My dear students,
As we begin another week of remote planning for summer 2020, I am writing on behalf of the faculty to give you a full update about what we are thinking as we look ahead. It has been an extraordinary and confusing time for all of us as national and state advisories have evolved and campuses around the world have grappled with how to respond.
Over these last weeks we have had to make some complicated and difficult decisions regarding summer 2020 terms, Commencement, our annual conference and more. As we respond to an environment that is uncertain and constantly changing, we are being careful to ensure that the decisions we make prioritize health and safety, pedagogy, learning and that they preserve our Smith community. I’ve outlined a few of these decisions below and provided more detail regarding summer 2020 terms, the upcoming 2020 field year (look for even more information soon), our anti-racism and social justice work and professional education offerings in the paragraphs that follow.
- Commencement 2020: We anticipate that even at the conclusion of summer we will not be able to gather in large groups. We made the decision to hold a virtual Commencement to ensure we have time to plan something special and to make the ceremony as meaningful and personal as possible.
- Commencement will be held on Sunday, May 16, 2020 at 1 p.m. ET. We are pleased to announce that Ericka Hart, M.Ed. will be our honored commencement presenter. Ericka identifies as a Black, queer writer and racial/social/gender justice disruptor. She has a powerful voice addressing issues of medical racism and social justice.
- Additionally, many of you have asked whether we might gather for an in-person celebration in August 2021. This is definitely an option but for now, we would like to see what the coming months bring and decide later in the year.
- Deferring an Entering Ph.D. Class: After much deliberation, SSW has made the decision not to enroll an entering doctoral class this summer. The size of an incoming doctoral class is typically small, often 6 people or less and due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, some of the admitted students chose to defer their enrollment for a year and begin in 2021. As a result, it became clear that it would be best to wait until next June to begin a new cohort. We have been in contact with those that planned to begin this summer and each of them, although disappointed by this decision, are deeply committed to starting next year. We have been so encouraged by their graciousness in accepting the decision of the School as well as their commitment to being a part of the cohort next year.
- Re-thinking our annual clinical conference: We made the decision to cancel this year’s conference, Advancing Racial Justice. Instead, we will offer many of the planned breakout sessions virtually throughout the coming year.
- Our InDepth Magazine: As we worked to finalize the magazine this spring, we realized that by not printing and mailing InDepth we could divert these resources to supporting our programs. Soon you will receive a link to the spring edition of InDepth. For now, we will continue to send more communications electronically until it makes sense to begin producing InDepth again.
Delivery of Summer 2020 Programs
As you know, we made the necessary decision to deliver summer 2020 programs through alternate modes of instruction. Our faculty have been diligently working to ensure our program is still of the highest caliber this summer and I am happy to be able to share some details from our work with you.
As we have planned for summer 2020, we have come back again and again to our principles as a School. We know we must offer an educational experience that has depth and that holds our values of relationship and equity paramount as we move our programs into the virtual environment.
In order to do this we have had to revise large parts of the School’s processes. The faculty have been clear that to teach well and to serve students and instructors with different teaching/learning styles and abilities, it is not a matter of moving in-person syllabi into Zoom sessions. It’s about re-thinking how we support teaching and learning and the community that we prize.
On the logistics side of things, we have accomplished much. We have:
- Reconfigured our M.S.W. and Ph.D. course schedules to accommodate students who are learning in multiple time zones.
- Reconfirmed with instructors that they are interested in continuing to teach in this new environment and that they are able to do so.
- Worked to ensure that each student has a course schedule that fits their needs as much as possible.
We have made these shifts as carefully as we could and as a result only two instructors could no longer continue with us this summer and about 20 students had to make adjustments to their schedule that they were not anticipating. Our Registrar worked with each of these students individually to help them get a workable and desirable study plan.
In the coming weeks, the faculty will continue to work with instructors to finalize their syllabi for alternate modes of instruction. We recognize that to make these kinds of changes, all faculty must give additional time to their course preparation and to SSW. In recognition of the wisdom, experience and labor that our adjunct faculty bring to this, we have provided additional compensation for the extra work we are requiring from them.
Even as we have faced challenges in moving our programs to alternate modes of instruction, we recognize that the timing of our summer terms means that we are benefitting enormously from what Smith College has learned over the past several months. In coordination with Smith’s educational technology office we are:
- Offering our faculty and students a roster of tailored trainings about how to teach and learn using alternate modes of instruction.
- Ensuring all instructors, students, and advisers have the technology they will need to participate.
- Delivering hotspots and loaner devices to all members of our learning community who require additional technology.
We are also making arrangements to offer the range of student services--from wellness and mental health services to library services and learning accommodations--to a student body that will be located around the country and the world. We will continue to use these support services fully throughout the summer and beyond.
