Master of Social Work Program Receives National Accreditation

In record time, SUNY Plattsburgh’s master of social work program has not only become an offering in the School of Education, Health and Human Services but has received accreditation from the Council on Social Work Education.

The accreditation, announced in July, follows the approval of the program a year ago for a fall 2024 launch.

The road to program implementation and accreditation, which started in 2023, took a detour when, in December 2023, it was announced that the College of St. Rose in Albany, was shuttering its doors permanently as of May of that year.

SUNY Plattsburgh led the charge to sign a formal teach-out agreement with St. Rose, helping its students interested in attending the university complete their programs of study without requiring them to do more work than they would have finishing their degrees at St. Rose.

Opened Doors

That relationship opened doors to the Albany institution’s MSW accreditation.

Dr. Janet Acker, professor of social work and associate dean for innovation and academic success in EHHS and former professor at St. Rose, said that the CSWE has a mechanism where a program can be acquired if there is another accredited program at the new institution.

SUNY Plattsburgh has the CSWE-accredited bachelor’s degree in social work.

“As a result, we were able to pick up the accredited program from the College of St. Rose,” Acker said.

Acker was one of several St. Rose faculty who joined SUNY Plattsburgh’s ranks. Colleague Dr. Julie Piepenbring, assistant professor of social work and MSW program director at the Queensbury branch, where the MSW resides, was instrumental in assisting in gaining accreditation here for the MSW.

‘Compelled to Help’

“There were outside entities — the New York State Education Department and CSWE — that felt compelled to help guide us on the path where we could make this work,” Acker said. As a result, accreditation happened much sooner than the normal process.

“We had from middle to late summer last year to submit a self-study to CSWE by January 2025 while we were acclimating to a new system,” Piepenbring said.

“We never worked for a state system before, but we never thought we couldn’t pull it off,” Acker said. “Some of that comes from our professional sensibilities: We’re all social workers. There’s always a way.

“I really think that the reason we were able to survive is we realized how important it was to create something new that carried it forward,” she said.

Piepenbring said she attributed SUNY Plattsburgh’s navigation and quick turnaround to accreditation — 17 months from the announcement of St. Rose’s closure to now — to “teamwork and compassion.”

‘How Can we Help?’

Both Piepenbring and Acker were impressed when SUNY Plattsburgh approached them at St. Rose, asking how the university could help.

“SUNY Plattsburgh faculty came down to us; enrollment folks came down to us,” Acker said. “They asked how are you? How are your students? How can we help?

“We are so relationally driven with our students, and they sensed they would have that relational experience at SUNY Plattsburgh as well,” Piepenbring said.

“It was a mutual need,” Acker said. “SUNY Plattsburgh was looking at adding an MSW; that happened one year later.”

Identified a Need

For their part, SUNY Plattsburgh faculty and staff had identified a need for a MSW program and had already begun developing a curriculum in 2023. Dr. Julie Richards, associate professor and social work chair, Dr. JoAnn Gleeson-Kreig, associate vice president for academic affairs, and Dr. Denise Simard, dean of EHHS, were instrumental in leading the effort.

Lecturer Penny McQuinn and Kim McCoy Coleman, associate professor, were also instrumental in the effort to develop a program.

When it was announced that SUNY Plattsburgh had received approval for an MSW program, University President Alexander Enyedi also called out the partnership with Acker and Maureen Rotundi at St. Rose, calling their guidance with CSWE accreditation and establishing the teach-out agreement “pivotal.”

Acker said that all the students who came to SUNY Plattsburgh from the St. Rose will graduate from an accredited program; those who graduated in the first SUNY Plattsburgh MSW class in May will benefit as well as it is retroactive, she said.

MSW Program ‘The Vision’

“Developing this MSW program was the vision, and everyone worked diligently and together,” Acker said.

She praised the St. Rose faculty, who she called “vested in the program they had built.”

“The people who created it were important to what it was,” she said. “There was a uniqueness at St. Rose. We had a cohesive team there, and when we met the faculty at SUNY Plattsburgh, they were us. They were just like us. There was a melding. It was so evident and so smooth. And I don’t think you always find that.”

‘Pure Excitement’

“For me, it was just pure excitement and enthusiasm because of that,” Piepenbring said. “These are our people.”

Piepenbring said they had wanted to keep St. Rose students and faculty together, “but there aren’t sufficient social work programs in the capital region. There was a community component there and a need for a different program option (to what is available in and around Albany).

“To lose that in the community was devastating for the students. They wanted an option that fit within their schedules, trained by people who were social workers. We always kept our focus on the real world,” she said. “We offered an option that we were going to lose, and we retained that and the connection to the community. The flexibility we offered and continue to offer allows them to complete and further their goals.”

For more information on the MSW program, visit https://www.plattsburgh.edu/programs/social-work-masters.html or contact Piepenbring at Queensbury at 518-564-6041 or email [email protected].

— By Associate Director of Communications Gerianne Downs

— Photos Provided