“Social work means caring for people’s most pressing needs.” Interview with dr. Preston dyer

Dr. Dyer, welcome to Moldova. Thank you for coming to teach at the College of Theology and Education (CTE). We are so pleased that because of your input Baylor University’s School of Social Work agreed to take the first steps toward establishing a lasting partnership with CTE. Could you please tell us about yourself, your family and educational background?

I was born in Atlanta, Georgia and reared in a Christian home. Much of my life was centered around Druid Hills Baptist Church where my parents were married and my father served as deacon and president of the men’s brotherhood. At Druid Baptist I was baptized and worked as youth director several summers during my college years. I completed grade school and high school in Decatur, Georgia and then journeyed 1,000 miles to Waco, Texas to attend Baylor University, the largest Baptist University in the world.  I majored in sociology and received my B.A. degree in 1960.

Two weeks after receiving my degree I married Alma Gene Hildebrand (Genie) who I had known since I was four years old at my church. We moved together to Baton Rouge, Louisiana where I attended Louisiana State University School of Social Work and received my Master of Social Work degree in 1962. For the next eight years I practiced social work as a clinical social worker in a state psychiatric hospital and a federal psychiatric hospital for veterans. In the summer of 1969, I was invited back to Baylor to establish an undergraduate social work program. In 1974, I took a leave of absence to attend the doctoral program at Texas Woman’s University (TWU) in Denton, Texas, and received my Ph.D. in sociology in 1974. I have spent the last 37 years teaching at Baylor.

Genie, my wife, has a Ph.D. degree from Texas Woman’s University in family studies. For the last twenty years we have together taught a popular Marriage and Family course at Baylor. Through that course we have shared with more than 6,000 students the joy and value of a healthy marriage. Genie is a part time faculty member in the School of Social Work. We have written two books together and numerous articles related to marriage. We have two adult children, Debbie and Sam, and they have blessed us with three granddaughters. God has blessed us richly with good health, meaningful work and a wonderful family. We have been active members of Lake Shore Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, since 1970, and we both serve there as deacons.

You have a wealth of teaching experience in the field of social work. Could you please share what is the classical definition of social work and how it may be different from our understanding of social work here in Moldova?

The International Association of Social Workers and the International Association of Schools of Social Work have accepted the following definition of social work from a global perspective: “The social work profession promotes social change, problem solving in human relationships and empowerment and liberation of people to enhance well-being. Social work intervenes at the points where people interact with their environments.” My simple definition is that social workers are educated professionals who, guided by professional ethics and values and a broad body of knowledge, assist people in working on their problems in living. They work with individuals, families, neighborhoods, organizations and communities to promote human well being.

I really cannot speak to how people in Moldova in general see social work practice since all of my experience has been with students at CTE. I believe that up until now CTE students have seen the primary purpose of social work as bringing people to knowledge of Christ. One undergraduate student said, “The primary purpose of social work is to bring people to Jesus.”  When we visited Moldova in 2005, I frequently asked faculty and graduates of the program how they evaluated the effectiveness of their social work activities, and every time was told how many people had been saved by their work. From my perspective, I think it is important to understand salvation as more than the individual hearing about Jesus; it is much bigger than that.  Jesus came to bring justice to people who were poor and oppressed, to teach radical love.  Social work with non-Christians will be most effective when we care for their most pressing needs, and when we are effectively challenging the forces of injustice that burden them. Jesus paid attention to both people’s spiritual and physical concerns. Through social work we can manifest Christ to people around us.

I think the best any Christian can do is to model his or her life on that of Jesus. In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25 Jesus gave a pretty clear direction for how that is to be done: “I was hungry and you feed me; I was thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was naked and you dressed me; I was in jail and you visited me.” (Mat.25:34-46) To me that speaks loudly to the purpose of social work.

