Social Work kicks off the new year with international collaboration
UW-Green Bay’s Social Work Professional Programs in the College of Health, Education, & Social Welfare (CHESW) are ringing in the New Year with an official international agreement with the University of Gothenburg in Gothenburg, Sweden. Effective January 1, 2020, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been approved between the two institutions which will allow for student, faculty and staff exchanges between the Master’s of Social Work Program and the Master’s Program in International Social Work and Human Rights in the University of Gothenburg Social Work Department. It is anticipated that two students from each institution would participate in the exchange which is set to kick off in the January 2021 semester. Faculty and staff exchanges are yet to be determined.
This “Scandinavian Interdisciplinary Initiative,” was developed with the support of Dean Susan Gallagher-Lepak, Social Work faculty and staff, the assistance of MSW Program Chair, Prof. Gail Trimberger and Democracy and Justice Studies Associate Prof. Andrew Austin. The initiative emerged from the sabbatical research of Associate Prof. Doreen Higgins (Social Work) who conducted sabbatical research on the social welfare state at the University of Gothenburg in 2018. This initiative will progress with the 2020 sabbatical research of Prof. Austin who has been invited as a faculty scholar in the Department of Sociology and Work Science at the University of Gothenburg. It is hoped that these efforts, over time, will broaden to other academic units at both UW-Green Bay and the University of Gothenburg. The photo above depicts the final phase of the exchange project with a formal signing of the MOU on December 9. Left to right: Dean Susan Gallagher-Lepak, Provost Michael Alexander, Associate Prof. Doreen Higgins, and Brent Blahnik, director of the Office of International Education.
The University of Gothenburg is the third-oldest of the current Swedish universities with 38,000+ students, 6,000 faculty and staff, and 190+ degree programs. The Department of Social Work hosts 1,400 students in several undergraduate and graduate majors, and holds 130+ faculty and staff. The Social Work department is centrally located in the city of Gothenburg, one of the largest in all of the Nordic countries. Gothenburg’s population is approximately 600,000 residents, with a metro area exceeding 1 million.
