MSW Waiver of Requirements

Program Philosophy and Overview

We at the L.S.U. School of Social Work believe that doctoral education in Social Work must involve first and foremost a passionate commitment to learning, and a specific commitment to the pursuit of new knowledge that can improve the lives of our client populations. The Ph.D. Program at the L.S.U. School of Social Work prepares the next generation of social work educators, researchers, administrators, and policy-makers to contribute to the creation of the knowledge base of our profession. We prepare students above all else to conduct empirical research targeted at the pressing needs of our client populations and service systems. Social work practitioners must have the highest quality up-to-date knowledge to strengthen the evidence base of their work, and it is the job of doctoral-trained social workers to provide this. The major educational outcomes for our doctoral students are:

To learn about the historical and contemporary contexts of social work research, focusing on the nature of research questions posed and the methods used to address these
To learn to critically analyze the quality and merits of social work research in a variety of substantive areas
To produce original research relevant to the field of social work, including the framing of research questions, synthesis of the existing relevant literature, the use of appropriate methods to investigate answers to research questions, and the analysis, synthesis, and interpretation of data
To translate learning to practice, especially through preparation for teaching beginning social work professionals.

Our doctoral program is now the only Ph.D. Program in Louisiana. It is an interdisciplinary degree in which students are expected to explore diverse areas and traditions of inquiry and use a variety of research methods, all the while keeping a sharp focus on the need for information to inform social work practice. It is important to note that ours is not an advanced clinical program. The course of study in our doctoral program is completely oriented toward mastering the skills needed to design and conduct empirical social work research.
Our faculty is well-equipped to effectively mentor doctoral student research. Major areas of research and scholarship expertise that our current faculty mentors provide our doctoral students include:

Child welfare/child maltreatment
Children’s attachments to caregivers
Substance abuse/prevention
Juvenile justice
School truancy
Welfare/family support-related policies
The personal and social circumstances of welfare-receiving families
Social capital and poverty
Vulnerable families
High risk youth
Gay and lesbian youth
Gerontology
Domestic violence
Mental health/mental health interventions
International and comparative social welfare and social development, including opportunities for research at selected universities world-wide.

Our program is small, usually admitting 3-5 students per year. This means that all students work very closely with faculty mentors, oftentimes directly with them on their on-going research. We have a diverse student body that includes students from several foreign countries and we encourage international applications.
Doctoral studies in Social Work at L.S.U. are characterized by three major phases of work: coursework (completion of a minimum of 39 credit hours of coursework); the general exam (an intense period of self-guided study and examination directed by a faculty committee), and the dissertation (the student’s original research, guided by a primary mentor and 3 other faculty committee members). It is expected that the period of study for the doctoral degree in social work will be three to five years, but not exceeding seven.
It is a good time to pursue a doctoral degree in Social Work. The profession increasingly demands evidence-based knowledge and expertise in research and evaluation. Recently, the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work, a national/international consortium of Social Work Ph.D. Program Directors, completed a national study that found that Social Work Programs at virtually all levels in the U.S. face a tremendous shortage of doctoral-trained academicians in the coming years to fill the ranks of the social work programs in our colleges and universities. We need more social workers who are passionate about pursuing the answers to important questions affecting our client populations and eager to take on the challenges to improving social work practice and the well-being of our clients.