I recently heard a pastor say that there are 47 incidences of Jesus healing reported in the gospels. Following Jesus’ instructions is what all Christians should be doing; social workers just do it professionally. I will never forget one of CTE’s students from Russia, who when asked during our 2005 visit why he wanted to be in the social work program rather than the theology program said, “In my country actions speak louder than words. With social work I can show people Jesus with my actions.” He already graduated from CTE with a degree in social work and returned to his home town to proclaim Jesus working with the elderly and disabled. I believe that social workers are acting for Jesus when they help people with their problems in living even if they never utter his name. Openly preaching Christianity in Muslim lands would mean death or imprisonment for many of CTE social work students.

I believe all of graduate students we taught at CTE gained some new insights into this way of thinking about the integration of faith and social work practice and so did many of the undergraduates. For others I think we at least helped them to think about the idea that there are many ways to preach Christ.

Tell us about Baylor School of Social Work and Baylor University. When was the University founded? Tell us of your experience of beginning the social work program at Baylor? What makes Baylor distinct from other American universities?

Baylor University was founded in 1845 by the Republic of Texas shortly before Texas became a state in the United States. It is a private Christian University in the Baptist tradition. It is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The University is composed of the College of Arts and Sciences and eight professional schools—the schools of business, music, engineering, education, law, nursing, social work and George W. Truett Theological Seminary.  Baylor has grown to almost 14,000 students, and its nationally recognized academic divisions provide 146 baccalaureate degree programs at the undergraduate level. The University also offers 73 masters and 22 doctoral programs, two educational specialists, juris doctor, master of divinity and doctor of ministry. The 735-acre campus is located on the banks of the Brazos River in Waco, Texas, a metropolitan area of 200,000 people. The mission of Baylor University is to educate men and women for worldwide leadership and service by integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment within a caring community (http://www.baylor.edu). It is this mission that makes Baylor unique. The University is committed to providing a superior academic education while remaining true to its Christian world view and Baptist tradition.

I mentioned above that in 1969 I was invited to return to Baylor by my former major professor Dr. Charles Tolbert, Chair of the Sociology Department, to begin an undergraduate social work program. Social work education in the United States underwent a major change of direction in the mid 1960s. Up until that time all social work education was at the master’s level and only persons with a master’s degree in social work (M.S.W.) were considered professional social workers and eligible for membership in the National Association of Social Work (NASW), our professional association. A few undergraduate programs existed, but their purpose was to prepare students for graduate education and not for practice.

In the late 1960s the United States was engaged in the “war on poverty” in our country, and it became clear that there was a need for many more workers than there were those with graduate education in social work, and that there were social work jobs that did not require the advanced skills of M.S.W. education. The federal government made funds available to begin educating students at the baccalaureate level for social work practice. Baylor Department of Sociology applied for and received one of those grants.  It became my job to develop the program. Baylor was truly one of the pioneers in developing undergraduate education in Texas and the United States. Over the years, I was able to recruit excellent faculty and together we built an outstanding program that was first accredited by the Council on Social Work Education in 1976 and has maintained that accreditation until the present.

In the mid 1990s I became aware of the need for another graduate social work program in Texas. There were already four excellent graduate programs in the state, but they were operating at capacity and there were no M.S.W. programs in private Christian Protestant universities. It was an uphill battle to convince the Baylor administration to invest in a new masters program at a time when money for new programs was tight. Eventually they were convinced of the need for a M.S.W. program that would focus on the integration of faith and ethical social work practice.

In 1996, the social work program at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was closed. The social work program at Southern was the only accredited M.S.W. program in a seminary in the United States. Its closure meant that there was no longer a place where men and women called to social work could receive master’s level social work education in a Protestant institution.

