By Haley Costen
Staff Writer

The Simmons College of Social Work launched SocialWork@Simmons last month, giving students across the country a chance to take online classes and receive a Master of Social Work degree from Simmons.

The program is currently accepting students for the first cohort, which will begin mid-July. There will be five cohorts over the calendar year, rather than the traditional semesters, according to Stefan Krug, Dean and Professor of the School of Social Work.

The first cohort will be for part-time students, and the second cohort, which will begin in September will have both part-time and full-time students.

“We’re liberated from the sort of traditional academic calendar,” Krug said. “It’s a very different rhythm we have to get used to.”

Though Krug is unsure of how many students will be in the program, he said the plan is to start with a relatively small cohort of around 40 or 50 students in July, and for numbers to increase later.

“I’m reluctant to go out on a limb in terms of suggesting a headcount, but it’s certainly reasonable to think we’d be bringing in somewhere between 80 and 100 students in September and November,” Krug said, adding that the program needs to be prepared to ramp up quickly if there is a more widespread interest, or to adjust if interest is low.

SocialWork@Simmons is currently in the course development process, according to Krug.

The process involves converting the on-the-ground curriculum to online courses, starting with the program that begins in July, and adding courses even as the program launches.

“It’s an extensive and intensive process,” Krug said. “It usually takes about nine months, and I think we’re working on an accelerated development schedule—closer to five or six months.”

The courses are currently being developed by current Simmons faculty. However, as they add more online sections of courses, Krug said the program will be recruiting additional faculty from around the country.
“That’s one of the wonderful advantages of an online program. You can grow the program even when your on-campus space is very tight,” Krug said.

“The marvelous advantage is that you can bring together in these small live classrooms students from Alaska, Texas, Massachusetts, Vermont…so you get a geographic diversity that isn’t often possible for a school that has a historically regional draw,” Krug sad.

While Krug said that many schools are moving into the online education marketplace, some programs reaching tens or even hundreds of thousands of students, the Simmons program is a smaller, more intimate program, created in part with 2U, a program which partners with colleges to create online programs.

There will be 12 to 15 students per class, and the students and faculty will be able to see each other through high definition video through 2U.

2U is the industry leader in the offering of online graduate programs, according to Krug.

Before working with Simmons on SocialWork@Simmons, the only other online social work program 2U had organized was the University of Southern California’s, making Simmons only the second school to offer this program. According to Krug, 2U usually creates only one program in each discipline.

Another advantage with Simmons’ partnership with 2U is that it assumes primary responsibility for marketing and recruiting students, while leaving Simmons to make the actual decision-making when accepting students and hiring faculty.

“They do a lot of the expensive work of marketing a program nationwide,” Krug said. “They have the resources to do this on a scale that we couldn’t on our own.”

2U also has around 3,800 field placements for students established nationwide, and will be developing new placements for SocialWork@Simmons students, Krug said.

The Nursing@Simmons program is also offered through 2U.

“We’re really excited about it. Online education is probably controversial—there are people who are skeptical of the quality of online education and people who wonder how a profession like social work can be offered online, and I’m confident that it can,” Krug said. “I see it as the way of the future.”