Due to urgent calls for global action in reversing climate change, Trent University Durham GTA Social Work professor, Dr. Susan Hillock, is aiming to empower social work students, professionals, and educators to integrate sustainability, climate change action, and environmental social justice topics into their curriculum and practice. 

Professor Hillock’s work incorporates climate literacy into education, leading to increased action in educators and their students – our future leaders. 

“I propose that what the social work profession needs most is to make radical paradigm shifts, start a revolution, and train students and educators to become ecological warriors,” says Prof. Hillock. 

Social work educators and professionals help to serve vulnerable populations, dismantle oppression, and intervene to promote social justice. Prof. Hillock says that those priorities can also be used to focus on working with students to better the planet and should be social work’s mission going forward. 

Prof. Hillock’s newest book, Greening Social Work Education, “aims to centre a green social work knowledge base, highlight practical applications, integrate Indigenous Knowledge into their curriculum and practice, give concrete teaching/learning recommendations, and address the need to help social work educators and students build confidence to start applying this knowledge directly in their work.” 

The book also includes various interdisciplinary contributors including six other Trent University scholars (Dr. Stephanie Rutherford, Dr. Stephen Hill, Professor James Wilkes, Dr. Karleen Pendleton-Jimenez, Dr. Kelly Young, and Dr. Paul Elliott), who share their perspectives on how to integrate sustainability into social work from the lens of their respective fields.  

The book brings together the voices, experiences, and expertise of top Canadian scholars from the social work field, as well as experts from the disciplines of education and professional learning, environmental science, gender and social justice, sociology and social development, health and community, culture, and Canadian and Indigenous studies. 

“To be effective, this revolutionary work must be done in collaboration with other academic disciplines, as well as community activists, social justice groups, initiatives, and movements,” says Prof. Hillock. 

Learn more about Social Work at Trent. Applications remain open for fall 2024.