phd social work university of calgary

1. Summary of Degree Programs of the Faculty of Social Work

For a list of programs offered by the Faculty of Social Work, search Programs . The Overview , Admissions and Program Details tabs in the selected program contain important information regarding admission and graduation requirements.

Degrees Offered

Undergraduate

Bachelor of social work (bsw ).

The Faculty of Social Work offers an innovative Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) degree accredited by the Canadian Association for Social Work Education. The BSW program prepares students for generalist Social Work practice in a variety of professional settings.

Program options: University Transfer (including After-Degree) route: University Transfer and After-Degree students may be admissible to this route, offered in the following delivery formats:

Blended BSW – offered at Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge campuses. It is a combination of face-to-face learning on campus and online learning.

Online BSW – the entirely online BSW allows students to pursue their education remotely, with the exception of the required in-person practicum courses.  

Alberta Social Work Diploma route: Students with an approved Alberta Social Work Diploma may be admissible to this route, offered in the following delivery formats:

Blended BSW – offered at Calgary and Edmonton campuses. It is a combination of face-to-face learning on campus and online learning.

Online BSW – the entirely online BSW allows students to pursue their education remotely, with the exception of the required in-person practicum courses. 

Master of Social Work (MSW)

The Faculty offers a Master's program accredited by the Canadian Association for Social Work Education leading to the MSW degree. The objective of the MSW program is to prepare students for advanced professional practice in social work. Students can choose the course-based or the thesis-based route in one of the three specializations: Clinical Social Work Practice, International and Community Development, and Leadership in the Human Services. The program is available for both BSW graduates and graduates from other disciplines in Calgary and Edmonton. Please visit the faculty’s website socialwork.ucalgary.ca for specific program delivery information.

More details about the MSW program can be found here: Programs | UCalgary Catalog .

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Social Work

The PhD in Social Work is a research-based degree and is intended to produce highly qualified social work researchers, administrative leaders, policy makers, and educators. Please check the faculty’s website to determine the program location for the year that you apply.

Graduate Certificates in Social Work

Graduate Certificates in Social Work serve as stand-alone credentials for practicing social workers who seek formal professional development opportunities in their field or provide practicing social workers a flexible option to pursue the MSW degree.

More information about Graduate Certificates can be found here: Programs | UCalgary Catalog .

Back to Faculty of Social Work Overview

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University of Calgary

Faculty of social work.

Our PhD is a research-based degree intended to produce highly qualified social work researchers and teachers who will become future leaders of the social work profession. Faculty members focus on many substantive areas relevant to social work practice as well as a variety of methodological strategies. We emphasize creativity as well as rigor, interdisciplinarity, and a commitment to student success.

• Where: Calgary, Alberta
• Type: Public
• Degree Offered: PhD Program in Social Work
• Program Type: In-Person Program Only
• Students: Full-time Enrollment Only
• Average Enrolled Students Yearly: 3-5 Students
• GRE Requirement: No
• TOEFL Requirement: Yes, with a cut-off score
• MSW Requirement: Yes, MSW or Masters degree required
• Two Years Post-MSW Experience Required: Yes
• Joint MSW/PhD Program: No

Substantive Research Areas of Faculty

• Aging/Gerontology
• Child Welfare
• Children & Families
• Community Practice/Macro Practice
• Family Violence
• International Social Work & Global Development
• Housing/Homelessness
• Social/Economic Justice

For more information visit University of Calgary .

To update your program's profile, please complete the Program Directory Update Form .

Danielle Smith wants ideology 'balance' at universities. Alberta academics wonder what she's tilting at

Premier muses about new provincial research programs to produce more conservative thought.

Social Sharing

From the exam-marking trenches to the ivory tower executive suites, Premier Danielle Smith has injected nervousness throughout Alberta's post-secondary sector.

It initially seemed her Bill 18, the Provincial Priorities Act, was intended to make her government play checkstop or gatekeeper whenever the federal government and mayors made deals without provincial involvement.

Then it became apparent that Smith's government would apply the same scrutiny to the higher-learning sector, and the premier's remarks made it clear she had federal research grants and notions of ideological "balance" in her targets.

