Advanced Social Policy: Advocacy

Catalog description

This course is designed to introduce you to what is sometimes called “policy practice,” the application of your knowledge, skills, education, and training to alter laws, regulations, rules, cultures, and institutional routines that affect the well-being of marginalized populations. This is part of the fight for broader social justice that is among your obligations under the NASW’s Code of Ethics. We will examine and evaluate strategies for effective policy change at the federal, state, city, neighborhood, and agency levels through a careful examination of the relevant academic literature and the history of struggles for change. But this is an applied course, too, during which you will undertake your project in policy advocacy on an issue of your choice, learning about how to make change by trying to do it. By the end of the semester, you should have new scholarly and practical knowledge about how to make the world a little more fair and a little more just. This course travels to Washington, D.C. over Spring Break week.