1971 Utonian

Page 107

One thousand and fifty hours of casework are required of all students working for a Master of Social Work degree in the Graduate School of Social Work. No college stresses actual involvement education more than Social Work, for obvious reasons. The College runs field units at the Guadalupe Community Center in western Salt Lake City, at Brigham City and Fort Duchesne, in addition to working with CAP in the Central City district, providing a child care and welfare center and staffing Neighborhood House group work center for the disadvan-taged. Under-graduate Sociology students as well as graduates work in these units, gaining invaluable experience and learning to put academic principle into actual application. The Graduate School of Social Work has been a sudden and notable success, landing better than ten grants in less than three years. Among these awards are training grants from the National Institute for Mental Health and a program fund for training Indian in social work. Dean Rex Skidmore stated that the school's new building south of the Social Sciences tower symbolizes the newness and rapid expansion of the program, the best in the intermountain area. He looks forward to increased university/community interaction with mutual benefit. The Graduate School of Social Work is one of the few academic divisions on campus that actually deals with the involvement so much discussed in most departments. The College of Law is moving more and more to the practical, problem-solving approach in legal studies, according to Dean Samuel Thurman. Students prepare problems to be presented and analyzed in class and also are encouraged to contribute to the community in any way possible-through clinical programs, student aid to Community Action Program and indigents- by involvement courses which are supervised by professional lawyers. There is active participation in the Student Bar Association also, indicative of the extremely high competitive nature of students who know that six hundred ^ of a thousand applicants are denied admission to the college. Dean Thurman said that he couldn't think of any standards by which Law could be compared to any of the other colleges in the University, that there was no ranking system for doing so that he knew of. If one judges by the faculty, however, one could say that the law school is as high or higher in academic experience as any college on the campus-it includes, among others, a former Dean of the Philadelphia Law School. Although on a semester rather than quarterly system and generally not only older but more busy than the regular student, the student lawyer finds a surprising amount of time to be active in campus affairs. Other departments tend to forget that Law students pay activity fees also, but legal eagles, many of them former undergraduate ASUU participants, tend to maintain and cultivate the contacts they made, and keep in the running. In order to meet health needs in the Seventies, medical care education will need drastic changes. A large segment of the public is demanding more doctors, but Franklin Ebaugh, Dean of the College of Medicine, says this is neither necessary or desirable. The solutions to problems in medicine are complex, but revolve around reorganizing the Doctor's time for greater efficiency. More medical technicians, general practicioners and ambulatory care facilities are a part of the answer. One third to one half of patients occupying hospital beds could be taken care of by technicians in motel-like ambulatory units, sparing the physician with twelve years of education overwork and allowing him to give proper care to those who need it. One of the top twenty Medical Colleges in the nation, the University Med School obtains over 80% of its operating cost from research grants and turns out a large percentage of graduates who teach medicine. It annually receives 1300 applications for 75 openings, turning away an average of two eminently qualified applicants for each one accepted. Reorganization of the approach to medical education has led the College of Medicine to an all Pass-Fail grading system and streamlining of curriculum, but Dean Ebaugh thinks that shortening the course of study to nine years would not make much difference in the number of physicians graduated- instead it would increase the amount by approximately 7.5%-although it might make the medical profession a much more attractive proposition.