VCU School of Social Work

Ph.D. research

The Ph.D. program in social work is a well-respected and rigorous research-focused doctoral program with a mission to create scholars and leaders for social work and human services. We continue to graduate students who have completed high-quality dissertations and attain prominence in academic or policy and practice arenas. For the past several years, doctoral students have been very successful in publication and presentations, especially on the national and international stages, increasing both the visibility of the school and VCU, and advancing its research mission. The past two years have included 50 presentations, 35 of them at national or international conferences, and 24 publications. Indeed, our school has enjoyed a large doctoral presence at the profession’s two major national conferences, one sponsored by the Council on Social Work Education, and the other, the Society for Social Work Research. We sponsored a large cohort (N=10) of students in attending the Qualitative Conference in Champaign-Urbana in 2007.

Our students actively engage in collaborative research with a wide variety of faculty around the university, and in consultation on projects with the Institute for Women’s Health, the Department of Psychology, School of Nursing and the developing School of Public Health, to name a few. In the recent three years, we have recorded dramatic improvements in student success in acquiring external support for Ph.D. research from such programs as the Hartford Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the CSWE Minority Fellows program, the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, and the Lance Armstrong Foundation, to name a few. In 2007, 100 percent of students (4/4) applying for Graduate School Dissertation Awards of $8,000 plus tuition, received those awards. We are proud of the research our students conduct, and are pleased with the collaborative opportunities and the support provided.