Nolan Winters

I chose to attend UNC Charlotte because it was in a major city and because the generalist program provided me with a wider base of knowledge than a clinical social work program would. I believe that learning about the variety of work social workers do outside of therapy has made me better and proud of my degree.

When studying for your MSW, I feel that you learn many of your clinical skills in your internships. However, the generalist curriculum of the UNCC MSW program gave me a context for my career. It provided me with the history of US society and American social work. It also showed me all the ways social workers can make change and the diversity of contexts in which social workers operate. It gave me a sense that I could do anything with this degree and reduced any fears I had about finding work after graduation. Social workers are everywhere in US society doing a large variety of fantastic things for their communities.

So many professors played such a pivotal role in my growth as a social worker while studying at UNCC. Professor Jacquelyn Garcia always taught with such energy and in such an engaging way. The way she supports her students and provides constructive feedback motivated me to improve my work. The work I began in her Social Work with Groups course I continued to develop not only into my capstone, but into a full-fledged therapeutic program which I am currently fund-raising to execute in the Charlotte community. I also experienced a similar amount of encouragement from Professor Amy Peters.

I also want to be sure to mention the way that Professor Dante Bryant challenged my thinking in his “Social Work, Social Justice, and Diversity” course. This course forced us to confront the societal implications of our call to create a socially just society, and the different ways to understand what social justice is. It also provided me a historical background to better understand the racial and class structures currently seen within US society.

While a studying for my MSW at UNC Charlotte, I had the honor of being selected as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and worked with Professor Edwards-Knight assisting in his course, “SOWK 1511-001: The Field of Social Work.” The experience confirmed for me that I eventually want to lecture at UNCC. Although tough work, I thoroughly enjoyed planning, organizing, and occasionally lecturing for the course. Because I occasionally lectured about the social work profession, the experience also helped me better conceptualize some of what I was learning at the graduate level.