The curriculum for the public safety social work certificate is designed to respond to the growing need for specialized public safety social work training across the nation. The certificate program will prepare social workers to engage in crisis intervention and macro social work embedded within police, fire, and EMS agencies or on mobile crisis teams.
It is strongly recommended that current MSW students or MSW graduates who have not taken a psychopathology class choose that option as it is required for clinical licensure. Students who have already taken a psychopathology class should take the course on cross-disciplinary teams. These three courses are designed to be stand-alone courses, which can be taken in any order.
Students who wish to take all four courses are allowed to enroll in the fourth course if they choose, though they should be aware that this is above the requirements for their MSW program or certificate program.
Admission requirements include the following:
- Undergraduate degree from an accredited university
- Enrollment in a Master of Social Work program in any accredited program in the United States or Canada.
- A current MSW GPA of 3.00 or higher.
- TOEFL of 550 or 80 iBT, or IELTS 6.0 for international students
or
- Enrollment in Valparaiso University’s MSW Program
or
- A completed Master of Social Work Degree from any accredited program in the United States or Canada.
Students who do not meet these requirements but have reason to believe that they can succeed in and benefit from graduate study will be considered on an individual basis and, if appropriate, admitted conditionally.
Students who are pursuing clinical licensure should take SOCW 691 - Psychopathology for Social Workers . Other students should take SOCW 694 - Topics, Ethics, and Cross Disciplinary Teams: Navigating Healthcare, School, Criminal Justice, and Other Settings .
All courses that comprise the Public Safety Certificate are only offered online. They are not offered in-person. All courses that comprise the Public Safety Certificate have synchronous components. Some are partially asynchronous.
