January 8, 2004 | Read Time: 5 minutes
When Andrea Bazan Manson joined with several other residents of Chapel Hill, N.C., to found El Pueblo, a nonprofit
group to help Hispanics, in 1996, she never expected to become its leader. Instead, she was planning to get a degree in social work that would give her the skills to work as a case manager, seeing clients all day.
But because she got her degree at an institution that provides instruction in social work as well as training in nonprofit management, she ended up as the organization’s executive director. Ms. Bazan Manson received a master’s degree in social work with a concentration in management and community practice at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
A degree in social work, says Ms. Bazan Manson and others at UNC, teaches students skills in communicating with clients, like homeless people or wayward teenagers. At the same time, the courses in the “macro” concentration, as students refer to the management and community-practice program, focus on the skills it takes to run a nonprofit organization, such as fund raising and marketing, as well as nonprofit leadership.
Learning both types of the skills at the same time is powerful, say students enrolled in the program, and they say they wish more academic programs offered such broad exposure.
Says Michael Haliski, who is in his second year in the social-work program: “People who have been managing nonprofits that I have worked for in the past could have served their organizations a bit better if they had grounded some of their skills in social work, rather than strictly administration.” Social-work graduate training, he says, “really helps people relate to the workers that they’re going to be overseeing and also to structure programs more effectively.”
Adjusting to Enrollment
The university’s School of Social Work was founded more than 50 years ago, while the management and community-practice concentration began officially in 1994 because many of the school’s graduates were eventually ending up in management positions at their organizations. The two-year program’s original goal was to prepare its students to work in government, but UNC changed the curriculum as more and more of its graduates went to work for nonprofit organizations.
Beyond the courses offered in the macro concentration, the School of Social Work collaborates with other graduate schools at UNC to offer an interdisciplinary certificate in nonprofit leadership. Any graduate student can enroll in the courses leading to a certificate, which include elective courses in fund raising, volunteer and citizen involvement, financial management, human resources, or legal issues.
Daniel Lebold, a 1996 alumnus of the social-work program who now serves as vice president for development at the nonprofit Triangle Family Services in Raleigh, N.C., got involved in helping to develop the certificate program after he graduated. He believed that some key aspects of nonprofit management were not emphasized enough in the management and community-practice program, like fiscal management, so the certificate helps to fill in the gaps, he says.
Mr. Lebold, who has also taught some courses for the certificate program, says the interaction in the certificate courses benefits from the diverse perspectives of students who are in UNC’s other graduate programs, such as business, law, and regional planning and development. “There are different views of management that they bring into the classroom that I wouldn’t trade for anything,” says Mr. Lebold. “It enriches the education; you can take the best of each one.”
Internships Required
Students seeking the management and community practices degree are required to serve an internship at a nonprofit or government organization.
First-year students spend two days a week at a local nonprofit organization or government agency, while second-year students spend about three days a week at their internships.
Besides giving students a chance to apply what they are learning in the classroom, the internships often allow students to make connections that help them get jobs when they graduate. It is not just the students who benefit from the internships, however.
McCray Benson, a 1990 graduate of the program and senior vice president for community philanthropy at the Foundation for the Carolinas, in Charlotte, says he and his colleagues learn a great deal from the UNC interns.
“It’s a good way for us to keep abreast of what’s going on with the academic part of the world as well,” he says.
The University of North Carolina ranked seventh among graduate schools of social work in the nation, according to a U.S. News & World Report ranking.
In addition to the internships and certificate program in nonprofit leadership, students often cite the university’s academic reputation and comparatively low tuition as advantages.
Richard Edwards, a professor at the School of Social Work and its former dean, estimates that more than half of the students in the school hail from North Carolina. And many more stick around after they graduate.
“People are surprised by the quality of life here,” says Mr. Haliski. “If you come from somewhere small, it’s just big enough; if you come from someplace large, it’s a nice smaller version.”
Lara L. McDavit contributed to this article.
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL
Program: Master of social work, with a concentration in management and community practice and a nonprofit-leadership certificate
Offered by: School of Social Work
Location: Chapel Hill, N.C.
Number of enrolled students: 45 to 50 in the management and community-practice concentration; 327 in the School of Social Work
Average number of students admitted each year: 174 in the School of Social Work
Percentage of students who apply who are admitted: 59
Tuition costs: Varies depending on number of credits taken at same time; ranges from $395.38 to $1,581.50 for state residents and from $1,895.13 to $5,685.38 for out-of-state residents
Percentage of students who receive financial aid: 67
Percentage who attend full time: 48
Average age of students: 29 to 30
Average class size: 25 to 30
Web site: http://ssw.unc.edu
