The Master of Social Work Program at California State University, Dominguez Hills is strategically located to focus on the diverse social service needs and problems particular to the South Bay area of Los Angeles County, a large metropolitan area, populated by a wide range of socially and culturally diverse people.

Because of the diversity of the various ethnic groups and cultures, the program will prepare social work students for contextually competent social work practice, inclusive of issues of culture, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, class and gender differences, religion and the effects of bias, prejudice, and institutionalized racism. These issues and concerns often obscure helping efforts if they are not appropriately recognized and dealt with in practice and in social policy development and implementation. Thus, the program aims at increasing students’ understanding of the underlying causes resulting from intersecting effects of prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping and teaches ways of identifying strategies and interventions for addressing these concerns and problems in social work practice.

The CSUDH MSW program has set several goals in the preparation of professional social workers applying cultural and contextually competent practice.

The program aspires to prepare graduates to:

- Engage in autonomous professionally competent practices that are culturally appropriate interventions tailored to enhance the well-being of individuals, families, and the successful functioning of groups, organizations and communities in diverse urban environments.

- Be able and willing to promote economic and social justice through the practice of culturally and contextually competent interventions at all levels, including policy practice, advocacy and direct intervention.

- Be analytically skilled to identify and understand the destructive patterns of institutionalized poverty, discrimination and oppression using scientifically valid research methodologies and critical analyses to identify, assess and change aspects of competing economic, political and social systems, as well as harmful interactions among and between them.

- Engage in community based research on social issues, focusing on those variables affecting individuals, families, groups, organizations and communities in diverse pluralistic urban environments that can be directly applied to the education of students and reflect evidence based culturally and contextually competent social work intervention.

- Establish and maintain professional relationships that enable cooperation and collaboration with members of the social service community that mitigate/ameliorate complex social challenges through shared leadership and partnerships.

- Be committed to the profession of social work that includes maintaining the highest ethical standards embodied in professional ethics, development of a life-long-learning philosophy based on ongoing evaluations of one’s own practices informed by regular access to and consumption of appropriate scholarly research.