Fortunately for Baylor, it also meant that the Dean of the School of Social Work at Southern, Dr. Diana Garland, a pioneer in the integration of faith and social work practice and in church social work, was available. I immediately began trying to recruit her and finally in 1997 brought her to Baylor as the coordinator of the proposed M.S.W. program. We launched the M.S.W. program in 1999, separated from the Department of Sociology and became a School under the College of Arts and Sciences. I chaired the school until 2001 when I left administration and became a full time teacher. I had been in Social Work Education administration for 33 years, my entire academic career. It was a relief to be able to focus on my first love, teaching. Dr. Garland became chair. In 2005 we became an independent School in the University and Dr. Garland became the school’s first Dean. In 2006, U.S. News and World Report ranked Baylor’s M.S.W. program in the top 100 in the country. That is quite an accomplishment for a School to achieve in just five years.

How do you integrate Christian faith and social work? What are some ways in which Christians could help solve some of the critical problems of the society through social work?

At Baylor School of Social Work we are very intentional in our efforts to integrate faith and ethical social work practice. We have identified that as one of the major themes of the school. Different members of our faculty might differ on how they interpret that theme; so, I want to be clear that this is my personal interpretation.

I see our efforts to integrate faith and ethical social practice happening in three ways: (1) we are very intentional in our work with students to help them seriously evaluate how their personal faith and the values and ethics of the social work profession fit together; (2) we teach them how to work with clients to assess the strength of the client’s spirituality; and (3) we teach them how to help clients use their spirituality as a source of strength to work on problems in living. I will try to explain what I mean my each of these.

Social work is a value-based profession and has a well developed code of ethical behavior that members of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) must follow or lose their membership. Additionally, social workers are licensed to practice in the various states and to maintain their license to practice they must adhere to a code of ethics established by the state board of examiners for social workers. State codes in general reflect the NASW code of ethics. On the global level the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) and the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) have identified a code of ethical behavior for social workers world wide that is similar to NASW’s.

The ethics of the profession are derived from its values. The foundation value is a belief in the dignity and worth of all people. For some, that is the beginning point. For social workers who are Christians the belief in the dignity of worth of people is based on our faith that human beings are created by God in God’s own image. The second major value is the belief in each person’s right to relative self-determination. Because human beings are created in God’s image, they have a right to make choices in their lives. Think about the rich young ruler in the New Testament story (Mat.19:16). Jesus gave him a choice and he chose his riches rather than following Jesus. Social work ethics require that social workers give clients the right to make choices in how they go about solving their problems in living.

The first choice is whether to choose to use social work services. If the client does choose to use social work services, the client continues to have the right to participate in decisions related to his situation and the social worker is ethically obligated to objectively help the client evaluate options and not force the worker’s opinion or values on the client. That includes the worker’s religious, social or political values and opinions. The ethical practice of social work requires social workers to respect the dignity of worth of their clients and to honor their right to make choices about how they will live their lives as long as it does not violates someone else’s rights.

I first encountered these values and ethics in sociology course – “The Field of Social Work” – taught by a Christian professor, Dr. Harold Osborne, at Baylor. Because of the way social work values and ethics were presented, I found them to be an extension of my Christian faith. I found no conflict between my Christian world view and social work values. In fact, throughout my long social work career, I have found these two belief systems to be mutually reinforcing.

In my first years at Baylor, I taught the introductory course. In that course, students study social work values and ethics and are required to become familiar with the NASW Code and several other codes of ethics. I designed an assignment for that course that required students to write a paper in which they describe their values and worldview and to compare their own values with those of the social work profession as identified in the NASW Code of Ethics. This assignment has been improved by a number of professors since I first designed it, but it continues to be one of our major efforts to help students determine their goodness-of-fit with the profession and to integrate their own values with those of the profession.

Social work has always claimed to work with the whole person. Ironically, until a few years ago most social workers ignored spirituality as a component of one’s personality. Social work has now rediscovered the importance of spirituality in human life. Accreditation standards now require schools of social work to teach students how to help a client assess the importance of faith in his or her life in the same way we assess intellectual, social, biological, and psychological functioning. I think it is important to say here that we are not talking just about Baptist, Protestant or Christian faith–or even religious faith. People of many faiths and of no faith come to social workers for help. This is true in the United States; but probably even more so for the students at CTE.