"When the government of Alberta states that it wants to align research funding with provincial priorities, it risks colouring research coming from Alberta post-secondary institutions as propaganda," wrote Gordon Swaters , a University of Alberta mathematics professor and academic staff association president. 

"Students are caught in the UCP's forever war with Ottawa," stated James Steele, head of the University of Calgary Graduate Students' Association.

Bill Flanagan chimed in on his University of Alberta president's blog Wednesday: "I will continue to do all I can to advocate for a regulatory framework that does not impede our ability to secure federal funding and operates in a manner consistent with the university's core commitment to academic freedom."

An academic world, wondering jointly: what's Smith going to do? 

It doesn't appear even she knows, not yet revealing any clear direction. 

Campus improv night

Several signs, in fact, suggest that the UCP government did not initially conceive of the post-secondary realm to be a major player in this Bill 18 drama — at least, not until journalists began asking last week how those provincially controlled entities could get tangled up in the bill's oversight.

Consider the following:

• Advanced Education Minister Rajan Sawhney didn't participate in the April 10 news conference; only Smith and Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver did.
• The premier didn't mention post-secondary once in announcing the program; it only came up when a reporter asked about it, and Smith mentioned a curiosity about social-science research.
• When Sawhney was approached to discuss this the next day, her comments suggested no crackdown or limits on federal grants to researchers, seemingly at odds with what the premier would later say.
• When Smith began speaking in more detail in interviews on April 12, she extensively referred to a Nova Scotia business professor's criticisms of the system, which appeared in an Edmonton Journal column that very day.

If this policy approach involved more forethought, one imagines there would be a body of evidence or anecdotes beyond that morning's newspaper. Smith did cite one political scientist's survey that indicated far more left-identifying Canadian professors than right-wing ones — which was mentioned in that same Journal column.

This week, she tabled that article in the legislature.

• Alberta bill requiring provincial approval of federal funding risks political meddling, academics say

A few days later, in her 38-minute debate speech on the bill she extensively quoted from that piece, but also brought in a second anecdotal point — another article.

This one came from the National Post in 2021  when a McGill University chemistry professor's protested he was denied a science research grant because the "woke" granting agency expected him to factor diversity and equity into his assistant hiring. Unmentioned by Smith, that agency's peer review committee gave the same scientist, Patanjali Kambhampati, a $144,565 grant last year .

For those keeping score at home, that's two articles about out-of-province profs forming almost the entire public justification for Smith's coming policy on universities.

Now, journalists love to imagine they have massive influence in high offices, and probably inflate their self-importance too often (or maybe this is just me), but it's likely that most journalists, and more importantly most citizens, don't expect or intend for articles or columns to form not just the backbone but the entire skeleton of political decision-making.

But even if Smith cobbled together her justification from news clippings after she tabled Bill 18, there is at least a sense of where her grievances lie. And if it's not clear what route she'll take with this legislation, she's signalled what the desired destination is. 

She's made it clear she believes more conservative-tilted research would bring more like-minded academics and then students. "If we did truly have balance in universities, then we would see that we would have just as many conservative commentators as we do liberal commentators," she told the CBC's  Power and Politics .

Smith offered this week two potential paths she could pursue. One is using this provincial oversight bill to track all federal research grants to determine what share goes where — even though the granting agencies already publish everything online, as many academics have recently noted to the UCP.

"The other way is that we could also establish our own research programs to make sure that we're providing that kind of balance," Smith added.

The UCP government, in this notion, would create a new body to support ideologically focused research that Smith doesn't feel gets its fair shake from the non-partisan, peer-review committees that dole out agency grants at arm's length from the Liberal government, or governments of various stripes, that have overseen these agencies for more than a century.

Believe this to be far-fetched and heavy-handed for a partisan government to set up their own shop to conduct public-interest research? 

It's already happened in the UCP government era — twice.

Former premier Jason Kenney gave his "energy war room" twin mandates to advocate for and research oil and gas  — essentially to do work he felt was lacking elsewhere. Smith has maintained this program.

