This weeks featured club is the Student Social Work Association. This press release was prepared by Leslie Cook, Assistant Professor of Social Work and Director of Field Experience.
The Social Work Student Association (formerly called the Social Work Club) has been in existence since the mid 1990’s, when the BSW program was new to Western New Mexico University. The SSWA has open membership and does not require that students be Social Work majors in order to be involved. They participate in a wide-variety of community events in Silver City, Deming, Gallup, and Truth or Consequences every semester, doing community service projects that give back to each community that WNMU serves as a university. This allows the SSWA to be involved in communities, as well as promoting the civic engagement and campus to community relationships.
The SSWA also holds several fundraisers each year so that members can attend the National Association of Social Workers-New Mexico annual conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The NASW-NM conference provides students the opportunity to attend workshops to learn about a variety of social work practice skills, as well as providing them the opportunity to network with 800 social workers from all across the state of New Mexico. Students get to participate in Student Legislative Advocacy Day in Santa Fe, where they get to lobby for bills in the round house that they feel are important, as well as network with their state legislators.
The current officers for the 2016-2017 year are:
President: Cynthia Rodriguez
Vice President: Faith Nulk
Secretary: Emma Humphrey
Treasure: Shelby Wilkie
Advisor: Leslie Cook
The SSWA can be reached by contacting their President, Cynthia Rodriguez at 575-956-8755 or rodriguezc16@wnmu.edu or their Advisor, Leslie Cook at 575-313-2230 or Leslie.Cook@wnmu.edu