In their practice classes, Baylor social work students are taught how to ask the client questions about his or her belief system in a non-judgmental and supportive way. Examples of such questions could be: “When things are really hard, where do you turn for support?”  “You seem to have coped well with difficulties in the past. Where does that strength come from?”; “How important is faith in your life?”; “Are you a part of a faith community?” Our task is to determine if the person’s faith can be use as strength to bring to bear on coping with his problems in living.

In their Human Behavior and Social Environment courses, Baylor students learn about different cultures. They also learn about different religions and ways people try to make sense out of life. We have a Rabbi in Waco who is an M.S.W. social worker and he has been very helpful in teaching students about the Jewish faith.

For me the primary purpose of social work was to help people cope with problems in every day living. At Baylor we teach our students to do that through what is call the “Strengths Perspective.” That simply means that we teach our students to focus on clients’ assets rather than on their deficits. What are the assets a client has available to focus on attacking a problem? When we work with clients through the assessment and planning steps of the helping process, we often find that faith has been a major source of coping with difficulty life situations for a long time. Helping clients identify how their faith has helped them in the past may help them to use that faith to meet the challenges of a new crisis. My long experience as a social worker has taught me that people in severe need of help are frequently much closer to God than those of us who deal with less challenging problems. The way many people around the world deal with extreme poverty is through their faith.  Faith often gives hope to the person fighting cancer. At Baylor we want our students to learn how to help clients tap into their faith as a way of struggling with the problems that beset them.

This is your second visit to Moldova. What are your impressions of Moldova, its people and CTE? What can you say about the social program that was started at CTE? What would be some of your recommendations for improvement?

My wife and I have had two extremely positive experiences in Moldova. Our first experience was a one week visit in September, 2005 when we lead a team of five School of Social Work faculty members to Moldova to explore the possibility of a social work education partnership with CTE. In that visit, our team taught four class sessions to the undergraduate social work students, had several meetings with the college administration and social work faculty, and visited several social service programs in Chisinau and some of the villages.

Our second visit was in 2007. During our second visit we taught three first-year Baylor M.S.W. courses to a group of ten graduate students, most of whom had undergraduate degrees in social work. Most of their degrees were from CTE, but one had a degree from a Romanian school and another from the State University of Moldova. All of them had several years of experience in social work. We then taught the bachelor-level equivalent of two of those courses, one week to a group of Romanian-speaking students and another week to a group of Russian-speaking students. By the end of the five weeks, we had taught 40 students.

On both visits, we have fallen in love with the people we have met. The students in general are highly motivated to learn and excited by the content we taught. After 37 years of teaching, Moldovan students were the first to ever say to me, “Thank you for your lesson.” On both visits, students stayed after class to talk about the course content and about social work practice in the USA. Dr. Oleg Turlac and his family have become good friends and hosts. The administrators and faculty at CTE have been helpful, cooperative and friendly. During both trips we have lived with a Russian-speaking family that operates a boarding house for visiting mission teams. They have totally embraced us both times and they are our family in Moldova.

One of the things we have learned is that Protestant churches in Moldova are deeply involved in community ministries. Almost every person we met has been involved in some community ministry. The first Monday night we were in the capital of Moldova, I visited a support group for individuals with drug and alcohol addictions. Most of them had also spent time in prisons and were unemployed. The group was a ministry of a few men from the Voice of Truth Baptist Church. We attended this church during our time in Moldova with our host family.

Some of the students look at social work education as a way to improve the effectiveness of their ministry rather than as a paid job. Often when you met people in Chisinau and ask what they do, they tell you about their ministry instead of their employment. Unfortunately, for many there is no employment.

CTE is an amazing place. It is hard to believe it was started less than two decades ago with virtually no money by ministers of churches in the Union of Evangelical Baptist Churches of Moldova. It began in an old house, and now with help from the Southern Baptist Convention and other Christian organizations it has a beautiful campus in downtown Chisinau.  We met students form several Eastern European countries and from Central Asia.

