Dear SDSU School of Social Work Community,
I welcome all of you to the Fall semester of 2021 with a warm heart filled with great excitement and hope! I trust that all of you had a restful, healthy, and safe summer, having many opportunities to recharge your batteries and refresh your will to move forward in the academic year of 2021-2022! All of us here in the School are so excited to welcome our new incoming students (in undergraduate Social Work and Gerontology programs, MSW graduate program, and Joint Doctoral Program) and see our returning students coming back safe and healthy. Due to the persistent Covid-19 pandemic, our academic and educational lives have been altered significantly from our normal campus life in the past year and a half. It is great to finally be back on campus, seeing our colleagues and students in-person, while keeping all of our health and safety measures.
Despite various challenges posed by the pandemic, our faculty and students have pushed through a difficult path with many successes and accomplishments. Our School remains committed to nurturing our Social Work, Gerontology, and JDP students so that the quality of their educational experiences will be enhanced and strengthened and that all of our students will realize every bit of their potential to the highest extent possible. Faculty and staff will work to ensure that our students will engage in their learning, in a safe and stimulating environment, building upon the foundation of social justice, diversity, inclusion, and equity.
We are thrilled to have three (3) new faculty members and eleven (11) new lecturers joining us this year! Our School has never experienced such a large group of new faculty members and lecturers joining in one semester before! Please welcome them so that they can quickly feel that they are wonderful family members of our SDSU School of Social Work Community.
While we head into the fall semester of 2021 with great excitement, I wish to stress the utmost importance of close and frequent communication, understanding, patience, and care for each other. We should always strive to come together under our common goal of advancing the well-being of the vulnerable population and help each other to build up our passions towards the goal. We begin our unique journey this fall semester of 2021, and we can turn whichever situations around into favorable opportunities to help us! As many of you already know, the word ‘opportunity’ comes from the Latin phrase, ‘ob portum veniens’ (coming toward a port). It means a favorable wind blowing ships into the harbor. Likewise, something good or favorable may be coming to all of us, so the choice is ours to make, to ‘seize’ it, or let it go!
I sincerely wish you the best and many blessings in this new academic year! Please always stay healthy and safe! Looking forward to seeing you in-person!!!
Jong Won Min, Ph.D., MSW
Director
School of Social Work
