Monday, August 4, 2014

Summer at Penn School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2)


It is an exciting summer of change at SP2!

July proved to be a month of welcomes. We were delighted to welcome Dr. John L.  Jackson, who began his tenure as Dean on July 1st.  Although Dr. Jackson is new to SP2, he is not new to the University of Pennsylvania. Dean Jackson joined Penn in 2006 as the first University Professor of the Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) program. This program recruits preeminent faculty who have appointments in more than one Penn school and who utilize knowledge and expertise from different disciplines and professional viewpoints to address complex social problems.  As many of you know, SP2 is an interdisciplinary school; as such, we are honored to welcome such an eminent scholar, who has written and taught on issues that include—but are not limited to—theories of racism’s social impact, urban conflict and change in the digital age, visual culture and forms of scholarly filmmaking, the anthropology of urban religion, and critical approaches to ethnographic research methods.  The Admissions Office looks forward to continuing to work closely with Dean Jackson as the 2014-2015 school year unfolds.

We also welcomed our largest Advanced Standing Master of Social Work cohort in July, when 30 exceptional students formally joined the SP2 community. Our Advanced Standing students come from 10 states and from 23 Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) programs. After taking classes and beginning their field placements this summer, they will join the rest of SP2’s Advanced Year students in the fall and will graduate in May.

Five exchange students from Beijing Normal University also joined us in July. These students will be at SP2 until mid-August to attend one summer class and five special seminars given by SP2 faculty and staff and to make weekly field visits to local social service agencies. In addition to learning about social work and social policy in the United States, our Chinese exchange students have experienced local culture, visited neighboring cities and national sites, and made friends with the SP2 students. Their experiences, knowledge and thoughts about social policy and social work from the international perspective have also benefited SP2 students in and out of class.

As we prepare for the fall recruiting season, we are finalizing plans for our dynamic  website redesign, which will go live in late August.  Hopefully, you will find this vibrant new site informative and easy to navigate on your mobile devices.

On a different technological front, the SP2 Admissions team is currently hard at work implementing a new online application system. In keeping with the University’s interdisciplinary ethos, this new system will unite the applications for most of Penn’s graduate schools into one University-wide form, which will hopefully simplify the application process for our prospective students. We expect to open applications to all of SP2’s programs in mid-September; if you would like to receive more information in the meantime, you are more than welcome to keep an eye on our website, join our Prospective Student Listserv, or reach out to the Admissions team at apply@sp2.upenn.edu.

As this exciting and busy summer winds down, we look forward to our upcoming recruitment season.  It is our hope that we will have the opportunity to meet many of you at one of our onsite or online information sessions as well as while we are on the road. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about the admissions process.

Mary Mazzola, MSW, EdD
Associate Dean for Enrollment Management and Global Outreach
mmazzola@sp2.upenn.edu

 
Adiza M. Ezell, MSW
Associate Director, Admissions and Recruitment
adiza@sp2.upenn.edu

 
Genevieve Liberatore
Admissions Specialist, Admissions and Recruitment
glib@sp2.upenn.edu

 
Laura Baldasarre
Recruitment Coordinator, Admissions and Recruitment
laurabal@sp2.upenn.edu

 
Yuyuan Liu
Global Initiatives Coordinator, International Recruitment and Global Initiatives
yuyuanl@sp2.upenn.edu

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