We spent most of our time in the city with only a short visit to some of the rural areas. That was enough however to be aware of the stark difference between life in the city and life in the rural area. We saw horse drawn “taxis” that deliver people to and from the fields, squatty potties, dead animals decaying along the road and questionable water supplies. Highways are narrow and full of potholes. Chisinau, on the other hand, is a bustling city that was first mentioned in writing in 1436. I think Chisinau could be a beautiful city, but its appearance is marred by soviet area buildings that have a sad exterior appearance and many structures that were begun and never finished. We were told that most of the buildings were structurally sound but not only needed exterior refurbishing but also need updating of plumbing and heating.

Almost a third of Moldova’s population lives in Chisinau. The infrastructure is in need of major renewal. Roads are overcrowded. The public transportation system, which is an absolute necessity since so many do not have private transportation, is slow at all times of the day. The downtown streets are narrow and this leads to traffic snarls.

Change does seem to be coming. One of the first things we noticed this year on the trip into the city from the airport was the amount of new construction under way. At least three big cranes are working on high rises in the downtown area and we saw a number of attractive condos that were already completed. We made several trips to “supermarkets” and the food there seemed only a little cheaper than it is in Texas and, of course, anything that was imported was much more. The bazaar did have cheaper food and many, even in Chisinau, raise their own vegetables.

Moldova is the poorest country in Europe, and migration is another big problem. We heard that the amount of money sent back to Moldova by citizens living in other countries is equal to the budget of the country. People simply have to leave to make a living; even if that means leaving family behind. Children are left with neighbors, who then leave, or with grandparents who are eventually unable to care for them.

Our hearts break for the people of Moldova. On our first visit in 2005 we were told, “In Moldova when we shake your hand we steal your heart.” That has certainly been true for us. Would we be willing to go back and teach again in Moldova? You bet, at the drop of a hat.

What are some ways, in which, you think, Baylor School of Social work could help the college and Moldavian Christians to be better equipped for social work in our country? Could you share with us some of the elements of your vision for the future?

The knowledge and skills of professional social work are needed in Moldova for work with individuals, families and small groups, and with community and policy development. The administration and faculty of CTE were courageous in developing a social work program at the time they did and the graduates of the program are doing unbelievably good work in caring for the needy in Chisinau and in the rural villages. The graduate students we taught worked in a variety of settings such as a center for children in a small village that provides food, clothing, tutoring and assistance with school issues; a woman’s health clinic that provides alternatives to abortion and sex education in the schools; a hospital for handicapped children; a hospital for children with leukemia; a program for street children; and a transition house for girls leaving orphanages. The members of the faculty have done a great job in instilling into their students the heart of social work and the theological foundation of social work.

We team taught three courses to the graduate students at CTE. The first was “Introduction to the Profession,” which covers social work history, social work values and ethics, social work practice settings, social work organizations, and social work education curriculum. The students needed to learn social work’s basic values and ethical standards for practice. This includes such things as not providing services to family, members and friends or entering into economic or personal relationship with clients. We purposely choose to teach the International Code of Ethics rather than the U.S.A. National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics in order to present a global picture. The students gave no indication that they were aware that such an organization existed or that there was an international code of ethical behavior for social workers.

The other two courses we taught focused on the basics of how to practice social work and on the skills for practice. In the last fifteen years, social work practice has made significant progress in becoming a profession that bases its work on scientific evidence. That is to say, social work practice is increasingly based on methods, models, skills, and techniques that have been shown through research to be effective. I did not expect the Moldovan graduate students to be using an evidence based approach to practice. That is still developing in the West; but I was surprised that they had little or no knowledge of any systematic approach to practice.

