Field Manuals

The School of Social Work at Western Michigan University is proud to offer quality field education opportunities to BSW and MSW students to help them develop professional-level competencies in social work practice at micro, mezzo and macro levels, and to serve as the signature pedagogy, or the most fundamental way that social work practice is taught in social work education.  The field office is committed to making sure that field education is one of the highlights of the social work educational experience. 

Field education involves coordination among four key groups of people to provide a high-quality field placement learning experience: 

• The student is the central focus of the learning experience. 
• The field education coordinator is the person in charge of the field education office at each campus site. Depending upon the campus site, the field education coordinator may have graduate assistants or staff.
• The field instructor is the social worker at the field placement who will oversee learning at the agency and provide professional supervision.
• The faculty liaison is the university instructor of record for the field education course.