspiring. Advisors are committed to supporting students as they explore their interests and opportunities both academically and professionally. Advising meetings are an excellent time to lean into self-determination and have rich conversations around maximizing opportunities within Silver, the University and the practicum of social work. With careful planning many students have crafted their course of study to allow for study abroad, interesting minors and even double majors. SWAT works closely as a team to make sure that students can have the most meaningful educational experience possible.
An individual academic advisement session precedes registration. Students should arrive to their advisement meeting prepared to discuss the specific courses they plan to take for the following semester. At advisement, students will review their selected and required courses and will be provided the needed access codes for their social work courses and be cleared to register. Students are required to meet with their advisors to be cleared for registration.
Field Learning
NYU Silver is connected to an extraordinary diversity of health and social service agencies in the greater New York area and in Shanghai.
The School’s strong partnerships with more than 600 public and nonprofit agencies means that we can offer our students Field placements in an impressive range of sites. Our placements provide students with dynamic learning opportunities through which they develop skills and better understand the realities of coping with complex problems in the context of specific professional settings.
Explore Field Placement Settings
About Field Learning
According to the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), Field Education is the signature pedagogy in social work at the bachelors and masters level. The Field experience goes by many names: “Field learning,” “practicum,” “Field placement,” “the internship.” However, while each of those terms may capture some part of the process, none quite encapsulates this vital method of study. At NYU Silver, we think of Field learning as the open classroom. Your Field experience will allow you to take what you have learned in your classes ‒ the theories; the knowledge from books, articles and professors; the information that you have assessed critically and that you are digesting and synthesizing ‒ and will enable you to apply it directly with clients in agencies, organizations, communities, and neighborhoods.
Within the context of your closely supervised Field placement, you will gain hands-on experience outside of a traditional classroom while you continue to learn, not only in the Practice class you take concurrently, but also from your Field Instructor, Task Supervisor, and supervision meetings, as well as from your clients and the communities you are serving.
Goals of Field Learning
For BS students and MSW students in the Generalist Practice, or first, year, the primary goal of Field learning is to provide a foundation of social work practice skills, guided by social work values and ethics, applicable across a wide range of systems and populations. At NYU Silver, Social Work Practice classes and Field learning are integrated for BS and Generalist Practice MSW students; the students’ Practice instructors serve as their Field learning Faculty Advisors in order to provide optimal support and foster optimal learning.
For MSW students in the Specialized Practice, or second year, the focus of their Field learning is on specific aspects of social work within a particular practice area (see Placement Settings) along with their professional development and growth.
The Placement Process
The Field Learning Office at NYU Silver devotes considerable effort to matching students with appropriate, enriching field learning opportunities to ensure their full development and growth as social work professionals.
Each year, students answer a questionnaire and submit their resumes to help the Field Learning Office match them with a placement agency that will fulfill their educational goals. In the Generalist Practice year, a member of the faculty in the Field learning office assigns the student to an agency, based on the student’s program, past experience, requirement of the Field learning site, and where they live.
In the Specialized Practice year, it is possible for the student to concentrate his or her graduate education on specific aspects of social work within a particular practice area. The student’s Field learning Faculty Advisor, in the capacity of educational consultant, assists the student with the development of educational goals and objectives for the Specialized Practice year that will facilitate the individual student’s professional progress.