Universityof Alabama senior and Pace, Fla. native Stephanie Craig was looking for a hands-on way to help people when she decided to change her major from political science.
She discovered social work would be the perfect vehicle to help influence social work and medical policy, and work directly with patients and clients.
This semester, Craig will get an opportunity to experience both ends of the social work spectrum in a pilot program at Walter Reed Military Medical Center.
Craig, a social work major in UA’s Honors College, will participate this fall in the first structured undergraduate internship program at Walter Reed. Along with Marshalek, seniors Caroline Miller, of Charlotte, N.C.; Mick Marshalek, of Flower Mound, Texas; Shankitta Brown, of York, Ala.; and Keri Warren, of Decatur, Ala., will begin their internship on Aug. 20 and will remain in Washington D.C. for the fall semester.
The students will live in the Washington, D.C. metro area and will gain valuable experience in social work administration, advocacy and direct service at the largest military treatment facility in the world.
“I like policy the most, learning how everything runs, especially in a government-run hospital,” Craig said. “I’ve been to D.C. a few times, and it’s beautiful. I love it. I look forward to seeing all the monuments and museums.”
The students were interviewed and selected from a pool of 25 honors/honors eligible students by UA faculty members Drs. Javonda Williams and Debra Nelson-Gardell, and Carroll Phelps, instructor and coordinator of the school’s Washington D.C. MSW Internship program, now in its 35th year. Additionally, officials from Walter Reed interviewed each student via telephone and conducted thorough security checks before granting each student clearance to the hospital.
The school began its honors program in the spring and is open to undergraduates in UA’s Honors College who are majoring in social work.
“These students had to have a track record of academic excellence and an aptitude to do more,” Williams said. “It’s been great to experience the uptick in students who’ve been accepted into the honors program.”
Phelps said she was contacted in February by Walter Reed officials about the idea of starting a BSW internship program at the hospital. While second-year MSW students had completed successful placements at Walter Reed in the past, Phelps admitted she was surprised that Walter Reed selected UA students to launch the program over the many schools of social work in the metro area and the more than 600 schools of social work in the country.
“That says so much about what our MSW students have done in the past,” Phelps said. “They said to us, ‘your students are just so well prepared.’ We’re honored to have been chosen, especially with so many choices in theD.C. metro area to form this partnership.”
The undergraduate placement will differ from the MSW program’s semester-long stay in Washington D.C. in that the school’s undergrads will experience a “generalist” placement. MSW students of the past and spring 2015 work at more than a dozen social service agencies, which prepare them both personally and professionally by exposing them to cutting edge direct service programs as well as policy and advocacy implementation.Phelps said students will be challenged at Walter Reed, particularly by the sometimes intensive nature of working directly with clients and families in crisis.
“They’ll have a lot of client work, and some with service members who just left the battlefield,” Phelps said. “But we’ve set up a rotational placement for the students, so they will get a variety of experiences, which include all areas of medical social work as well as service learning opportunities. I will also teach our field seminar for BSW students in D.C., which will incorporate policy and advocacy through attending Supreme Court oral arguments, meetings with Representative Terri Sewell on Capitol Hill and speakers from the Executive branch, and having a tour of the Holocaust Museum by a survivor.”
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Marshalek, UA to help pilot new internship program at Walter Reed