Service Learning

Service Learning is the core of Taylor’s social work department. Service Learning means that while students are enrolled in a class learning about a certain content area they are also applying that learning in the community. This is accomplished by serving the population being studied, doing research for an agency using methods being learned, or doing projects for agencies instead of just hypothetical assignments.

By integrating this concept of learning by experience into the curriculum, students see themselves as contributing in ever more significant ways at each level. The program initiates students into this system of learning with their first introductory course, Explorations in Social Work, and continues with electives and the senior-level practice methods course. The idea of service learning has been a part of the social work curriculum for the past six years.

In addition practicums, which are times spent working fulltime in a social service agency or with an international immersion project, are completed in the junior and senior levels of the major.