Each of us is doing this while we hold the uncertainty, isolation and difficulty of this pandemic. We are working to retain and strengthen the cohesion of our SSW community and our social networks by providing virtual spaces to gather, offering a range of professional and social spaces and ensuring that we are in close and regular communication with one another.
With the help and support of our wonderful alums, we created a Student Emergency Fund to try to help with some of the financial hardship for students. We just announced that we have expanded the criteria for these awards. Students may apply for up to $400 of emergency financial aid grants for expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to coronavirus. This includes expenses such as food, housing, course materials, technology, health care and child-care expenses.
As we plan for the summer, we want to find joyful things for our community as well. We have been busy meeting with student organizations, incoming and returning students and faculty to design new methods of connection and are looking forward to continuing to share them with all of you.
Looking Ahead at Field Placements for Fall 2020
We are looking ahead to plan for the field year this fall. We are working in coordination with our affiliated field partners and other schools of social work to best anticipate how the pandemic will impact field placements and to make appropriate adjustments and develop contingency plans for a range of possibilities.
In some ways we are advantaged because of our single specialization in clinical social work and because our students have a strong reputation for their level of preparation. There is a growing demand for clinical services and in many cases, clinical services can be delivered well remotely. We are, however, anticipating changes in the capacity of some organizations to work with interns and/or disruptions to their services. We are taking all of these factors into account in our planning. We are considering ways to build in flexibility to both service delivery and the field year and to work with organizations as they begin to pivot and grow their online clinical services. Katelin Lewis-Kulin, director of field education, will be providing more information to you in a separate communication soon.
Our Anti-Racism, Racial Justice and Social Justice Work
Despite all of the programmatic work that has focused our attention, the faculty have been clear that there are important ways that we can use our platform as a School to name and speak out against the ways that racism and inequity is embedded within the experience of the pandemic and to create resources for the clinical social work profession and the larger community.
The faculty recently authored a powerful statement addressing the COVID-19 related racism and xenophobia experienced by Asian and Pacific Islander communities and communities of color. I have shared the statement with the national consortium of schools and departments of social work encouraging deans and directors to take our statement in part or in its entirety, rebrand it as their own and share it widely. It is most important to engage as many people as possible with understanding how racist agendas are being advanced within this pandemic. I have heard from many other schools who will be circulating our statement.
Additionally, the faculty are committed to moving ahead with our anti-racism and racial justice work through this summer. Earlier this winter I sent an update to the student and adjunct faculty bodies about the faculty’s work to address the recommendations submitted by external consultants Ann Zanzig and Jim Gray last fall. As I described in that message, we decided to enter a period of self-study to rethink how we hold principles of anti-racism, racial justice and racial equity in our programs and processes. Our intention continues to be to re-envision an anti-racism commitment to guide us over the next decade that will be relevant, responsive and meaningful.
With the onset of the pandemic, our work has shifted but our intention has not. We are crafting a new timeline for this work and will move ahead as best as we can in a virtual environment while engaging our community in identifying the key principles, values and elements a new commitment might contain. A committee of resident and adjunct faculty, students and staff has been formed to think through how we can best achieve maximum community involvement in the least taxing manner.
Professional Education Offerings
We are leveraging the resources of SSW Professional Education to provide more support to our alumni and the professional community in the delivery of clinical services. In recent weeks, SSW PE has developed many COVID-19 related trainings on topics such as working with COVID-19 related anxiety and improving nervous system regulation during times of great stress as part of their general offerings. In addition, PE offered a free-of-charge training on Transitioning to Telehealth for our alumni. When field placements ended early this spring, SSW PE also moved to offer students pre-recorded webinars as optional learning opportunities to help fill the unexpected time gap.
SSW PE is also creating resources for the larger community. There are many populations currently in need of psychosocial support and crisis response and we are creating ways to bring students, faculty and staff together to offer clinical and supportive services. We recently offered a free webinar on co-parenting in the time of COVID-19 and faculty are piloting a new train-the-trainers course, Psychosocial Capacity Building in Response to COVID-19, for faculty, students and staff. Our aim is to create a free-of-charge resource that we could offer more broadly.
In the next two weeks, you will be receiving more communications from the School as we prepare to come together - albeit virtually - for learning and community. You will be able to find these and all other recent communications on our website at ssw.smith.edu/coronavirus. This summer won’t be one any of us expected but our community roots are strong and I have no doubt that we will lead the way in creating a virtual learning experience and community.
Wishing you all health and peace,
Marianne R.M. Yoshioka, M.S.W., MBA, Ph.D.
Dean | Elizabeth Marting Treuhaft Professor
Co-Editor-in-Chief, Smith College Studies in Social Work
Smith College School for Social Work