One student did remember having heard of the “Study, Diagnosis and Treatment” model. I was taught this model in social work school in 1960, and it was rapidly going out of style at that time. I can remember how frustrated I was with that approach because it gave me no real guide to how to help people with their problems in living. It is no wonder when we taught a contemporary, systematic approach to doing social work practice students were like sponges sucking up the water of new knowledge. These were all practicing social workers who saw this new knowledge as something they could immediately put into practice. One of the students, who worked in a woman’s health clinic, shared her new knowledge with some of her co-workers and they were so excited that they set up time for a workshop when she could teach it to the entire staff. My initial plan was for these students to teach the undergraduates and that eventually they would make an impact on the field; but here we saw an immediate transfer of knowledge to the field. This kind of activity not only impacts the development of the professions, but also strengthens CTE’s position as a provider of social work knowledge.

The third course focused on the social work skills necessary to guide the helping process we referred to above. We found that the graduate students had some basic interviewing skills; but that these skills did not go much beyond how to develop a relationship and how to ask questions in an interview. They had learned well the importance of developing a relationship with clients, but were unaware of the differences between professional helping relationships and friendships.

The three courses we taught are foundation courses. They are taught to first year M.S.W. students and to undergraduate students. The fact that these students who have undergraduate degrees in social work were not familiar with this content says to us that there is room for improvement of CTE’s curriculum, at least by contemporary Western social work standards. I think that the gaps we identified at CTE may be indicative of social work education in other places in Eastern Europe. Significant gaps in knowledge about social work and social problems exist for both the graduates and undergraduates. A part of this is the faculty’s lack of advanced training in social work; but it is also the result of not having access to literature in Romanian or Russian. One of my Moldovan students, Galina, works in a hospital for children with Leukemia. She works primarily with the parents of children who are dying. As we worked with one of her cases, it became clear she had no knowledge of the literature on death and dying. To my inquiry she replied that she had tried to google for information and could find nothing in a language she could read.

Another gap we identified was the lack of an intensive internship (field education) program. Students reported that their practicum consists primarily of short periods of observation. This was confirmed by an agency administrator who talked about a CTE instructor who brought her students out to his agency to observe the children. Another faculty member in discussing this reported that a part of the problem was convincing agencies to allow the students to actually work with the clients. Directors of field education programs in the U.S.A. will recognize this as a familiar problem in field education. In Moldova, it is complicated by the lack of adequately trained social workers to serve as field instructors. A good field education program is the heart of social work education and essential to having an adequate social work program.

Our team that visited CTE in 2005 spoke frequently of how much social work and social work education in Moldova is like the beginnings of social work in the U.S.A. and England. From what we have seen in Moldova, it is people of faith who are leading the way in attempting to meet the physical, social, psychological and spiritual needs of the poor and others in need of help with problems of living. Unlike in the history of social work in the Western world, these are not people of privilege or wealth, but people who are only slightly better off than those whom they serve. As in Moldova, in early social work education in the U.S.A., it was not those who already had social work degrees that taught, but those who had learned about social work practice by trial and error in the community, serving. Many of them were sociologists, psychologists, economists and political scientists. The same is true of Moldova and other former Soviet Union republics today.

Fortunately, social work educators from the West have also added their expertise to the development of these programs. CTE students are fortunate to have had faculty, who have been delivering social services to those dealing with some of the harshest problem in living, to teach them about helping those in need. What these students are doing in their work is testimony to value of what they have been taught. What the students need to gain is the specific knowledge base of contemporary social work practice that has been developed over the last 100 years. I think this is where the Baylor School of Social Work can add to the program.

In 2005 the leadership of CTE clearly stated to us that the best way we could help the school was to teach social work to the faculty. As we have worked together, that has been further refined to mean helping their faculty obtain M.S.W. degrees in Moldova. I didn’t grasp the significance of that request until this trip. (1) First of all, they specifically requested that we not take people from Moldova to the U.S.A. to provide advanced social work education. There is good reason for that. It is estimated that about 40% of those who leave the country for advanced education never return. (2) Secondly, if we only taught undergraduates, we would affect only one generation of students. By teaching the teachers, we have the opportunity to impact generations of students. We were honored that the dean of the social work program and one of the program’s most experienced teachers were two of the M.S.W. degree students we taught.

