Trent’s Department of Social Work is the place where students become compassionate, critical, and contextualized social workers.
On behalf of the Department of Social Work, welcome to our program! We offer a high-quality, accredited BSW program which integrates rich field placements opportunities in the community with thoughtful, critical classroom learning.
What makes our program really special is our people: Our faculty are world-class academics with diverse, active research portfolios. They bring their research and professional experience from the field into their classrooms to engage our students and bring topics to life. Our students are the best of Trent: their commitment to social justice, motivation to support transformative change, diverse personal experiences, and compassion leave our Department buzzing with good energy. Our program staff work tirelessly to support our students’ growth, learning and well-being. Community partners and alumni (and now many who are both!) support our BSW program to be experiential, responsive, and relevant.
It’s vital that social work programs like ours stay this responsive, critical, and principled; we must continually confront and learn from the ways our profession has been complicit in colonial harms and oppression. This is one of the reasons we’re constantly, carefully innovating. Since joining the program in 2016 to work with our very first cohort, I’ve watched our program grow, develop, and flourish under the care and guidance of our faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community partners. We all have much to be proud of: we achieved full accreditation from the Canadian Association of Social Work Education (CASWE-ACFTS) in 2019,we continue to have a bright, diverse and engaged group of Trent students applying for admission to our Professional Years program, and celebrated our 10 year anniversary this year. And this is just the beginning: we have our eyes set on expanding our program offerings, continuing our project of exploring how to decolonize our program and best integrate the TRC’s Calls to Action, and further developing our collaborations with Trent and community partners.
In fall 2025, we’ll welcome Reviewers from CASWE-ACFTS to see us in action and meet with each of our stakeholder groups. I’m proud of the program we’re going to show off to them, and excited about what we have in store for our next 10 years. Join us - we’d love to welcome you into this vibrant community of learners and change-makers!
Dr. Else Marie Knudsen
Associate Professor & Acting Director