Columbia University School of Social Work Office of Professional Excellence—Course Directory
 
Columbia School of Social Work
Office of Professional Excellence
Course Offerings
as of 1/10/2019 8:06:33 AM
Spring 2018 | Summer 2018 | Autumn 2018
New York State LCSW Content Areas
Codes following course descriptions indicate the New York State LCSW content area(s) satisfied by the course. Courses without codes do not satisfy any of the content areas.
For more information see General Information on LMSW and LCSW Licensing in New York State and the List of Courses Meeting LCSW Requirements.
DIAG DSM, diagnosis
ASMT Assessment in clincial social work process
TRMT Clincial social work treatment
POPS Clinical social work practice with general and special populations
T7114 Clinical Practice with Couples
(Prerequisite: T7113 Advanced Clinical Practice in a Field of Practice.) 1.5 points. 22.5 contact hours (continuing education units/CEUs). The purpose of this course is for students to acquire the knowledge and clinical skills necessary to work with couples. Course material will center on experiential learning that will include VITAL exercises and role-plays. Lectures and discussion will draw from systems, cognitive-behavioral, social-constructionist, psychodynamic, and narrative theories. Emphasis will be placed on understanding and intervening using appropriate theoretical perspectives, as well as working with diverse populations including gay and lesbian couples, couples of color, and cross-cultural couples. Students will develop knowledge and skills for practice with specific problem areas such as chronic illness, and abuse. Issues of gender, class, age, culture, and ethnicity will be emphasized. Students will be encouraged to present their own cases whenever possible.   ASMT TRMT POPS 
 

Spring 2018
Section D36. 3/20/2018 - 5/3/2018. ONLINE COURSE. Tuesday 1:00pm-3:00pm (room TBA). Martin Babits. Call number: 73322.

 
T7114 Clinical Practice with Individuals and Families Coping With Life-Threatening Medical Illness
(Prerequisite: T7113 Advanced Clinical Practice in a Field of Practice.) 1.5 points. 22.5 contact hours (continuing education units/CEUs). This course is designed to provide a framework for clinical practice with individuals and families who are coping with a life-threatening physical illness. The course will enhance the skills and knowledge base of clinical practice students and may be particularly useful to those students concentrating in the Health, Mental Health, and Disabilities or Family and Children's Services fields of practice. Life-threatening physical illness is surrounded by a complex set of issues that will be addressed throughout the course. These include medical treatment choices, sociocultural forces that shape care provision and coping, multicultural perspectives on illness and death, psychosocial challenges and tasks associated with developmental stages, countertransference, and stresses connected with this type of work. Social work skills vital in health care practice will be examined, including biopsychosocial assessment, interventions including discharge planning, case management, advocacy and outreach, interdisciplinary collaboration, crisis intervention, supportive, grief and bereavement therapy, and psychoeducation. Values and ethics in clinical practice will be openly discussed as the health care environment is rapidly changing.   DIAG ASMT TRMT POPS 
 

Spring 2018
Section 013. 1/16/2018 - 3/1/2018. Wednesday 2:00pm-3:50pm (room 802). Mary Sormanti. Call number: 81758.
Section 027. 3/20/2018 - 5/3/2018. Wednesday 2:00pm-3:50pm (room 405). Mary Sormanti. Call number: 60032.
Section D33. 1/16/2018 - 3/1/2018. ONLINE COURSE. Tuesday 1:00pm-3:00pm (room TBA). Mary Sormanti. Call number: 28455.

 
T7114 Complicated Grief Treatment
(Prerequisite: T7113 Advanced Clinical Practice in a Field of Practice.) 1.5 points. 22.5 contact hours (continuing education units/CEUs). The purpose of this course is to introduce senior social work masters students to knowledge about attachment, loss and complicated grief, and to the principles, strategies and techniques of complicated grief treatment (CGT), an evidence-based approach developed by the instructor. CGT was tested in a prospective, randomized controlled trial and found to be more effective than interpersonal psychotherapy in reducing symptoms of complicated grief. Two further studies of this treatment are currently underway. One focuses on older adults and the other examines CGT when administered with antidepressant medication compared to placebo. An optional field trip to the research site is available as a part of this course.   DIAG ASMT TRMT POPS 
 

Spring 2018
Section D34. 1/16/2018 - 3/1/2018. ONLINE COURSE. Tuesday 10:00am-12:00pm (room TBA). Katherine Shear. Call number: 75508.
Section D35. 3/20/2018 - 5/3/2018. ONLINE COURSE. Tuesday 10:00am-12:00pm (room TBA). Katherine Shear. Call number: 88012.

