Bachelor of Science in Social Work

The Nyack College Bachelor of Science in Social Work (BSW) program uses a Christian context to prepare students to be generalist social work professionals who provide service with competence, compassion, and the highest ethical integrity. By equipping students with the requisite knowledge, values, and skills of the social work profession, Nyack’s BSW program aims to raise social workers who can enhance the well-being of all people and communities, and promote a just and caring environment in a complex and interrelated global society.

Why Study Social Work at Nyack?

Nyack provides a social work education in a Christian higher education context that models the integration of Christian faith and learning. Nyack’s Social Work program provides a personally transformative environment that

• helps students find meaning and purpose in their work as they respond to their calling through the vocation of social work;
• fosters virtues that are essential for social work practice via personal and spiritual development; and
• cultivates a community in which all students experience acceptance and support.

What Will I Study?

Nyack’s social work curriculum is designed to help students develop the necessary competencies for their profession. Upon graduation, students will be able to do the following:

• Identify as a professional social worker and conduct themselves accordingly.
• Apply social work ethical principles to guide their professional practice.
• Apply critical thinking to inform and communicate their professional judgments.
• Engage diversity and difference in their practice.
• Advance human rights and social and economic justice.
• Engage in research-informed practice and practice-informed research.
• Apply knowledge of human behavior and the social environment.
• Engage in policy practices that advance social and economic well-being and deliver effective social work services.
• Respond to the contexts that shape their practice.
• Engage, assess, evaluate, and intervene with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
• Integrate their personal Christian faith with their professional social work practice.

Our Mission

Nyack College, a Christian and Missionary Alliance educational institution, through its undergraduate, graduate and seminary programs, pursues its historic mission of preparing men and women to “take the whole Gospel to the whole world.”

Core Values

Nyack seeks to exalt Jesus Christ and fulfill its mission by being:

Academically Excellent The academic excellence of Nyack has been recognized by the Middle States Commission on Accreditation, The New York State Department of Education, and The Association of Theological Schools.

Globally Engaged We live in a world that demands engagement from all of its citizens. Nyack will meet these 21st-century challenges with a commitment that for us dates back to the 19th century.

Intentionally Diverse Nyack is the most ethnically diverse Christian College in the history of American higher education. We celebrate this as an important part of both our effectiveness and our identity.

Personally Transforming This transformation is what occurs when students encounter Jesus Himself on our campus and abandon their citizenship of a self-centered, materialistic world in favor of becoming citizens of the Kingdom of heaven.

Socially Relevant Nyack graduates do more than take the words of Jesus to those who have never heard. Our graduates take the love of Jesus to those who have not known love.

A Little History

Over one hundred and thirty years ago, God ignited an overwhelming love for people of every race and tongue in the heart of a Canadian named A.B. Simpson. In those days, Simpson was pastor of a large and affluent church in Manhattan. In response to what God was doing in his own life, Simpson urged his congregants to reach out to the immigrants who were pouring into the city. He even went so far as to bring the poor and the downtrodden into his church. When he began to do this, many in the church were less than pleased.

So in a Sunday morning sermon in 1882, Simpson declared, “I am not interested in being a respectable Christian.” He left the church and began a new venture in which his burning desire to serve all people could be satisfied. He left his church to start a school in which people would be trained to take the Good News of God’s love wherever this news needed to be heard.

That school today is known as Nyack College.

Since its inception on the back of a Broadway stage in 1882, Nyack College has grown to become an institution of over 2,500 students pursuing a wide variety of graduate and undergraduate degrees on multiple campuses. At the heart of it all, is a burning commitment to bring the good news of God’s love wherever this news needed to be heard.

A.B. Simpson described this commitment as taking “the whole gospel” to “the whole world.” Today, as Nyack College serves students who represent “the whole world,” the result is a diverse and vibrant community unlike any other in higher education.