For those of you who don't know, the dean of the Family, Home, and Social Sciences college at BYU recently cancelled my program, the Bachelor's of Social Work degree. He did it without any consultation with the students, faculty, or community agencies. He also decided to cut the program the day before applications were due for the next pool of potential BSW's. Although he thinks his reasoning makes sense, he really has not provided sources for his claims and has changed his reason for cutting the program multiple times. It is clear that there is a hidden agenda behind his motives. He probably thought that we as students and community members would just roll over and take it, but boy was he wrong. Amongst other things, a petition has gone around, letters have been sent to President Samuelson, and community agencies who rely on BSW interns have contacted to school looking for answers. Next semester, I will be part of a group of students who will do an extensive research project on the impact that the BSW interns have on the surrounding community (In order to graduate, each must put in 480 hours in the community in a related agency). Yesterday there was a silent protest to show that we would like to have our voices heard. I was not in attendance because I was at my internship, but I was so happy to see that multiple news stations covered the event. There have also been many articles in all three major papers. I will try to post the link to one of the news casts, because I think it is pretty good. The girl that is intervied is named Mallory. I know her pretty well because we are committee members of the BSW student association together. Also, for a brief second, one of my favorite professors (who is actually not a full time professor, he just usually teaches one class per semester, his full time career is at Wasatch Mental Health) is interviewed as well- Marty Matheson. See what you think!
http://www.myfoxutah.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=5075477&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=3.2.1
7 comments:
That is so crazy! I can't believe they would cancel such an important program. I guess it is good that you got in before it ended.
I've been hearing a lot about this. Do you know what the reasons the dean has given are?
Also, Here's a clickable link to the video.
Thanks for the clickable link. I tried forever to do that and it sure didn't work. I do know the reasons the dean gave. In the email (yes email) he sent out to inform us of the program's cancellation on October 31, he listed:
1) LDS Family Services employs MSW, not BSW, graduates
and
2)BSW degree is available through BYU Hawaii, BYU Idaho, and several Utah universities.
1 is clearly false. Any random individual can call LDS Family Services and find out that they employ large numbers of BSW and MSW graduates. Also, this reasoning is weak anyway because how many of BYU Social Work students come to BYU just to work at LDS Family Services? Not many. I can see why maybe with an uneducated guess he can think that since they have the church-owned link. However, a small number of graduates in Social Work go on to work at LDS Family Services.
The second argument is weak as well because BYU-Idaho and BYU Hawaii have still be to accredited in Social Work. Byu-Idaho is working on it now, but that could be a while off still. University of Utah and Weber State are accredited, but what if students didn't want to go to those schools and, like me, came to BYU looking to major in Social Work?
He then changed his reasoning to the fact that there are "no faculty in the pipeline" to teach at BYU and thus you can't have a program without faculty (when the current faculty retire). However, this is also not well-researched and a lame excuse since just reading on Deseret News.com in the comments about this there are people who say that they would love to teach at BYU and they know otehrs who are qualified as well (meaning have PHD in social work and are LDS), but that BYU has never posted job openings or advertised that they are hiring in any way. The dean jumped to that conclusion before checking it out.
There are other little reasons he has given here and there, but they are all unsound and can be easily argued, which happened when he met with the students at a Q and A after he dropped the program. If a question came up that he didn't feel like answering, he simply moved on and was rude and disrespectful in my opinion.
It's just sad to me that so many people have to suffer because of one person's own political agenda.
PS. Sorry that is so long.
That's crappy. None of those sound like reasons at all, but just excuses. I wish we could know what was really happening in his head when he canceled the program.
Is there a video anywhere of that Q&A session? That'd be interesting.
There isn't a video online anywhere, but I do have the transcript that you can read if you want...I can email it to you.
And you are right, they are excuses, not reasons.
Email works. Or you could just make it your next post....
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