Visual Social Work Graduate Certificate

The certificate in Visual Social Work enhances students’ ability to use unique approaches for understanding, communicating about, intervening and positively impacting complex social justice issues. The certificate is designed for students not satisfied with a purely theoretical or conceptual understanding of human problems, but who instead desire the first-person voice in the testimonial and to bring the viewer into the world of the storyteller’s experience. This personalization of social issues recasts previous notions of witness and testimony by calling on the viewer to engage and empathize with the personal story of the subject through their own self-representation. Macro issues are made manifest into micro experiences. The certificate trains students how to examine issues visually, drawing from social work and other disciplines, qualitative research and archival material.

The USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work offers university certificates which provide students advanced practice or research training through a social justice and intercultural competence lens that emphasizes community, organizational and environmental justice. Certificates are designed to complement and deepen training provided through our degree programs by focusing on experiential application of concepts in relation to particular and diverse client populations, settings, and systems. Each certificate consists of at least 12 units, which may in part be satisfied by courses completed for a degree program. Certificates are also available to graduate students from other disciplines and to employed professionals.