PHILADELPHIA - The University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice will launch a new doctoral-level education program in social work, which will offer the D.S.W. to students alongside the Ph.D. degree.  

Penn scholars identified four areas of need in social work, including developing new clinical knowledge, strengthening the quality of practitioners in order to meet new challenges, creating a new group of doctoral-level professors who are able to teach and conduct clinical research, and establishing new professional standards to enhance the status of social work as a profession and its practitioners.

"This is yet another example of a Penn 'first,'" said Ram Cnaan, chair of the Doctoral Program in Social Welfare.  "The D.S.W. degree will focus on the needs of high-level social work practitioners, while the Ph.D. is more focused on research."

The School of Social Policy and Practice is recruiting students for the inaugural class, which will begin in the fall of 2007.