Master of Social Work

Welcome to the Department of Social Work at CSU Dominguez Hills!

We are proud of faculty and students in our MSW program which has been serving communities in the Los Angeles area since 2006. Our MSW program is nationally accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE).

Our program consists of a vibrant community of faculty, students, agency social workers and community partners committed to improving lives and advancing the well being of all people they serve by working for social change and promoting social justice.

Grounded in Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality, the Department of Social Work has developed a psychosocial, ecological and cross-cultural orientation to social work practice and is designed to educate contextually competent social work practitioners.

The curriculum is developed and organized as a coherent and integrated whole consistent with program goals and objectives. Social work education is grounded in the liberal arts and contains a coherent, integrated professional foundation in social work practice from which an advanced practice curriculum is built at the graduate level.

Critical Race Theory (CRT)

Critical Race Theory is a theoretical paradigm rooted in legal studies that has gained traction in its applicability to other disciplines, including social work. CSUDH’s Master of Social Work Program is the only program in the nation – and likely in the world – whose theoretical foundation is rooted in CRT and Intersectionality. Our students take a course in Critical Race Studies in Social Work Practice in their first semester of the program, and CRT is integrated throughout the rest of the MSW curriculum.

Through its core tenets, CRT examines how race and its intersections with other markers of identity are social constructions that lay the groundwork for systemic and institutional oppression of marginalized groups. CRT in turn can provide a theoretical approach to social work practice that allows us to understand that the issues that a client presents have less to do with the client themselves and just as much, if not more, to do with institutions and systems that have created conditions that bring them before the social worker. Consequently, interventions informed by CRT attend to both the individual and institutional manifestations of oppression.