 
T7114 Mindfulness in Clinical Practice
(Prerequisite: T7113 Advanced Clinical Practice in a Field of Practice.) 1.5 points. 22.5 contact hours (continuing education units/CEUs). Mindfulness interventions, and supporting research, have increased exponentially in the past 10 years. Mindfulness is taught worldwide in multiple settings including schools, prisons, out-patient and in-patient health care, and pre-deployment military settings. In addition, there is increasing evidence that mindfulness practices can assist the clinician by preventing burn out, improving patient care and job satisfaction. While mindfulness is frequently grouped among other interventions, such as CBT, unlike other interventions, it works best when grounded in a personal practice of formal and informal meditation, mindfulness, and yoga. This class will integrate the practices of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a group formatted by Jon Kabat-Zinn over 30 years ago, allowing students to understand mindfulness from the inside out. MBSR and other programs tailored for specific populations such as Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy have shown consistent, reliable and reproducible evidence of reductions in numerous and varied medical and psychological symptoms and conditions including chronic pain, anxiety and depression as well as increased immune responses and self-efficacy. The course will also review the most current evidence, including studies that demonstrate the links between mindfulness and increases in the brain's "grey matter" and slowing or reversing cellular aging (telomere length).   TRMT 
 

Spring 2018
Section D39. 3/20/2018 - 5/2/2018. ONLINE COURSE. Monday 8:00pm-10:00pm (room TBA). Julia Colangelo. Call number: 71098.

 
T7114 Theory and Treatment of Suicidal Behavior
(Prerequisite: T7113 Advanced Clinical Practice in a Field of Practice.) 1.5 points. 22.5 contact hours (continuing education units/CEUs). Most social workers will encounter suicidal clients more than once in their careers. While suicide is the penultimate act we wish to avoid, practitioners must also intervene with deliberately self-injurious behaviors that occur with higher frequency. These include suicidal ideation or thoughts; suicidal verbalization, often in the form of suicide threats; intentional self-harm (whether or not there is intent); and suicide attempts. Research on suicidal behavior now indicates that non-fatal suicidal behaviors are often most effectively reduced via systematic focus and specialized intervention strategies. This class will prepare beginning practitioners to assess and manage the clinical risks associated with self-injurious and suicidal behavior as well as expose them to the most recent empirical research advances in preventing and treating suicidal behavior. Objectives: Specifically, the students who successfully complete this course will learn about: 1) the incidence and prevalence of various self-injurious and suicidal behaviors in different demographic and diagnostic groups 2) current controversies in the field 3) methods to identify and assess suicidal and other self-injurious behaviors 4) assessment of suicide risk; immediate risk management strategies 5) functional analysis and selection of intervention targets related to suicidal behavior 6) designing intervention plans, including consultations, for managing the suicidal client in a multidisciplinary setting 7) the role of hospitalization and alternatives in preventing suicide 8) intervention strategies used to reduce chronic suicidal behavior 9) the impact of suicide on survivors and postvention intervention strategies.   DIAG ASMT TRMT POPS 
 

Spring 2018
Section 004. 1/16/2018 - 3/1/2018. Tuesday 6:10pm-8:00pm (room 302). John Fredrickson. Call number: 23443.
Section 018. 3/20/2018 - 5/3/2018. Tuesday 6:10pm-8:00pm (room 302). John Fredrickson. Call number: 29577.

