School of Social continues to explore possible collaboration with Peking University

Virginia Majewski poses at the Great Wall of China during a visit to Beijing last fall

April 2, 2009  - The School of Social Work continues to explore possibilities of collaborating with Peking University as it looks at creating a student exchange program as early as the summer of 2010.

At an information and planning meeting last week, Margaret Adamek, director of the School’s Doctoral Program and Virginia Majewski, Associate Dean of the School, presented details of a potential implementation plan between Peking University and the School of Social Work, the Medical Humanities Program and School of Liberal Arts.

The update comes in the wake of a trip Adamek and Majewski took to China last October at the request of the Chinese University’s Health Science Center to discuss if the School might be interested in helping Peking University establish a Master’s degree program in medical social work.

  The proposed implementation plan calls for a pilot student exchange to be developed as well as a faculty exchange program in the first year of the agreement.

The implementation plan suggests at least one U.S. student would be placed in a field experience with a Chinese hospital or NGO and one Chinese student in a U.S. hospital or community agency. It also suggests at least one faculty member would travel to China for study or teaching a short course for students.

If a syllabus for a proposed service-learning course could be completed by August, that would allow time to kick-off the course in the summer of 2010 and to have time to do fundraisers to help defray some of the associated costs, Majewski pointed out.

The Chinese interest in social work comes as the government is trying to reduce its role of providing services to people, explained Jieru Bai, a native of China and a PhD student in the School of Social Work.

As a communist country in the early 1950s, social work programs were done away with as the government was providing all the needs of its people. Then in the late 1970s, the country adopted a socialist market economy and the government began re-evaluating its role in addressing the needs of its people.

It adopted a “large society and small government,” approach as the government tried to encourage other parts of society to address problems in the country. Social Work programs were re-introduced into the country in the 1980s to deal with things like poverty, the break down of the family structure, crime and housing issues, she explained.

The government sees social work as a way to address problems, which in turn will lead to social stability, a key goal of the government, she noted.

But a social work program based on western values might face problems in China, Bai pointed out. In western societies, the individual rights are important, but in China, the collective good is seen as more important than the individual.

While a social worker in the U.S. would view everyone as equal, the Chinese view experts as having a certain authority, making the social worker-client relationship different, Bai said.

While there are about 200 social work programs in China, most are at the undergraduate level. Even students who graduate with a degree have a hard time finding a social work job, Bai said.

Government support of implementing social work programs at universities is a plus as the government may be the main source of jobs for social work graduates as it remains the main provider of social welfare.