Apply Now for 2025

Summer 2025 Advanced Standing and Fall 2025 
Applications NOW OPEN for On-Campus MSW

USC University of Southern California

News Archive

  • The Journal of Social Work Practice in Addictions has awarded Jeremy Goldbach, an assistant professor at the USC School of Social Work, an honorable mention for his dissertation, “Toward the Prevention of Substance Use in Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Youth.”

    The journal annually recognizes the best social work dissertations that present new developments in the field of addictions.

  • It’s been more than 50 years since Helen Ramirez, MSW ’59, was a student at the USC School of Social Work, but her connection remains as strong as ever. Every year, the Vista, Calif., retiree autographs her check, stamps the envelope and drops her gift in the mailbox—like she has for the last three decades.

    “I feel very passionate about education,” she said. “Education opened the doors of opportunity for me, and I always try to pay back. That’s my motivation.”

  • With the presidential race heading into its final stretch, both candidates vow to protect the sacred promises made to military families. But neither is offering any details on how they might support military families if we hit a fiscal cliff with budget cuts that could wipe out services for military and veterans' families.

    Month after month, in the midst of a heated presidential and congressional pre-election cycle, we see no organized blueprint to integrate millions of military family members into civilian society.

  • More than 100 scholars convened for a three-day discussion about the health of aging Hispanics in the United States, Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean, as part of the 2012 International Conference on Aging in the Americas hosted by the USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging at the USC School of Social Work.

  • Sexting, the sending or receiving of sexually explicit text messages or photos via cell phone, appears to be part of a cluster of risky sexual behaviors among adolescents, rather than a substitute for "real world" sex, according to a USC study in the October 2012 issue of Pediatrics.

  • A national social work organization has awarded USC School of Social Work doctoral student Gretchen Heidemann with funding to support her dissertation research on the transition of formerly incarcerated women into the community.

    The Robert L. Schneider Dissertation Award, which includes a $1,000 cash grant, is given annually by Influencing State Policy to scholars whose dissertation is focused on social policy research at the state level.

  • The USC School of Social Work will receive the Corporate Champion Award from the Los Angeles Opportunities Industrialization Center for extensive community outreach efforts and involvement in the technology literacy program Computers for Families.

  • If you’re a bank that serves a community that may not be the most savvy when it comes to finances and tends to be wary of banking in general, what do you do to encourage people to use your services?

    You enlist the help of social workers, who are well-versed in community outreach and education.

    That’s the tactic East Los Angeles’ Pan American Bank took when it hired two USC School of Social Work alumni to develop and lead its financial literacy program.

  • The Building Capacity in Military-Connected Schools project, a partnership between the USC School of Social Work and eight public school districts working to create sustainable models of supportive schools, will release four guidebooks Oct. 1 with the goal of bridging the military and civilian divide in K-12 schools.

  • To increase awareness of social work history and the pioneers who made it happen, the USC School of Social Work’s California Social Welfare Archives has created a project designed for incorporation into social work curricula throughout California.