 
T7114 Understanding Depression
(Prerequisite: T7113 Advanced Clinical Practice in a Field of Practice.) 1.5 points. 22.5 contact hours (continuing education units/CEUs). Depression is a highly prevalent, recurrent, and chronic condition affecting individuals across the lifespan. The World Health Organization has reported that depressive disorders are one of the leading causes of disease worldwide with over $83 billion in economic costs (Ustun et al., 2004). This course will provide an overview of current findings on the prevalence, risk, and protective factors for depression across the lifespan. Utilizing a developmental affective neuroscience framework, we will review current findings on the etiology and treatment of affective disorders. Significant attention will be placed on differential diagnosis and assessment, as well as evidence-based treatment and preventive interventions as the following questions are addressed: (1) What is depression? (2) What does it look like across the lifespan? and (3) What are the gold-standard treatment and preventive interventions?   DIAG ASMT TRMT POPS 
 

Spring 2018
Section 003. 1/16/2018 - 3/1/2018. Tuesday 9:00am-10:50am (room 405). Christine Carville. Call number: 20942.
Section 017. 3/20/2018 - 5/3/2018. Tuesday 4:10pm-6:00pm (room 311). Christine Carville. Call number: 19264.

 
T7114 What We Bring to Clinical Practice: A Critical Look at Professional Use of Self
(Prerequisite: T7113 Advanced Clinical Practice in a Field of Practice.) 1.5 points. 22.5 contact hours (continuing education units/CEUs). This course seeks to provide you with a context and tools to integrate and deepen your learning about the professional use of self in practice. You will use literature to critically examine situations from practice that involve controversy or uncertainty about how personal experiences, losses, values, race, culture, personality, beliefs, etc. have influenced or might be used differentially in the clinical process. You will examine readings on countertransference and consider the relevance of this concept across social work settings and practice approaches. For example, we will consider clinical situations where you find it difficult to determine how to assess or make clinical use of strong reactions evoked in you by a person who is seeking help from you and whom you are seeking to help. We will also consider how to make proper use of similarities between ourselves and our clients in experiences, values, race, culture, etc., and examine how and when we share aspects of our own experiences or beliefs with a client. The multi-dimensional aspects of power in the helping relationship will be considered critically as we examine your own experiences in practice. Throughout, the dimension of time will be considered for its impact on professional use of self, with particular attention to brief service.   ASMT TRMT POPS 
 

Spring 2018
Section 002. 1/16/2018 - 3/1/2018. Tuesday 4:10pm-6:00pm (room 311). Amy Werman. Call number: 69266.

 
T7305 Social Work Practice and Human Sexuality
(Prerequisite: T7100 Foundations of Social Work Practice.) 3 points. 45 contact hours (continuing education units/CEUs). An introduction to human sexuality in the context of social work practice, this course prepares students to assume a significant role in helping clients to deal with issues of human sexuality. Students are encouraged to address the affective, cognitive, and clinical components of practice and to apply them in their practice.   ASMT TRMT POPS 
 

Spring 2018
Section D04. 1/16/2018 - 4/26/2018. ONLINE COURSE. Wednesday 4:00pm-5:30pm (room TBA). Eva Kant. Call number: 63499.

 
T7311 Social Work Practice and Domestic Violence
(Prerequisite: T7100 Foundations of Social Work Practice.) 3 points. 45 contact hours (continuing education units/CEUs). Students examine the issue of violence against women in families. The demographics of the population, theories of domestic violence, crisis intervention, and short- and long-term clinical issues will be examined, as will service modalities for women victims and survivors, batterers, and their children.   ASMT TRMT POPS 
 

Spring 2018
Section 002. 1/16/2018 - 4/26/2018. Tuesday 6:10pm-8:00pm (room 311). Patricia Moles. Call number: 88600.
Section D05. 1/16/2018 - 4/26/2018. ONLINE COURSE. Wednesday 8:00pm-9:30pm (room TBA). Allison Ross. Call number: 16199.

 
T7320 Adult Psychopathology and Pathways to Wellness
(Prerequisite: T7100 Foundations of Social Work Practice.) 3 points. 45 contact hours (continuing education units/CEUs). Designed to give students an overall view of the psychopathology demonstrated by patients with the major psychiatric conditions, this course emphasizes background information concerning concepts of diagnosis in their historical context, and current concepts using specific psychopathological criteria to reach a diagnosis as expounded by DSM-5. This course is strongly recommended for clinical students, especially Health, Mental Health, and Disabilities.   DIAG ASMT TRMT POPS 
 

Spring 2018
Section 006. 1/15/2018 - 5/15/2018. Tuesday 11:00am-12:50pm (room 705). Katherine Compitus. Call number: 62546.