Military Academic Center
The Military Academic Center develops and educates the world’s next generation of military social workers through an innovative and interactive military-focused curriculum, community engagement, and professional networking, as well as the promotion of the academic successes of our school’s student veterans. The USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work is a nationally recognized leader in military social work education.
The school’s military social work courses are designed to prepare social work graduate students to address the needs of service members, veterans, and their families through culturally competent clinical and macro-level practice. The Military and Veterans Programs’ curriculum incorporates the military social work core competences from the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). Courses are taught by distinguished faculty with domain expertise in military social work and the growing mental health needs of service members, veterans, and their families.
Military Social Work Track
Military social workers play an integral role in helping veterans, active-duty service members and military families connect to the care and support they need. These specialized social workers support military personnel facing deployment and help active-duty individuals and veterans cope with a host of physical and psychological issues, including deployment, combat readiness, and military sexual trauma (MST).
Military social workers provide support to military families facing emotional and financial stress, and military-impacted schools and communities.
Our engagement in past, present, and future wars continues to drive the need for highly skilled social workers who can provide therapy, treatment and services for veterans, active-duty service members and their loved ones.
The USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work offers a Military Social Work track where students explore evidence-based methods for helping those who have dedicated their lives to protecting ours. As the first program of its kind to be offered by a civilian research university, the Military Social Work track is designed to complement any department in the MSW program and prepares students to:
- Care for service members, veterans and their families dealing with an array of physical, mental and psychosocial issues
- Better understand military culture
- Learn about the systems of care in place for military personnel before, during and after deployment
- Help returning service members find health and employment services
- Work with local agencies to identify and serve military populations in their communities
Social workers trained in the Military Social Work Track work in a range of settings and offer services such as:
- Mental health therapy for a variety of issues, such as physical illness, disease, substance abuse, family issues and traumatic experiences
- Military-to-civilian life reintegration support
- Crisis intervention
- Individual and family counseling
- Resource navigation, such as financial, housing and benefit assistance
- Aging veteran support and advocacy
Military Social Work Track Requirements
Students are able to complete any two of the following five courses:
633 Theories and Concepts of Military Social Work
640 Clinical Practice w/Military Families
641 Clinical Practice w/Service Members and Veterans
650 Military Veteran Policy and Program Management
Military Immersion Elective option
656- DC Military Immersion
