Some students enter Providence College knowing that they want to major in Social Work. Others decide on Social Work after taking introductory level courses in the major, such as the Introduction to Social Work  (SWK 101) or Human Behavior/Life Span (SWK 253), discovering the fit between their own values and interests and the field of social work.  Most of our students are attracted to the wide variety of options embodied in the field of social work--the breadth of settings in which social workers can practice, the diversity of roles embodied in social work, and the flexibility that social work offers as their interests grow and change.

One of the determining factors in students choosing social work as their major is the 600 hours of  professionally supervised practice in community-based health and human service organizations which is incorporated in their study of social work. Unlike disciplines such as psychology and sociology in which students learn about people, in social work students not only learn about the situations with which people and communities struggle, they also apply those understandings to situations in which they help, preparing them with experience and skills for work in the field immediately following graduation.