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

  • USC Mobile Dental Clinic

    During the week of April 15 - 21, 2021, five mobile dental clinics, containing 15 dental operatories, took over the parking lot of the Leo Baeck Temple near the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center (WLA VA) to provide free mobile dental care for veterans experiencing homelessness or at-risk for homelessness.

  • Each year, Drew Child Development Corporation (Drew CDC), a nonprofit in South Central Los Angeles dedicated to the education and well-being of at-risk children, recognizes leaders committed to advocacy, education, mental health and improved welfare for children and their families in the community.

  • Military sexual assault

    For members of the military who have experienced sexual assault while serving, the trauma and life-changing impacts of the violence and retaliation for reporting are crushing. Winning the battle against what Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin, III has called the “scourge of sexual assault” may not be easy, but there is a path forward, according to USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work researchers who specialize in military social work.

  • Hector Jiminez

    Many people fear the places Hector Jiminez needs to be. He relies on his battlefield experience — and his studies at USC, where he’s earned two graduate degrees — almost every day.

    In environments where gang violence stalks communities, Army veteran Hector Jiminez is unafraid. He served eight years in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 1990s before returning to Southern California, where he followed a meandering path to a military social work degree at USC.

  • PhD Achievement Award

    Each year, USC recognizes six current PhD students, and their primary advisor, with exceptional academic profiles. Tasha Perdue, graduating PhD student at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, and Alice Cepeda, associate professor, are 2021 recipients of the USC PhD Achievement Award for Perdue’s dissertation work focusing on the illicit drug market in Dayton, Ohio.

  • 2021 Dean's Recognition Awards

    Each year, the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work honors students who have made significant achievements in their academic careers and contributions to the community. We are proud to recognize the following students for their outstanding accomplishments.

    Social Work Alumni Association Award

    Recognizes great potential to contribute to the social work profession and the USC alumni community.

  • Brain Development

    Growing up in a disadvantaged neighborhood is related to children’s brain structure and neurocognitive performance, according to a study published May 3, 2021 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

  • George Floyd

    When I heard the verdict read at the trial of Derek Chauvin, I was relieved that a change had been made in how excessive violence by police officers has been viewed and treated in courts. This gave me some hope that a door had finally been opened to create change. A single verdict does not even begin to erase all the lives lost over decades of police violence based on prejudice and discrimination. It does however signal that change is happening, or is at least possible, if we are vigilant.

  • Latina Immigrant Mothers

    For several years, PhD student Abigail Palmer Molina has focused her dissertation study on the experiences of mothers participating in an intervention for maternal depression, implemented as part of the Head Start program in South Los Angeles. The majority of the mothers were Latina immigrants, and Palmer Molina looked at their experiences to provide a richer picture of the intervention's effectiveness. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year, she was compelled to find out how these women, and their communities, were being affected.

  • United States of Al

    On April 1, 2021, CBS premieres United States of Al - a new comedy from producer Chuck Lorre (Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory) about a Marine combat veteran struggling to readjust to civilian life and the interpreter who served with his unit in Afghanistan and has just arrived to start a new life in America. The show explores the relationship between these two men and how they help each other adjust to their new lives.