We were able to test this strategy to some extent during this visit. For their final exam, we required the M.S.W. degree students to prepare and teach a 45-minute lesson based on what we had taught them to the undergraduate students. We were extremely pleased with their comprehension of the material and their ability to transfer it to their students. This experience supports Director Serghei Namesnic’s and Dean Mihai Malancea’s plan to teach the teachers, social work program Dean Vadym Bulgac’s plan to use a  modular teaching model, the graduate students readiness for advanced social work education, and the absence of any major cultural hurdles in delivering Western social work education in this setting.

The faculty, staff and students of the Baylor School of Social Work want to help CTE build on the foundation they have so courageously established. I believe, our trips are evidence of our strong desire to enter into a partnership with CTE to strengthen the college’s social work program. I believe that CTE is in a unique position to educate Christian people in Moldova, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia for ethical and competent social work practice. In so doing, their students will be able to provide contemporary social work services to people in need in the region. In addition, I believe that the students we taught this year have the potential to be pioneers in establishing social work as a profession in Moldova and other parts of the region. Baylor University as an institution in the Christian, Baptist tradition has declared its plan its intent to strengthen Baylor student’s involvement in international education. In keeping with that goal, the School of Social Work has created a global initiative designed to increase social work students’ understanding of social work on world wide level and to contribute global social work education.  Our partnership with CTE is an excellent fix with that initiative.

We are in agreement with CTE administration that the best way to help the program as a first step is to provide contemporary social work education to those who will be teaching in the CTE program and a small number of other graduates of baccalaureate social work programs. The ultimate goal would be for this group to obtain an M.S.W. degree either from Baylor or from CTE.

If the details can be worked out, our plan would be to send a faculty member at best twice a year and at least once a year to teach two or more graduate level social work courses just as we have done this year. We would continue the module plan with a faculty member staying two to three weeks. We would teach the core of the Baylor M.S.W. curriculum and possibly some electives. At this rate it would take student 5 to 10 years to get their degrees.

I desire to see CTE take several steps to enhance the program from their end. I was pleased to learn that the CTE program had been accredited by the Euro-Asian Accrediting Association (EAAA). This is a major accomplishment and shows CTE’s commitment to excellence. The International Association of Schools of Social Work (http://www.iassw-aicts.org) and the International Federation of Social Workers have established standards for International Social Work Education. The next step is to work toward meeting the standards of the international professional social work associations so that CTE becomes more visible in global social work education and its undergraduate students can meet the preliminary requirements for graduate education in schools around the world. IFSW/IASSW standards are similar to what Baylor has to meet to be accredited by the Council on Social Work Education in the U.S.A. but take into consideration the limited resources of developing countries. They also leave room for cultural differences.

Quality social work education requires that students complete an internship experience that allows them to actually practice social work under supervision. It is in the internship experience that students must apply what they have learned in the classroom to work with client systems. In general, students are expected to complete 400 or more hours of practice in the internship. Those hours must be in actual practice and not just in observation. To do this, I think CTE is going to have to assign or hire a faculty member to work in field education at least half-time. Getting staff in field settings (orphanages, hospitals, community centers for children, churches, etc.) to let students work with their patients and clients is a universal problem and not easy to solve. Our director of field education struggles with that all the time, but it can be accomplished and must be accomplished if students are going to get the training they need to be well educated social workers.

One benefit of achieving this is that when students do well in their internships they are often hired in the setting when the internship is over. Also the better the intern does, the more respect is generated for the school and the social workers they produce. Eventually this leads to more respect for the profession as a whole. I believe the Baylor School of Social Work faculty and administration are willing to provide consultation on both of these issues.

My vision is that the program becomes the top program among those in the countries of the former Soviet Union. I believe in partnership we can accomplish that. Christ demands of us our best. If we are going to provide social work education within a Christian context and with a Christian world view, then it must be the best social work education possible, whether it is at CTE in the Republic of Moldova or Baylor University in the U.S.A.