March is Social Work Month and the UTRGV Department of Social Work celebrated by hosting an event to provide information and discuss the opportunities for social workers in the Rio Grande Valley.
The event was held last Wednesday night in Main Building 2.420 on the Brownsville campus and featured information booths from Texas Southmost College, the Social Work Student Association and the Good Neighbor Settlement House, as well as speakers from the Veterans Affairs Department, and Court Appointed Special Advocates of Cameron & Willacy Counties.
John González, interim chair for the Department of Social Work, and Jack White, director of the settlement house and UTRGV lecturer, organized the event.
González started off the event talking about his history as a social worker, as well as the history of social work at legacy institutions UT Pan American and UT Brownsville.
“Historically, as UT Pan American, we had a social work program on the Edinburg campus,” he said. “There wasn’t one on the Brownsville campus. There was the TSC program. We want to be able to offer our program on this campus and in addition to having it online. Part of what we’re doing with this is to spread the word that we want to come to you guys over here.”
White said it is generally accepted that Brownsville is undersubscribed to social workers compared to Edinburg.
“We needed to ramp up our curriculum to be sure that everybody knew we were offering here [in Brownsville] what we were offering in Edinburg,” he said. “And we have an agreement between TSC and UTRGV, so that when students graduate with their associate [degree] in social work, they’ll be automatically admitted into UTRGV’s bachelor’s program in social work.”
Joe Medrano, PR coordinator and recruiter for CASA, said his organization is at a standstill when it comes to internship work.
“I would like to create a pathway to get interns,” Medrano said. “But, if we want to have some kind of an arrangement with UTRGV, what I found in my research–I’m very eager to try to create this pathway, but as an organization, we can’t do that unless we have a licensed master social worker because we can’t [accept] interns unless we have someone with that degree watching over and doing all the reporting.”
Jessica Camarillo, a pre-social work senior, said she was originally going into pharmacy, but appreciated that social work is more personal. She also spoke of her experience seeing her boyfriend’s father in the hospital due to complications with heart surgery.
“He didn’t have much money to his name,” Camarillo said. “He didn’t know how to apply to Medicare or Medicaid, so essentially he couldn’t get the proper medications and that’s why it got so bad. … I realized that there are a lot of people down here in the Valley that need that sort of help.”
Lucia Leo-Diaz, a Veterans Affairs social work supervisor and program manager for the Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn operations, gave advice to those who are interested in pursuing a career in social work.
“One of the main attractions about social work is you never get bored,” Leo-Diaz said. “There are so many different areas you can go into, so you can kind of reinvent yourself. Even if you work for a large organization, you can be a case manager. Then you can go into management, you can work with mental disabilities. You can work with substance abuse, mental health. You can work in the legal system, you can work as an independent practitioner, you can do forensic social work, you can do so many different things. Nursing home, hospice, dialysis–we’re just everywhere.”
Students interested in the Department of Social Work can call 665-3575 or visit ez.utrgv.edu for volunteer opportunities.
