Saint Louis University's School of Social Work provides students with an academic experience rooted in research, real-world experience, and a focus on humanity. Learn more about the Master of Social Work program: https://www.slu.edu/social-work/academics/social-work/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/slusw/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sluschoolofsocialwork/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/SocialWorkSLU LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/80491303/admin/ ---- Transcript:Speaker 1: Christine Dragonette, M.S.W. | Alum SLU social work program is focused on the clinical and practical, and I think practicum is really a big piece of that. So a lot of opportunities to connect with agencies in the area and learn about what social work looks like on the ground level.Speaker 2: Anthony Gills, M.S.W. | Alum I believe my program prepared me very well. It gave me those skills to be able to effectively work with people from different cultural backgrounds to know that everybody comes from a different type of upbringing. And I feel like the master's in social [00:00:30] work program here at SLU gave me a lot of different opportunities to learn about that.Speaker 3: Julia Lopez, M.S.W., M.P.H., Ph.D. | Alum It really was like a launching pad for me, and I don't know if that would have happened if I had really gone to another place that didn't have social justice as its main focus.Speaker 1: Christine Dragonette, M.S.W. | Alum I'm the director of social ministry, so I basically direct all of our service and justice programing at the church. So our main program is our [00:01:00] ID and birth certificate program. We work with people experiencing poverty and homelessness to facilitate their access to Missouri State IDs, knowing that identification is the first step toward accessing housing, employment, all of the things that people need to move forward in their lives. I very immediately developed a lot of compassion for what people have to deal with and just navigating all of the barriers that people in poverty face.Speaker 3: Julia Lopez, M.S.W., M.P.H., Ph.D. | Alum I had a deep interest in really working with [00:01:30] low resource marginalized communities, with people with persistent severe mental illness and substance use. So I did a lot of work in the community to help them kind of navigate the arduous system that we have for health services in general, especially for those who are marginalized and don't have health insurance coverage.Speaker 2: Anthony Gills, M.S.W. | Alum In a helping profession. I like doing that. I learned a lot in graduate school here at SLU and all of those knowledge and tools and resources that I learned. [00:02:00] I want to give back to the students that I'm serving now.Speaker 1: Christine Dragonette, M.S.W. | Alum This focus on justice recognizes that each person, every one of us, is not a person in isolation, but a part of our environment and the systems we interact with.Speaker 2: Anthony Gills, M.S.W. | Alum I felt like after going to Saint Louis University, I live by the Jesuit mission now.Speaker 1: Christine Dragonette, M.S.W. | Alum It's my ethical responsibility as a social worker to be aware of my identity and how that affects any biases I might have in my work. I think that helped [00:02:30] to ground me as I was moving through the program, was being engaged in the community outside of just the four walls of a classroom and making the most of pairing what I was learning with practical observation and experience in the world.