In early April, Smith announced a new Crown corporation for research and expertise on addiction recovery  to bolster, hone and spread elsewhere the type of drug-crisis response her government has already invested heavily in.

• Province says new Crown corporation for addictions research will be independent, objective

The constitution squarely places post-secondary education into provincial jurisdiction, but the federal level has long led the way on supporting research projects.

The province topping up federal research funding could be a good thing, said Richard Sigurdson, past arts dean at the University of Calgary. Emphasis on could.

"It would only be great if the provincial government was to provide funds at an arm's length, non-partisan fashion," he wrote in an email while on academic administrative leave in Berlin. "There cannot be any interference with institutional autonomy or academic freedom."

If the government takes this approach and establishes its own research body in the style of the Fraser Institute — a conservative think-tank where Smith herself used to work — expect heaps of controversy. But it could be less messy than actually using Bill 18's gatekeeper function to interfere with federal agency grants, something that the Quebec government doesn't do, despite long having the provincial go-between powers that Alberta now intends to mimic.

'Firing a shot'

Alex Usher, a longtime analyst with the consultancy Higher Education Strategy Associates, doesn't expect the Smith government to intervene with agency research grants.

But he still expects a fight that universities won't like.

"While the UCP government may not be targeting tri-council grants specifically, they are firing a shot at the province's universities, warning them that they will be expected to show 'ideological balance,'" Usher wrote on his website .

"God knows what this will mean in practice, but my take would be that it will be low-level skirmishing and attempts at micro-management for the rest of the UCP's term of office, combined with attempts to [wage] culture war [over] odd-sounding research projects in what the right likes to call ' grievance studies .'"

• Analysis Submitted for her approval: Danielle Smith's new jab at Trudeau hits cities, universities too

The premier's recent rhetoric doesn't make it clear she knows what it will mean in practice, either. The Bill 18 debate seems to have become the jumping-off point, perhaps due to a combination of fluke and expansively written legislation. 

Now the premier has been thinking about it, and finding articles to read. So an entire sector will be left to wait, wonder and worry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Producer and writer

Jason Markusoff analyzes what's happening — and what isn't happening, but probably should be — in Calgary, Alberta and sometimes farther afield. He's written in Alberta for more than two decades, previously reporting for Maclean's magazine, Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal. He appears regularly on Power and Politics' Power Panel and various other CBC current affairs shows. Reach him at [email protected]

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About UCalgary Social Work

We are among the largest schools of social work in Canada. We have a rich tradition of innovation and leadership in social work education, field education, and transformative research.

Where would you like to go?

Thinking about a career in social work? Check out our programs pages >>  Currently a student? Find information here >>

Looking to get involved or connected? Find out more about our news, events, field education and career development opportunities here >>  

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Looking to find collaborators or to see our research areas? Start here >>

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Contacts for faculty and staff across all of our Alberta campus locations. Find someone >>

Territorial Acknowledgement

The University of Calgary both acknowledges and pays tribute to the traditional territories of the peoples of Treaty 7, which include the Blackfoot Confederacy (comprised of the Siksika, the Piikani and the Kainai First Nations), the Tsuut’ina First Nation and the Stoney Nakoda (including Chiniki, Bearspaw and Goodstoney First Nations). The City of Calgary is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta (Districts 5 and 6).

At our Edmonton campus, we acknowledge the Treaty 6 region, the traditional territory of the Cree, and the homelands of the Métis people, (Districts 9, 10 and 11) and the surrounding Métis settlements. 

In our northern Alberta locations, we acknowledge the Indigenous communities of Northern Alberta, including the First Nations of Treaty 8, 4 and 10, and the Métis Nation of Alberta’s northern Métis Districts.

In our southern Alberta locations, we acknowledge the traditional territories of the Blackfoot and the other peoples of the Treaty 7 and 4 regions, and the Métis Nation of Alberta Districts. Our Lethbridge campus, located at the University of Lethbridge, is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, District 1.

We are very grateful to Indigenous peoples for the privilege of working, learning and living on these lands.