Empowering Cultural Education: Event highlights pioneering UNE course on culturally informed practice

The University of New England School of Social Work recently partnered with the Justice for Women lecture series at the University of Southern Maine School of Law to present a meet and greet with Mariam Jalabi, director of the Syrian National Coalition’s Office at the United Nations in New York.  

The event highlighted the pioneering work of a team at UNE that developed a pilot course called, “Empowering Cultural Education.” The course, which was designed by a core team of immigrants, African and Latinx Americans and UNE School of Social Work faculty, focuses on preparing social workers for practice with people from diverse backgrounds: refugees, immigrants and historically oppressed groups such as Native and African Americans.

“When you bring theory and community together, we’re constantly learning,” said Empowering Cultural Education faculty member Regina Phillips, M.S.W. ’17. “You have community leaders helping to teach educators, researchers and administrators who have been in the field for a very long time, and then of course you have professors or colleagues engaging community leaders on something about informal theory and research. And, all of that rich conversation is happening while mutual admiration and respect go back and forth. It’s wonderful.”

Through this course, students learn about the experiences of immigration, assimilation, forced enslavement and historical trauma in partnership with members of these diverse communities, who provide instruction and first-hand knowledge.

“I think this course should be a requirement for all professions,” stated Alyssa Wyman (M.S.W., ’18). “I think you're amiss as a health professional if you don't engage in these conversations and know what populations you're serving and how to best serve them.”

“This course has completely exceeded what I thought it could be,” said Hattie Welch (M.S.O.T., ’18). “It’s gone in so much depth and covered so much breadth of human experience – it just completely blew my expectations out of the water.”

At the event, Jalabi showed great interest in the new course. The dinner also provided participants, who represented a broad range of health disciplines  and interests in social justice issues, the chance to connect and discuss future opportunities for collaboration. The UNE Empowering Cultural Education team plans to host a similar event with USM’s JFW speaker each year.

To learn more about the University of New England’s Westbrook College of Health Professions visit www.une.edu/wchp

To apply, visit www.une.edu/admissions